[spdionis]

Why am i not able to downvote this. You are wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start.

I'll just say that a good general knowledge of various topics will greatly help in life in a variety of situations. What you get taught in high school after all is the basics of the basics. If you don't know what a gerund is... sorry, you're an ignorant, and I don't care how many stars your JavaScript library has on github.

[alexvr]

I don't know what a gerund is, and I've never needed to except in 8th grade grammar tests, which I failed. Yet I got a 79/80 on the writing section of the SAT because my grammar is pretty solid. I've been in a remedial English class, actually, with ESL kids. Like yourself and most other rational people, I am a big proponent of acquiring knowledge on diverse topics. I just think people should be able to pursue the topics they're interested in instead of dealing with distracting busywork that old people decided was a good fundamental curriculum. Do you fail to see the problem with schools forcing kids to memorize things about Native Americans and Greek columns and long division (etc.) when 1) most do not care about such things and 2) even more will never need to know such things? It's one problem to have an outdated curriculum and another to force a set curriculum, even a great one that works really well for the average student, on kids.

[spdionis]

I understand and completely agree with your issue about memorization. In my experience good teachers don't force you to simply memorize formulas/details but make you appreciate the meaning of the concepts behind those. After understanding the concepts the formulas come out by themselves and look obvious.

E.g.: It's important to know that Greek history is divided in 3 pretty different big main periods and each of them had different column designs but after that knowing the details of those designs is pretty unimportant.

A gerund is a pretty easy and obvious notion. Personally I just know it without even thinking about it probably because I was taught about it at a pretty young age. To me someone not knowing what gerund is is like someone e not knowing what multiplication is.

Honestly anything before college is a pretty young age and 99% of people aren't sure (or shouldn't be sure) about what they're going to do with their life because they don't know enough about it yet. Even that 1% will benefit out of basic knowledge in the long run because that's what makes you a man with basic culture that can discuss on a range of topics.

We humans are not computer programs specialized on solving a single task. High school makes us more like an OS, providing the features to solve (hopefully) any kind of problem we encounter in life.