marcisolano:

By Roger C. Schank

‘A message to high school students who hate high school: Here is why you hate it -

Recently an article I wrote about why algebra is useless and shouldn’t be taught in high school was published on The Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog.

The hate mail that followed (written mostly by math teachers) was unbelievable. Most accused me of being irrational and incapable of thought, and stated that math teaches people to think. This is pretty funny because if math is supposed to teach one to think, as they argue, they might have looked me up and discovered that not only was I a math major in college, but I was also a professor of computer science.

Of course, it is not only high school math that I oppose. I believe that every single subject taught in high school is a mistake. This will surely infuriate teachers, but teachers are not my enemy. It isn’t their fault. They are cogs in a system over which they have no control. I believe there are many great teachers, and I believe that teaching and teachers are very important.

That having been said, in honor of this school year, I have decided to give students some ammunition. Here are most of the subjects you take in high school, listed one by one, with an explanation about why there is no point in taking them.’

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