I was never required to write Marxist literary criticisms of poetry. I learned rhetoric. I learned to write clearly and concisely, and I learned to write persuasively.
Correct grammar is not sufficient for effective communication.
Correct grammar is not sufficient for effective communication.
That stuff you learned is still not college material. It's remedial. OK, yes, there are remedial classes taught at most colleges, sadly enough. It's not justification to mandate that normal students take English classes in college.
If you think that English composition shouldn't be taught in college, you clearly haven't ready many undergraduate essays. It's fine for you to think that this information should be remedial. Looking at the writing of "normal" students, it clearly isn't.
Also most schools offer a CLEP exam for English composition, so if you consider the information remedial, you can easily skip it.
For my own kids, the solution is homeschooling, with dual-enrollment in a community college starting at age 11 to 13. Community college seems to have less of the hot garbage than a typical 4-year school would.
A class on Ancient Greek isn’t remedial just because the top 1% of society that went to college in the 19th century learned it in secondary school.
I’ve never had experience with English teachers who teach art and politics instead of English, but then again American school systems are very diverse. You might want to consider that before you make generalizations. You also might want to consider whether you have enough real evidence to hold such strong opinions on the state of English education.