[Adam]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

See, this is where you all lose me, acting as if the trades are "lesser" or no better than pumping gas. Journeymen can make 6 figures, and Masters often own their own companies. They are very often successful people any way you look at it.

Sure, but more often they are not. You can't just look at the handful of people with a given sort of education who become unusually successful. I mean, people with business degrees "often" become upper management or even chief executives, but they are exceptions to the rule just as much as business owning tradespeople. There is a strong correlation between education and income. Here's a paper (PDF) from 2005 with some data. Granted, the numbers are sort of incomplete since, as far as I can tell, they lump unskilled labor with no college education together with skilled labor with no college...in my brief research this morning, I was unable to find numbers that drew a distinction).

What if Little Johnny wants to be an electrician? Why should he not be offered some vocational training, and be forced to stick to the college track (which is basically what all high schools do)?

No one is saying Little Johnny can't become an electrician. I have no problem with trades classes being offered. Hell, I have no problem with basic trade skills being required learning, so as to expose kids who might not otherwise consider them to the fields.

Back to the OP. What do we all need them to know?

I'm not a qualified expert!

But, seriously, I think a number of people, including myself have made decent laypersons' attempts at answering this. IMO, at minimum, literacy, math, basic history, civics, basic economics, basic science.

I think that all kids need the opportunity to explore their own abilities and interests and be supported in that exploration.

Sure. And part of that opportunity, IMO, is being required to learn the basics of fields that might otherwise be dismissed as prima facie uninteresting, and to learn foundational subjects that prepare them for other, more interesting, ones.

Also, I think we're all sort of all over the place, drifting between talking about elementary education and then high school level education. Obviously, I think older students who have mastered foundational subjects should be given more leeway in selecting what sort of more focused subjects they find interesting.