Re: Fucking education! How does it work?
Oh, also, I disagree that schools as they are now provide any specific baseline that every single student needs to have. I think everybody needs to know how to read and count, but a lot of kids already learn that before going into kindergarten.
Beyond that, I think some kids need Calculus and other kids need 17th Century French Literature, but I bet there are very few kids that will end up having a use for both in their adult life. I recommend offering all of them so the student will have a chance to challenge themselves and see what they are interested in or good at. But when the kid reaches that age where they know they just plain aren't into math, it's just cruel to force them to take year after year of algebra, geometry, etc. If they're not good at it, they're not going to go into a field that requires it, and vice versa. In the meantime it just causes fights and bad grades and feelings of failure.
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