*quality

Awarding seltar with one star point for this contribution to VideoSift - declared quality by eric3579.

Very interesting rant, but I truly hope it was written tongue-in-cheek. The comments bring up one of the central holes in the criticism of school subjects' "uselessness", namely "how does one find out whether one likes/is good at this or that?" Moreover, school democratises (or should democratise) knowledge. Thus, a kid growing up in an uneducated household raised on Jerry Springer and Cartoon Network might discover a love for literature, or physics, etc. via good teaching during the obligatory cursus, and follow an otherwise unlikely career path.

The problem with the US system, for the little I know of it, is that it tailors to the lowest common denominator instead of offering diverse pathways of education/career. I don't want to sound patriotic or anything, but I think the system here in Switzerland is not too shabby (although there is plenty of room for improvement). What the wiki article fails to articulate is that in the last three years of obligatory school (13/14-15/16yo) the different sections tailor to different skills, eg home economics and handyman crafts for the "low level" section, and Latin/Greek and advanced math for the "high level" section.

I feel like most of those subjects are useful to me. Some of the upper level science and math don't do much for me, but I feel like the experience of learning difficult things teaches you how to learn difficult things, which is important, even if the difficult things you learn aren't all that important.

There are big problems with the US system, but they have more to do with how things are taught rather than what is taught. The politicians seem like they want to sell public education away to corporations, which sucks.

I'd like to see us pattern our school system off of Finland's system. They went from mediocrity to 1st place in a single year. I guess the lure of campaign cash and future lobbying jobs are more important than making a decent school system.

Election funding is what is wrong with our school system. Election funding is what is wrong with our foreign policy. Election funding is what is wrong with our economy. Ele...