>> Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.

I've nearly had the same experience as you but my perception of it was very different. I attended one of the top 100 high-schools in the US and one of the top non-magnet public schools in my state. My curriculum was comprehensive, but yes -- prima facie, very little of it was seemed applicable (other than intro to business -- which helped me deal with personal finances, maths -- which helped me write "demo" programs, and of course CS classes).

On the other hand, I enjoyed"knowledge for the sake of knowledge" tremendously (e.g., History courses) but most importantly -- I felt that I learned a great deal between the lines in those classes. I wrote a great deal of persuasive essays in humanities courses, I begin to see American politics beyond simple slogans, and I read books that taught me a great deal about the human condition that I may have missed out in my suburb (All Quiet On The Western Front comes to mind) and even when they didn't -- they taught me to be a better conservationist at lunch time.

I'll note, however, that high school could have done a great deal more. I came to the US in the middle of 7th grade from former USSR and stepping into a US middle-school felt like a horrible practical joke: instead of chemistry and physics, for examples, there was one class called "science", and the quadratic formula would not be covered for another year.

I suspect, however, we've a different personality -- many of my classmates echo your views on this matter, equally as many echo yours. There was a similar split in college: equally as many greatly enjoyed general education/core requirements, others saw it as a hindrance to taking my engineering courses. On a micro-level it happened within the discipline as well and to an extent I was guilty of this: I wanted to crank out of code and not do integration by parts by hand, so I went through the "motions" rather than learn this by heart, which I came to regret years later when I tried to grok the kernel trick in machine learning.

I am, however, inclined to agree with you: we should teach the fundamental concepts directly, but not at the exclusion of general knowledge. Some students are motivated by practical applications, others more so by knowledge itself -- and this may varies by discipline. Given a college-level education is effectively necessity (even if a paper saying "B.S. in CS" is not always a hard requirement, the requisite proficiency is still expected) students who are not as intrinsically motivated to learn the material use self-discipline to compensate. This is not good news, as it reinforces the popular perception of education as "boring" by necessity and attractive only to people who like being bored.