Your metaphor is flawed. By your metaphor this kid is an olympic basketball player being forced to practice sprinting. Who cares what's on the exam? Memorizing

Your metaphor is flawed. By your metaphor this kid is an olympic basketball player being forced to practice sprinting. Who cares what's on the exam? Memorizing facts for high school tests isn't any real indicator of knowledge of intelligence. That is precisely what's wrong with education though. When I was in High School I got in trouble for designing software and writhing code on paper. Then I got hired by Microsoft when I was 18, and have been doing pretty well for myself since.