[hogFeast]

That is a very generous interpretation of academics. In the UK, academics are notoriously militant (i.e. they strike pretty much constantly, have a huge media/lobbying profile...they aren't like the BMA but they are definitely up there). Even if you are going beyond nationality, it is a fairly well understood aspect of human nature that, in tertiary education, there is a tendency to teach whatever the teacher finds fun. The more arcane, the better (CS/Econ are the biggest areas for this).

And the problem isn't that the ideas are abstract. But that they are abstract relative to what the task actually is. It is like teaching a cookery course but not doing any cooking. And presumably, you are saying that it isn't difficult to teach these things because you know that? I can tell you it is false because many CS universities in the UK don't manage to produce grads that can program...easy though...amirite?

I didn't say it was pointless. I implied it was pointless to teach to children. And you are right, we need significantly less professors and significantly more doers. The UK has a massive quantity of people with immense talent wasting their lives with arcanum. The only value produced is in teaching this stuff other people...that isn't useful knowledge. Trying to control that process by brainwashing children based on what you think is valuable knowledge is not only a disturbing pattern of thought, it is utterly pointless. We have had this system (the UK civil service used to hire based on knowledge of Greek/Latin), it doesn't work. Give people useful knowledge, give them opportunity to innovate, and they will get on with it themselves. The problem we have is that we encourage people to waste their lives at universities (I say this as someone with postgrad degrees btw...you can learn useful things but the most useful thing is actually using your skills to help other people).