My problem with education is that they don’t teach kids what they need to know. They teach in depth about specific stuff – for some reason stuff that you will never ever need in your life.

Will you ever need to know how to calculate the derivate of a function? Unlikely, unless you’re an engineer or economist. Will you ever need to know which year some king signed some tax decree? Never, unless you want to be a historian. Will you ever need to understand the chemical process how mitochondria in cells convert energy? Not unless you’re a med major.

Teaching dry data instead of stuff students can relate to just makes everything foreign to them. I don’t remember a single date I “learned” in history class – forgot it the day after the exams. I don’t remember the formulas for trigonometric function derivatives – hell I barely managed to remember them when I needed them for exams. And my only memory from biology class is when the teacher told a story about how there’s no bone in the penis even if it may feel that way.

The whole point of education is lost because of the overwhelming amount of detail. Students can’t even grasp the whole picture and very few teachers make the effort to help them. Hell it would be so much easier if I knew what should I do to fire up my brain when feeling drowsy – drinking infinite mugs of coffee obviously isn’t the best solution. Do I really need to experiment on myself to find the best balance of caffeine, sugar and water? I’d so much rather understand how my metabolism influences how I feel, than “know” that there are double helix molecules in my cells that are then suddenly chromosomes that then magically reproduce and boom! cell division.

Or do they actually teach kids how to stay alive in the big dangerous world, and I just missed out on all the fun?