Love the comment and I really dislike the "usefulness" attitude. Learning useful everyday things is the task of parents, or a youth group, or a mentor, or what

Love the comment and I really dislike the "usefulness" attitude. Learning useful everyday things is the task of parents, or a youth group, or a mentor, or what have you. Here in Germany, regarding school, Wilhelm von Humboldt's Bildungsideal has alwas played an important role in framing the function of schooling, and I always found it astonishing how his attitude has if anything become more relevant, given that he wrote this over 200 years ago. "There are undeniably certain kinds of knowledge that must be of a general nature and, more importantly, a certain cultivation of the mind and character that nobody can afford to be without. People obviously cannot be good craftworkers, merchants, soldiers or businessmen unless, regardless of their occupation, they are good, upstanding and – according to their condition – well-informed human beings and citizens. If this basis is laid through schooling, vocational skills are easily acquired later on, and a person is always free to move from one occupation to another, as so often happens in life." Schooling lays the foundation for people to become fully developed adults, citizens and to cultivate the ability to learn. It's why we do sports, read classical literature, take religious classes, even if we don't 'use' them. They're important parts of our culture, and it's hard to imagine how someone could navigate or begin to understand our culture not being equipped with a well rounded basic education.