Practical skills are useful too

That's awesome! If you are interested in art, I think you should be able to focus on it and be rewarded for that. Colleges say they don't want one trick ponies, but an engineer doesn't get paid for their singing abilities.

Nice! I go to one of the Art Institute campuses. I'm in the animation program.

You probably will need calculus (especially on big projects) There is a lot of the technical aspect with position, sizing, curvature that you have to take into consideration and having that math skill will help. I'm not saying that you're wrong and that you should definitely go to college, it's just something to think about. I hope all goes well on your interview and get into the program that you want.

Song, can I just ask what made you want to go into animation? I want to animate too, but I'm currently on both sides of the fence.

I actually wanted to go into game design. I was told that Media Arts and Animation was more versatile and very close, anyway. But it was mostly because the campus that I needed to go to (because my parents want to keep a tight leash) didn't have a game design program. Because animation has only seven classes that are different from the game design program, I'm going to go to a different campus to take those. Once I'm done with animation, of course. Animation is still a pretty good fit for me, though. I just have too many different ideas for different things. The animators are the craziest people at my school, but we're all the same kind of crazy. We all get along well. : )

Pushing different classes to make kids more "well rounded" is a completely different subject from pushing kids that they HAVE to go to college. In fact, its kinda counter to the argument made in the post. By forcing different subjects on the kids, it makes them 1) learn at least a little bit about it 2) lets them see if thats something they'd want to go into later rather than just letting them think they know what it is and that they dont like it (kinda like forcing kids to eat a new food before saying they dont like it) This would be helping them "explore their options" instead of letting them figure it out. 3) Just about every subject has potential to make use of every other subject. I can't think of a single job that literally only uses 1 subject. Graphic designer for example, you still need math to figure out how to stay profitable, how to calculate your costs, etc. You might need to use some calculus to figure out as kiki said curvature, etc. If you cant, you'll have to calculate

calculate how much it would cost to hire somebody else to do it for you. You might use some engineering to make sure your design is feasible. Physics and Chemistry, you might need to use it to make sure that billboard design you made will actually stay up and not fall down. Or that wind or rain or snow won't overload it and break it. Or make sure the paint you are using won't be affected by weather or other stuff that might come into contact with it. Every technical aspect you can figure out and do yourself, is either going to save you money, make you more money, or make things easier for you. It makes you more marketable, if I'm looking at 2 people and 1 of em can do a whole lot more for me so I don't have to hire others later, I'm much more inclined to hire that person instead, AND pay them more for it.