It doesn't seem self-evident that forcing kids to learn a little about all subjects has that much benefit. I do taxes for a living and we have a lot of tradespe

It doesn't seem self-evident that forcing kids to learn a little about all subjects has that much benefit. I do taxes for a living and we have a lot of tradespeople as clients, and their life histories are surprisingly frequently - do miserably in school to the point that their self-esteem is destroyed, spend a few years bumming around, drinking too much, playing video games, get a job in the trades, realize they can make more money owning their own business, etc. By the time they come to us, you'd never be able to tell they were the worst students ever. How many people never make it out of the drinking and playing video games phase because school has convinced them that they're failures? A lot of kids would be perfectly happy starting some sort of apprenticeship when they were teenagers, and it's not obvious to me that that would be worse than forcing them through the remainder of school. I think it's hard to tell the difference between kids who have an intrinsic motivation to play video games, and kids who have an intrinsic motivation to do anything but school and have to default to video games because the world doesn't offer much of an avenue for kids to be productive on their own (unless you happen to be very interested in computers and have access to one and the internet). I say all this as someone who thinks education is profoundly important. I just don't think as much education happens in schools as we'd like to believe, especially for people who don't fit neatly in the system.