I think you're missing my point. While many kids in your math class might need linear algebra in the future, there are many classes that don't adequately prepa

I think you're missing my point. While many kids in your math class might need linear algebra in the future, there are many classes that don't adequately prepare you for study in that field yet expect that you are, in fact, on a major path in that field. This just isn't true for many cases and you can't expect students to not be turned off by this. At the same time, learning that you don't know anything about a certain field is incredibly enlightening and makes you realize you aren't an expert in that field, it's just unreasonable to expect students to risk messing up their future in their field of study over a class that isn't relevant. In hindsight, Linear Algebra was a bad example of irrelevance.