I get that reading widely sounds nice, but honestly a set curriculum at least gives everyone the same basic stuff to work from. Without that, a lot of kids might just skip the hard math and science entirely. I'm not sure how to argue it better, but that's my gut feeling.

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The real question isn't reading versus learning, it's whether anyone checks anything. If we can't trust the information we're given, then reading broadly makes it worse, not better, because now you're trusting whatever random book you grabbed with zero vetting. If that logic held, then a kid who reads a thousand unvetted blogs would be more educated than one who studied a curriculum built and reviewed by actual experts. A curriculum doesn't solve distrust, but at least it's a shared, checkable baseline. Reading widely helps, sure, but it can't replace that.