Schooling

[Inverted Things]

We do not want our schools to adequately train the kids to find jobs. School exists to take up kids' time in a useful-looking way until the job market is ready for them.

Imagine if we actually managed to make our schools perfect (i.e. the children were ready upon graduation to begin somewhere other than the bottom). Let's say Jenny learns enough in school to begin not as a burger-flipper, but instead a kitchen manager. Sounds great so far, but what about her older brother, who was too old to take advantage of the new and improved schools? He's been flipping burgers for three years and is ready for that promotion to kitchen manager. The fact of the matter is that we need someone to start at the bottom, and it might as well be the young 'uns.

When I was in 6th grade, my teacher gave the class an assignment to fill out an income tax form. WTF was the point of that? The tax laws are always changing, and none of the kids would remember enough of that assignment two years henc\e when we could legally get jobs. We did it to take up time.

People always talk about well-rounded education. What the hell is the point of that? I took many general classes like everyone else. Like almost anyone else, I cared not for these generals, and therefore have forgotten everything I've learned in them. There was therefore no point in me even taking the class.

School is nothing more than a waste of time until you hit professional/graduate school, where you actually get to study exclusively stuff you're interested in and is actually useful to you.

[Inverted Things]

School is nothing more than a waste of time until you hit professional/graduate school, where you actually get to study exclusively stuff you're interested in and is actually useful to you.

The earlier schooling prepares you for those schools as well. But if you decide not to go into higher education, school still has given you a number of skills that you might use - reading, writing, math, and others. The point of having the earlier education as well rounded is because young kids don't necessarily know for certain what they want to do for a living, or always are changing their minds about it. But back to the original point - you would not survive college without having gone through earlier schooling. Hardly a waste of time.

I graduated high school with a 2.4 GPA. If you take out the math classes, it was a 1.6 GPA. Nonetheless, I flourished in college, graduating with a 3.4 GPA.

I can honestly say that, other than the math (which I was interested in), I didn't learn a damn thing in high school. So much for well-roundedness.

People learn what they want (or need) to learn. I never did any high school writing assignments for english classes. When writing became a necessity in appraising and physics lab, I had little trouble picking it up. To summarize: the english classes did no good because I wasn't interested. Requiring the skill for a higher lever of school and job forced me to learn the skill--much less painfully than sitting through all those classes.

[Inverted Things]

I can honestly say that, other than the math (which I was interested in), I didn't learn a damn thing in high school. So much for well-roundedness.

Really?  You write amazingly well for a guy who learned nothing in his English classes.

It would also seem that some of your civics stuck, if you have such an interest in politics and understand how some of the basics of government work.

Congratulations.  You were so well educated, you never even realized you were well educated.

Never took a civics course actually. The interest in politics stems from my dad who is rather opebo-like politically but not personally.

Thanks for telling me I write well, by the way. It was not a skill picked up in English classes, but rather appraising and physics lab did the trick. Proving more in depth mathematical theorems for the math classes didn't hurt either.