Stop Stealing Dreams (what is school for?) - Seth Godin

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake: We spend a fortune teaching trigonometry
to kids who don’t understand it, won’t use it, and will spend no more of their
lives studying math. We invest thousands of hours exposing millions of students
to fiction and literature, but end up training most of them to never again read for
fun (one study found that 58 percent of all Americans never read for pleasure
after they graduate from school). As soon as we associate reading a book with
taking a test, we’ve missed the point.
We continually raise the bar on what it means to be a college professor, but
churn out Ph.D.s who don’t actually teach and aren’t particularly productive at
research, either. We teach facts, but the amount of knowledge truly absorbed is
miniscule.
The tools to make smart decisions: Even though just about everyone in the West has
been through years of compulsory schooling, we see ever more belief in unfounded
theories, bad financial decisions, and poor community and family
planning. People’s connection with science and the arts is tenuous at best, and
the financial acumen of the typical consumer is pitiful. If the goal was to raise the
standards for rational thought, skeptical investigation, and useful decision
making, we’ve failed for most of our citizens.
No, I think it’s clear that school was designed with a particular function in mind,
and it’s one that school has delivered on for a hundred years.