School never taught me that.

Perhaps. But let’s examine that. Do a high school senior and a college senior have the same experience in using these tools? In soft skills like time management, research, etc? Maybe. On average no. But- perhaps the high schooler does. Perhaps an elementary school student doesn’t need to go to school. Here is the kicker- lots of people don’t go to school and do very well in life. Some make huge fortunes and huge impacts in the world.

The minority I would say though yes? So... it would seem evidence suggests some people don’t need school. There are things like independent study, some very bright people are self taught or self guided in their learning. THEY didn’t need school. The fry cook at McDonald’s also likely doesn’t need school I suppose- if they intend to stay a fry cook forever.

School is a blank slate. In non continuation education you learn some basic fundamentals of various subjects to help you find your interests and altitudes to specialize in later. You learn soft skills and get an idea how most of the world works. M-F x hours a week. Some vacations. Schedules, organization, dealing with pressure, socializing, team work, etc etc.

School isn’t designed to teach you how to live life. If it was, we’d need twice the military budget and you’d be in school until you were at least 35. School isn’t designed to teach you common sense. You can’t teach common sense- people have tried and failed for 10,000 years to do that. School cannot make you anything more than you can make yourself. It is simply a framework to see and test your potential, find what you like and do not like, and use what natural gifts and personality you have to take yourself as far as you want to go.

There is no class that will guarantee you a job as a CEO, that will guarantee you can make qualifying for special forces and make the teams. Lord knows the military spends quite a bit of money trying to teach people to succeed in combat or at least not die- and after decades in SOF Guys still find things they were never taught in training. Go figure.

Life teaches you life. Your ability to learn and adapt, improvise, observe, find answers and reach goals, to endure and persevere- these will in large part with ambitions and the like dictate your life more than any education. School is a FOUNDATION.

People assume that just because hey graduated high school they should be able to jump into being an adult? Just because you graduated college means you know all you need to know eh? And yet- there’s still no replacement for experience. No school known to man- even in the most critical of subjects like flight school or combat training or medical training- will have a fresh faced grad up to speed with the pros. Why do you suppose that is? Why can two people study as hard and get different grades?

Why can two people get the same grades but one be much better at the same job? There are things school can’t teach. Likely will not ever be able to teach.

Tl:dr- people die at 90 years old who say they haven’t figured life out. They haven’t learned all the things they needed to know. A fresh engineer has all the formulas and perfect math and still arrives at a wrong conclusion against their senior peer because there are things you need experience to learn. So we could keep kids in school basic education until they were 20,40,90- and they still wouldn’t have learned everything they need in life. Life changes and is different for all. You figure it out as you go. Physics and math change little in short periods and are harder to learn in 6 minutes. Turbo tax charges $30 to do your taxes but getting your physics question answered by a pro costs a little more. Time is better spent on other things than taxes or filling out government papers that change yearly and get filled out differently for every circumstance.