> That's the problem, we have to get rid of the idea that there's a set of ideas that kids "have" to know. Why don't you let the kid decide what he wants to study. Like there will be limitations but fuck it, if s/he is interested in something weird, encourage it instead of killing it.
The collective cultural experience is that this is sometimes incredibly valuable, but very often leads to intense study of subjects of marginal economic value. A person may be intensely interested in Latin and Greek Classics, but the odds of this producing skills for a livelihood are not as high as some other subjects.
Which is to say there's sometimes an awkward tradeoff between "Weird thing a kid wants to study" and "Thing that can be studied that will pay the bills later in life". This is not something that can be avoided by making education services free at point-of-consumption, because student time is finite.
The collective cultural experience is that this is sometimes incredibly valuable, but very often leads to intense study of subjects of marginal economic value. A person may be intensely interested in Latin and Greek Classics, but the odds of this producing skills for a livelihood are not as high as some other subjects.
Which is to say there's sometimes an awkward tradeoff between "Weird thing a kid wants to study" and "Thing that can be studied that will pay the bills later in life". This is not something that can be avoided by making education services free at point-of-consumption, because student time is finite.