Worse- knowing you like something doesn’t mean you’ll like the careers or work in that field. Happens all the time. People get into the workforce and decide to go back to school or change careers because they can’t stand the work. And how could school prepare you for that? How will it give you both a wide but still functional sampling of courses AND a sufficient understanding of the workload, culture, day to day, stresses, pay and benefits etc. of each one to decide or just if you like it- but if you’d like to do that for work?

And well- it’s silly to expect a kid to decide their future. Even if you pick something and don’t regret it- people change careers and such at 30,40,50+. College for most people is still very much a time of self discovery. Most kids that age don’t even know who they are. If you meet a 35+ adult who is the same as highschool or college that’s usually really sad. We grow. So even if you had more opportunity to explore in school your odds of knowing what you want are slim because knowing what is out there is only part of the puzzle, to know what someone wants you need to know who they are, and if you don’t know who you are yet you can’t really know what you want.

It’s harsh. It’s rough. No one likes it, not even me, but end of day, all other factors asides, you have what you want or you don’t. If you don’t, you either are on the road to having it or you aren’t. There isn’t a class for decisiveness or determination, discipline…you can learn those things doing almost anything- if you apply yourself.
Others decisions influence our existences but ultimately our lives are the product of choices we make so long as we have the freedom and equality in opportunity that others have.

You can’t reach excellence. Excellence is self realized quality. Through drills and focussed training you can either get a persons best- whatever their individual best may be- or you can almost always train them procedurally to a task within their abilities. With the right training and the ability to follow a list, you can put most people on the moon if nothing goes wrong.
People want the exceptional life, or the great life, or the good life- but people aren’t always putting out exceptional, great, good, or even average. So much is subjective but the objective test? How can you objectively apply a metric for ability? Results. If you’re doing the job you love and have the life you want then you’re doing exceptional in general. The closer you are to that fulfillment, the better off.

To borrow a meme- most people are NPC’s objectively in that sense even if subjectively they are not. That’s why average is called average. That’s why genius in a field is lauded. If it was so common it wouldn’t be.
The world has a huge share of mediocre and less than mediocre people. Ho hum. Perhaps sufficient for some use or another, able to contribute but not spectacular in abilities or character or drive.
Those people aren’t likely to end up doing much unless it’s given to them or they get lucky or have some transformative experience. Not every worse will be champion and lots of horses will never even win a race. Most probably will never even finish first. Call it their genes or their training or blame the jockey- doesn’t matter.

Criminals or martyrs. The media at large is part of that system- even if not directly controlled by- owned and beholden to that system and only able to benefit because they exist within the system. So school doesn’t really need to care about what you want to do. People with the skill, disposition, potential, and means to do what they want and find their passions in life generally do.

Schools is part of that system. Naturally as part of that system it seeks to perpetuate that system and instill in students the behaviors and thought processes and condition to enter that system and continue the cycle. It is also however true that school consequently does an excellent job, if one is mindful, of preparing you to enter that system. The system doesn’t require you to understand anything about it, it requires you to stay inside the lines. Even the “disruptors” tend to stay within the line no matter how “counter culture” or “anti establishment” they are because true “disruptors” of systems usually don’t make the news or become household names unless they are known as c

That’s how everything works just about. You are given a small reward or made to feel like you got a reward for doing things that support and perpetuate a system and feed money from the bottom to the top; or you are punished for doing things that disrupt or harm that system or refusing to participate- since if enough people simply don’t participate or falls apart. The people most benefited by the system at every level have every self interest generally to try and make sure everyone else uses and maintains the system so that they can continue to benefit. The people who actually want to disrupt it are usually the people who benefit the least and usually have the least power as individuals.

It’s all a game. You generally need credit to buy a house. It’s hard to buy a new car for most people without it. Many can’t live day to day without it. You can’t get many jobs without it. You get a higher score for being a more frequent deadbeat. If you tried to borrow money from me every month, even if we are family, you don’t have “good credit” with me even if you pay me back. I’d tell you to get your life together. If you need to borrow money that often or you need to borrow money for a car etc. as an adult- you’re living outside your means or you are in a bad socio economic position or you need to do something.
You’re rewarded for borrowing because you make rich people money when you do. The more you borrow in life the more they make. The more their rich friends make because you’re probably borrowing money to give to them.

Here’s the not so secret secret. Prison is where we put people who can’t behave in an office. That’s basically it. You missed appointments or didn’t turn in paper work on time (failure to appear in court, failure to pay tickets, failure to correct citation, failure to report to PO officer etc…) you failed to follow rules even if they seemed pointless or it was reasonable not to (cannabis use, speeding alone on an empty “safe road” etc.) You behaved disruptively, you used violence either by your nature or because you had no other power against the other party etc.

Soooo many jobs, even technical jobs, require degrees but you don’t actually need a degree to do the job. Many, a degree doesn’t make you any more likely to be better at it or even more likely to have the basic skills. A college degree says you play by the rules. You went to the place you were supposed to. You had money or got loans that make sure the financial world turns or you went through hurdles and paper work to get financial assistance. You checked boxes off a list and time managed and did things even when they seemed pointless. You took that semester of basket weaving to get those elective creds.

What I think school REALLY does to prepare you for the real world is not in the classes and such.
It is a condensed and simplified world.
You do pointless things because you are asked. Someone always has some power or authority over you and you don’t always agree or they aren’t always smarter or even capable. You are given only so much in the form of information and opportunity and the rest you have to find. The unifying truth across nations and time in humanity has always been the need to figure out how to get what you want, and how to keep it.
College isn’t a whole lot different. Ivy leagues aren’t generally sought because of better education- sure they often have elite faculty and more funding but- it’s more about experience and networking.

