[nephihaha]

I was generalising of course, but that was my experience. My god daughter came out of school barely able to read or write. Others I know just remember being bullied by teachers.

Out of that list you mention there (from my personal experience), we were never taught calculus, linear algebra or probability theory. The maths was very basic and uninspiring. The foreign language teaching was next to useless. (I learnt more in six months learning German after high school than six years of French in high school.) The science teaching was okay. The history teaching was appalling (I do like history but we were taught it in such a dull fashion, and from only one or two angles.)

It would have been useful for me to learn basic cookery, how to open a bank account and so on. Sewing and clothing repair would also have been handy. We did do some carpentry and I.T. (which is obsolete, but was a useful foundation). I do use some of what I learnt in Geography class.

Against this, they tried to instill some horrible habits in us. Like they would punish all of us when one person did something wrong (and they didn't know who). I saw that across multiple schools, and I still resent it. There was also the notion that we should obey teachers without question and accept everything they say (and they were frequently wrong). In my last school, you either went straight into university or the military but at that point in life neither was an option.