"Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools."
Germany does this.
Unfortunately, this is only true for places with trade schools nearby. I grew up outside of Chicago and every school had this option.
Having being shoved down that path in the UK due to dyslexia it does have its downside lots of bright kids where sent to secondary modern schools and left at 16 to work down the pits etc.
Myself, I left high school with high marks but no direction. I went to university for computer science the next fall, not because I knew that CS was for me, but because my brother went through the same program and I didn't know what else to do. That only lasted one semester, but six years on, after working various jobs and getting a college diploma in Graphic Design, I've landed on web design and development as a career. I had no idea this kind of work existed when I was in high school.
I wonder sometimes how much of the problem with switching careers comes down to the usual scapegoat - lack of humility - and how much of it comes instead from infantilizing the students.
If we're going to keep moving the workforce around every 15 years then we need a way for someone^W most people to comfortably have 3-4 fairly distinct careers in their lifetime.
But you'll be putting in 50-60 hour weeks in the cold and heat. On the bright side, the work isn't as physically demanding as some other jobs.
I've pitched the idea to a bunch of friends who seem to have an aptitude. They'd all rather with as delivery boys, waiters, or whatever low end job. They don't want a "dirty job". They want to hold out for an easy money desk job. Screw working in the cold, I'll just stick with my $7.25/he job.
There are a lot of people who can or could stitch together existing libraries to accomplish results. There are a lot fewer people (than are currently participating) who have any business writing those libraries in the first place.
My hope is that if we just acknowledged the difference in these two problem domains we might get more quality over quantity in the places where it really matters.
Precalc and English were me 2 most useful classes.
"Science" "engineering" and "history" were actually useless. If you were going to get further education, college science eclipses HS science in 1 semester. My Engineering class was the most absurd, it wasn't engineering. History was basically propaganda.
High school needs to end sooner. AP classes are the sign of this.
Here is a thing someone discovered at one point in time. Here is the conclusion. Now do this experiment. You didn't get the right answer? Do it again until you do. Or make up an answer that you think is right enough that you'll get credit. Sure, some people probably figure out what you're supposed to be learning, but I suspect most people just figure out that you should listen to authority and parrot what they expect you to say.
Looking back at my Canadian (BC) high school history curriculum, it was well-sourced and written, but I think it could have been structured in such a way to encourage youth to understand modern politics better.
I agree that the Canadian history post-1945 wasn’t emphasized enough; it should have been the center-focus. I had a good teacher in the eleventh grade that vocationally extended the curriculum to include things like economic and social issues, but they were a rare one. Honestly, if they spent as much time on The Quiet Revolution or Western Alienation as WWI, I think young British Columbians would be much better off.
Pre-highschool Canadian history was extensively focused on pre-1945 events and pretty focused around Eastern/Acadian history
Now there was nothing in the curriculum that said "Students must learn that Israel can do no wrong" it was just the way he chose to bias his presentation.
(I take the point, though -- I briefly taught HS math and one of my responses to the perennial "when are we going to use this" question was "most of you have no idea all the things you'll need or want to do yet, and we want to open doors for you.")
I blame your teachers.
There's a host of skills I'd love to have now, don't have the time/energy to learn now, and could have acquired very easily in my rural high school, instead of taking a calculus class I'd already learned on my own the year before, because it was the highest-level math class offered and the one that all the "smart" people were taking.