If you tailor make the experience to each kid and their unique traits using intimate knowledge and keen insight into their wants and needs and likely path and psychology etc- maybe. That isn’t practical though. Even “grouping” kids who fit certain templates isn’t. Leaving ethics and other issues out of it.

Today I watched my friends kid face plant on stone after being told then yelled at 5 times not to run on the stone because they’d fall. After they fell they cried, calmed down, and then went back to running shortly. Myself and probably 90% of people on earth have our own experiences where we didn’t listen as teens or a teen didn’t listen and then the obvious consequences occurred. Even if you had the “perfect curriculum” good luck getting a highschool kid who knows better than you or “lives in a different world then you can understand” or whatever to follow it.
But there isn’t really one- as far as we know. Least not one that works and can be practically applied across a general mass audience.

Overall you can’t win. School is already an easy 8 hours a day plus usually home work. To teach the basics and more they’d need more time or a more intense curriculum. Many kids struggle with what already is, and many more would be left behind if things were more intense. Longer hours can fit more but if kids are burned out- sometimes shorter hours give better results, and longer hours wouid rob kids of what life they have in youth and the time to self discover and explore the world independently, be with family, socialize etc.
most schools do offer clubs and extra curriculars to allow students opportunity to learn and explore outside the standard courses. Kids need to take advantage of that though for it to be worth anything.

Chemistry, math, these also give you fundamental tools for problem solving and knowing the basics and using some thought can allow you to take the information on hand and make good decisions and get things done. History and social studies provide a sort of framework like that for social thought, politics, etc. though that’s more subjective or abstract.
I hated school when I was younger and saw so much pointlessness and waste but as I got older I realized how much opportunity there was, and I just didn’t use it well while I was there. My life could have gone very differently- not that I’m unhappy with how it’s turned out, but some things could be better or have gone better etc.

I use chemistry all the time- cooking, choosing methods and chemicals for cleaning the house or laundry, painting, crafts, handiwork, avoiding dangerous situations, understanding medicine and in survival situations etc.
these things aren’t just about careers but about life.
Physics are the fundamental rules of movement and existence. If you grasp the fundamentals you can understand and figure out most day to day physical things.
How to best heat food, safety in your car or on your bike, building, moving things around the house, fighting and self defense, risk assessment in general choices and so forth.

Science and math, trades and math go hand in hand. Wood work, metal work, it’s hard to do much with those with some geometry, algebra, and even trig or calculus. I’d say algebra and geometry are bare minimum fundamentals that any adult should have a good grasp of by the time they exit the mandatory school grades.
History is important for context and goes hand in hand. With civics (seldom if ever taught anymore in America at least.) f course kids don’t necessarily need to learn and relearn the same periods of history over and over in more detail on a rotating basis as there is a lot of history and types of history.
Physics and earth sciences and chemistry not only go hand in hand to math but are doors to many careers from trades to research and useful in daily life.

I see your point, and I believe part of the purpose of school is to give you a taste of various fields and types of knowledge so you can find what you like or are “good at,” and I agree that school isn’t always the best at doing that.
I don’t agree 100%- it’s sort of a given that you need to keep learning harder and harder courses because knowledge tends to Interrelate, even in specialized fields. If you decide to pursue engineering, architecture, science, plenty of technology, business, finance, many trades- you’ll likely need advanced math and it’s better to learn it for fre than pay hundreds or tens of thousands for semesters of math you don’t need. Going into engineering out of highschool I placed to where I didn’t need to take any non program specific math- with one required class I skipped being notoriously hard to get into and students “killing” a year or more waiting for their chance for example.

I literally came here because I saw the picture and was like: “this person does not know the audience they are speaking to in the modern age…”
And I saw there was one comment- and I said:
“What are the odds that isn’t one of 3 people (of whom you are one)….?”
And I was not disappointed.

That isn’t to say war is “better” or “worse,” a primary tactic of siege warfare was to force famine and plague upon entire fortifications or cities until everyone died, gave up, or lost their effectiveness to fight.
It could take months or years or more.
So I don’t know what’s worse- being trapped in a walled city for years, locked off from the outside world living in anxiety and fear and vigilance while you and people around you waste away unless the enemy gives up, is somehow routed, or you finally succumb- or having a few really big bombs dropped on you and having all the deaths and suffering (minus the aftermath of war) concentrated in a few days or weeks. But- war has always been a brutal and cutthroat affair with most popular portrayals of historical conflict being fictions.

So our ability to destroy and kill at scale on a per soldier basis has generally increased while our weapons have often become more prone or able to impact large areas or penetrate structures. Destroying a city at one point would usually require deliberate intent (outside of siege against fortified cities), where now destroying a city is a general consequence of proximity to a modern battle. It’s also much easier to hide or distribute active combatants and direct combat support in urban centers and more common in general.

Some of our earliest accounts of war involve battles among the towns people. As technology has progressed, the weapons and tactics of war have often become more indiscriminate. One soldier today can wield destructive power equivalent to 10,20,1000 or more men from times past.
The further you went back in war the more personal it became. The closer a soldier needed to be to another. You didn’t snap your finger and a man died, possibly without you even seeing- you had to deliberately and often with brutality and gore stab or bludgeon them to death or such. It might take a battalion of archers to lay down the field of fire in rounds per minute one soldier with a mounted heavy machine gun can.