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The person being quoted (Bryan Caplan) does actually make similar claims to what you're saying. His claim is that most people use very little of what they learn
by jeffreyrogers 8y ago
The person being quoted (Bryan Caplan) does actually make similar claims to what you're saying. His claim is that most people use very little of what they learn in school and that the main thing that school does is show you're smart because you were able to graduate. So instead of making kids waste time learning stuff they're just going to forget (or never really learn as in the case of foreign languages), we should strip down the school curriculum and only teach them things relevant to their future life.
- majormajor 8y agoI think that learning to study stuff - especially when it's not obviously relevant or interesting at first - is incredibly relevant to later in life. I also don't think we'd be great at predicting the 10% that's "most relevant" for any given person. It's like the "reinventing Excel" problem - everyone only uses 10%, but everyone uses a different 10%. I think we should try to shorten the school curriculum - give some more purpose to people's ages 15-20 years, instead of filling it up with busywork while they're at their most restless and energetic - but not reduce it's breadth at all. Cramming extracurriculurs into every hour of the day to fill up time to tick boxes for a college application is a much bigger problem than foreign language classes, in my mind.