Oy. I agree the education system needs an overhaul but you didn't really think this post out very well (it would also be nice if you contributed to the community before blindly submitting your post but whatever). Your post doesn't give one single relevant solution to the problems you outline.<p>Let's go over your points...<p>1. Kids aren't taught real money skills in school which is why many Americans are in Credit debt<p>Anyone who has taken economics should be able to figure out a credit card. People who get into credit debt do so because they don't spend wisely and that's a function of emotion ("I want that even though I can't afford it") and not knowledge.<p>2. USA Today says only 64% of high school students go on to College and only 29% of those earn a degree and you think this is because kids are bored by classes they can't relate to.<p>The system's screwed up. I don't think anyone questions that. But the solution is not to cut out General Education as you suggest. Most kids don't know what they want to be at 18 years old. General Education exposes them to fields they may never have thought of and that's always been the point of it. There's an argument that teachers should make things more interesting but that, imho, is really an argument against Teacher Tenure and that brings us back to "everyone knows the system's screwed up."<p>Beyond that there's also the up-side of opening kids minds (I love classical and baroque music to this day because I was forced to take a liberal arts class like music appreciation)<p>3. Textbooks need to go because they are boring, old and outdated.<p>Newsflash, it's a corrupt system. Publishers bribe dept. heads, dept. heads require those text books and it all goes on and on. Nothing you suggested (electronic or self publishing solutions) solves the actual problem.<p>The rest of your points.<p>From there you go after the K-12 education system. Well, yes, K-12 is screwed up. If you think you discovered that problem think again. But the reality is that K-12 is run by teachers and many K-12 teachers aren't good. It's a job that's frustrating as all heck, pays lousy and (thanks to unions) promises lifetime employment no matter how bad you do it. That is the problem. You can outline the results of that problem all you want but it won't change the fact that nothing else can be done before that problem is fixed.
This sounds like a college student who is stressed out by his current classload, and instead of studying more, he decided to write a blog and complain about it. Here's one snippet:<p>"Why do colleges require you to take classes that have nothing to do with your major (zoology for business majors anyone)?"<p>One of the roles of college is to give you a broad education; this diversifies your skill set and also prepares you for an uncertain future. I'm seven years out of college. Instead of wishing that I had taken more computer science classes, I often wish that I would have taken more classes not related to my major. Some of the most memorable classes that I had were not related to my major (art, music theory, sociology). These classes don't directly help me make more money in my job, but they certainly did help me prepare for life.
perma link: <a href="http://infinibuy.blogspot.com/2009/05/im-never-going-to-use-this-in-real-life.html" rel="nofollow">http://infinibuy.blogspot.com/2009/05/im-never-going-to-use-...</a><p>Every generation has this bug bear (well, I suppose every modenr generation). For a LONG time I've thought you could scrap large parts of most Physics courses and instead get the kids to read A Brief History of Time (the one with some actual math), In Search of Schroedingers Cat and a couple of others. They make it much more digestable.<p>The Blind Watchmaker covers most important biology.<p>And I've always argued that the Mitnick books should play an integral part of any school/college level IT class.<p>But it wont happen :)