I think the best way to understand stuff, is to see how it works. Problem is we can't really see stuff at so small levels, like quantums and photons, and things happen so quickly that even if our eyes could observe it we wouldn't have the time to really observe what happens. I think that some money should be invested in making animate movies, showing in supermega-slowmotion how everything happens, the way we can all best agree it would look if we could see it.
Then create some animated movies showing in the same way how brilliant people have found creative ways of exploiting these discoveries, to make inventions like the tv and the computer. And they should show with animation what in fact happens inside these devices so people can see it with their own eyes. This would provide a far better understanding of things because everything wouldn't be so theoretical, and imaginative. Imagining these things require huge amounts of brain-processing for the untrained average joe while simply watching it would leave a lot of brain-power for actually understanding it. Also we could leave the maths out in the beginnig, when teaching children about this. All the maths make students block their minds even more, and when it comes to physics then the way i see it, maths is just a good tool for imagining  more precisely. Therefore maths when teaching physics would become a bit irrelevant, compared to just seein it with your eyes. If someone really did a good job at animating a physics-course, that could perhaps even spawn a whole new breed of creative people.