Yet I have students who have graduated from/are now attending the London School, Yale, Stanford, Rice, MIT, just to name a few.
Think of the folks who spent all those thousands of hours mastering how to use the card catalog and search library stacks for information. Then comes the Internet. Zap.
All the people who spent all that time solving all kinds of equations by hand or by using a slide rule (yep, me), when along come cheap graphic calculators, available for $30 or less. Zap.
All those med students who learned to meticulously stitch inside stitches. Medical glue. Zap.
Since it's impossible to know what actual content will be any good in even less than a decade, then the real skill becomes a love of lifetime learning and the flexibility to change. That can easily be taught in the classroom and is.
No great longitudinal study has ever been done to see what parts of school make people happy in their lives, to the end of their lives. So no claim can be laid to the importance of any particular skill or content. So I will not intrude on the rest of their lives to insist my students learn something which may be worthless shortly, or could prevent them from learning social skills from their family that would make their lives happier.
Even burger-flippers don't have to take their work home with them and bring in a few cooked patties next shift. Shouldn't we treat our students at least that well?
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