What exactly does school prepare us for?

Hi all, My question is going to focus mainly on the (public) education system in the USA, but I’m sure there are parallels that can be drawn to other parts of the world.

There are some people in my family whom you might call the “poster children” of education: they excelled in elementary school, middle school, high school, graduated valedictorian, over 10 AP classes and straight 5’s on those exams, did extracurriculars. They went to HYPSM for college, topped there as well and some went onto Ph. D’s from Ivies as well.

One of the Ph. D’s is really struggling. He says all he really knows how to do is take tests, and absorb what is already known, but has no clue how to do research effectively. He finds the lack of concrete answers discomforting, and his usual approach for school ineffective. The others who went on to work at companies after college find it frustrating that they use maybe 5% of what they learned in school in the real world, and that after the job interview nobody really cared about their accomplishments in the past.

So I wonder: what’s the point of doing well in school if what you learn doesn’t really help you out once you’re out of the classroom? What would be the ideal trajectory after high school for someone with that kind of intelligence?

Thanks!

Submitted May 12, 2020 at 09:19PM by mhk98 https://ift.tt/2YZP0Zt