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Comment by vlunkr | Hacker News Reader

I don't really agree with this. It seems to be based on the assumption that the entire purpose of school is to prepare you for a job. Obviously that's important, but education also simply enriches your life. Some of the electives I took in high school and college have had a great impact on the way view things, or the way I live my life, despite having nothing to do with my career.

Also, lots of math is optional (depending on your school and career.) You may not use calc or trig regularly, but most people use some algebra and geometry.

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> Obviously that's important, but education also simply enriches your life.

You should read the Aims of Education speech given by Abbott; you might really enjoy it.

https://college.uchicago.edu/student-life/aims-education-add...

Imagine if I'd said "life path" instead of "career path" and the rest of my comment still holds true. We all have a finite time on Earth and we're going to spend it doing something. Most of us seem to want to spend that time doing something meaningful and interesting.

> Some of the electives I took in high school and college have had a great impact on the way view things

"Electives" is an important word there. By high school, I think you're ready to explore the things you already know you might be interested in. Much more so than what high schools typically have on offer.

I was bored out of my mind for my first two years of high school. I went to a HS at a community college for the second two, and it made a world of difference. We had English and History classes taught by HS teachers, but for all our other credits we had the whole college's course list to choose from.

Being able to choose makes learning so much more engaging.

But that's part of the problem - not every school system lets you really choose a lot, and more importantly often does not let you choose to not take certain things, often with kinda arbitrary categories. (Speaking of the German school system here, the amount of bullshit I had to learn is astonishing, and I definitely didn't want to get rid of math or history)

Problem with this is that it’s not very comforting to someone who feels extremely frustrated (not enriched at all) by the experience they’re going through. That’s true even if you know with certainty they’ll feel enriched by it later on.

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