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> So, the answer to the question "why doesn't school teach [writing, taxes, fiscal responsibilities, civic duties, the law, etc.]?" can be found in the capabili

> So, the answer to the question "why doesn't school teach [writing, taxes, fiscal responsibilities, civic duties, the law, etc.]?" can be found in the capability and ambition of the median student. I took honors level classes in english. I would argue that constructing a persuasive essay or writing a story is going to be much nore approachable that what I spent most of my highschool english classes dong. (reading shit and writing analysis of it). With that in mind, I don't know if I can agree with the notion that it is modulated to the capability of the median student. That said, its obvious why taxes are generally not covered. if you're straight out of highschool, you probably have a standard w2 which means 10-20 min filling a return in some tax software. If you run a consultancy like I do and have several sources of income, the knowledge required to do your taxes is too complicated to teach in high school. In my case, my accountant takes care of that. lastly, we don't teach about fiscal responsibilities, civic duties or the law because they wat us to be consumerist little sheep.

borroka 3y ago
I used to ask people what they had studied in school, posing specific questions. I tend to be in the company of (former) mid-level or above students. One question was: which writers did you cover in your English/Spanish/Farsi/French/etc. classes? Nine times out of ten, the answer was, "I don't remember." I was a top 1% student and I remember well the writers we studied. No need to ask them about sin and cosine. But I had to take 6 chemistry exams in college/Master's, and even though I was in the top 1% of students, I remember virtually nothing of anything I studied related to chemistry. And before anyone says "when you open a chemistry book, memories will flood your brain," I did, for multiple subjects, and I saw no flood, only drought.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  That's funny, I remember all the chemistry, geography, mathematics, etc. No interest in the literature stuff whatsoever. EDIT: It might have been due to the curriculum, perhaps if they had chosen authors which resonated a bit more (or at all) I'd have remembered some of it.

borroka 3y ago

I used to ask people what they had studied in school, posing specific questions. I tend to be in the company of (former) mid-level or above students. One question was: which writers did you cover in your English/Spanish/Farsi/French/etc. classes? Nine times out of ten, the answer was, "I don't remember." I was a top 1% student and I remember well the writers we studied. No need to ask them about sin and cosine. But I had to take 6 chemistry exams in college/Master's, and even though I was in the top 1% of students, I remember virtually nothing of anything I studied related to chemistry. And before anyone says "when you open a chemistry book, memories will flood your brain," I did, for multiple subjects, and I saw no flood, only drought.

HPsquared 3y ago
That's funny, I remember all the chemistry, geography, mathematics, etc. No interest in the literature stuff whatsoever. EDIT: It might have been due to the curriculum, perhaps if they had chosen authors which resonated a bit more (or at all) I'd have remembered some of it.