[Matticus_Rex]

Congratulations, you're the 1% who got things out of it.

As a former teacher, I can assure you that (optimistically) 90% of what happens in school does not teach any problem-solving skills (and that's backed up by the literature). The 10% that does is in literacy and mathematics up to Algebra (not including Geometry, which almost no one remembers, nearly zero people use, has been demonstrated to make little or no difference in problem-solving skills, and yet is still somehow a required course almost everywhere).

[runesoerensen]

This remind me a bit of my elementary school math teacher who’d usually answer any question or curiosity with a dismissive “you don’t have to understand it you just have to do it”.

That didn’t help spark any particular interest in the field. It’s very difficult to learn something that doesn’t interest me.

I later ended up failing high school math, which made it difficult to get accepted for my college education. I was accepted on the condition that I’d take the math course again, and pass the exam within 6 months.

Incidentally (and fortunately) I studied philosophy and business administration. Philosophy (and particularly the ancient Greeks) got me much more excited about math, and I got an A in my exam shortly after.

Just a personal anecdote, but thought you might find it interesting.

[Matticus_Rex]

Oh, I'd love for kids to understand it -- it's far more important than doing it, and if we were teaching that understanding it would likely all be worthwhile. I'm saying that we know from the data and qualitative studies that we don't teach kids to understand most things we teach them, and they forget how to do them very quickly.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Is there not value in a basic understanding of, say, history, geography, or political science? Those ideally teach new modes of thought, but at worse they give you a fact or two. Even if they retain 1% of what they learn, they now know that the world isn't as small as it seems, and the world isn't limited to their own experiences.

[Matticus_Rex]

We know from retention data that we don't actually achieve a basic understanding of history, geography, or political science for the vast majority of students. Is there nothing better that could be done with that time? Should we be content with the structure providing that result? I agree that increasing the size of a student's world is a worthy goal, but there's little to no evidence that we're achieving that for the vast majority of students, and there are costs to achieving those dubious benefits.