but, let's say high school physics was all modern physics - let's say i went through a curriculum that didn't even mention classical physics. no apples falling on people's heads, just straight to relativity in a curved universe and god playing dice at the subatomic level. would i have enrolled in a physics program in the first place?

emphatically: no. i enrolled to study a newtonian universe.

i'd be a lot less cynical about physics if they had just told me the fucking truth in the first place. but, i would have probably studied biology, instead.