Most of formal education is a complete waste of time

The reason I state that most of formal education is a waste of time is because I see the results of it. If you have ever watched "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader", it is a quite telling show. The adults seriously struggle to answer questions from textbooks from grades 1-5. In fact, they almost always have to use the cheats (copying from the kids) on questions from grades 4-5 and I have never seen anyone go all the way being the grand winner of the game. I do think that certain parts of formal education are valuable but they all occur in the earliest of grades. Learning to read and read well with a good vocabulary is highly important for anything you pursue in life. You also don't forget how to do basic math since this is also something you use quite often. 1. Most of formal education is not learning. It is temporary memorization. This has been proven over and over again. This is easily proven just by testing yourself. Even though you are young (you lucky bastard) and not out of the classroom atmosphere, wait a few years and go back and try to take some of those tests you aced last week or last year. Good luck. Temporary memorization is not valuable in one's life. Students who study really hard to pass that next test is going to forget most of the unimportant drivel pounded into him very soon and most, if not all of what they "learned" will be long gone from their mind in a few years. 2. Most of formal education is not useful for life. Let's take sentence diagramming for example. I could not do that now if my life depended on it thanks to #1 above nor could I name all the parts of a sentence. But assume that I, being the rare exception, still remembered how to diagram a sentence. The real question is "why would I need to?" What value does it have? Is it going to make me more money? Is it going to make me a more rounded, interesting person? Is it going to help me get a job in the first place? The answer is "no" to all (unless I just want to be an English teacher). Along these same lines, I can remember the stupid things taught to me in 10th grade geometry class complete with logic. The entire class thought the class was stupid. No one remembers it now and no one uses it in their life except for those in very specialized fields, something no one was considering while in 10th grade. 3. Ask people with full-time jobs and careers how much of their formal education they use in their jobs. Let's start with those with jobs that only need a basic high school education. They may use the reading and writing and math stuff but that is about it. They will not be using high school chemistry to manage that meat plant nor will they be using algebra to repair computers. They don't need to diagram a sentence to run their organic strawberry farm. Most job skills are learned by experience, not by a classroom. What about jobs that require college degrees? The one advantage of a degree is that it GETS you the job if the job requires it but that is not the point. This does not change anything I say about formal education. Think of someone who is an engineer. What classes did they take in high school that were helpful? Almost none because of the memory loss factor. The first two years in college, students (myself included) are told that they don't even have to choose a major! That is two years of college soaking up your money before you take the first class having anything to do with your chosen career! That speaks volumes. They just want you to take anything so that they can make money off of you for two solid years in tuition, books, food, etc. That itself is a scam of sorts but that is what society says to do. I can still remember the classes I took in my first college semester - English, Sociology, Figure Drawing, Psych and Bowling. Yes, bowling. Not one of these has any value to me. I don't remember much of any of it except the nude models in Figure Drawing class. That was a surprise. Now, what about after those two years of needless classes? Students still take classes unrelated to their major because two more years has to be filled up. Every future doctor takes the same medical school classes for the first two years. If you want to be a brain surgeon, a foot doctor, an earn, nose and throat doctor or a chiropractor, you will all be taking the same classes. What does what a foot doctor have in common with a brain surgeon or a chiropractor...or a stomach doctor? Two more years of one's life and money wasted. College is a great money making place. The truth is that most jobs a graduate will get are less interested in your degree and more interested with how trainable you are on the job because that is where most training comes in. Ask nearly anyone with any job how much they learned about doing their job in a classroom and you will get the cold hard truth. They learned most of their skills on the job. The classroom and that piece of paper known as a degree got them the job. 4. Even formal classroom education that lead to jobs that require college degrees often miss the boat. Why would an accountant need to have serious math skills? Accountants do not sit at their desks and try to figure out compound interest. They use calculators. They have for decades but I can guarantee you that they will be forced to take all sorts of various math classes that they do not even need for the actual job. Classes in geometry, algebra and trigonometry are taught in grades 9-12 but why? Besides the memory loss factor (See 5th Grader) no one does these things except people in highly specialized fields like architects and engineers. Architects and engineers make up a tiny minority of fields and yet schools want to shove this information into the heads of everyone for a little temporary memorization? What a waste of high school time! If schools are going to teach such random specialized things that people will forget and/or never use, there is a lot more random things they could teach but do not. 5. Numerous things could be required in schools that nearly everyone uses like cooking, car maintenance, basic home maintenance and other shop courses, things that are hands on and will be remembered and used throughout life and instead, the schools teach piles of useless, forgotten information. 6. Schools are outdated. The things that people are taught to learn or memorize in classes can easily be Googled. If my homeschooled kids have a question about something, I point them to the world's largest library - the internet. They research it because they are interested (teachable moment) and they find the answers and they often remember them. They do not need to take a class. Thousands of facts that schools try to impose on us that we will forget are right here on the internet. If we want to know, we search them out. What we are interested in, we will learn about. What we are not interested in, we will ususally forget. The greatest math classes in the world are right on youtube (Khan Academey) and it is all free. That is it for now. In the interest of rebuttal space, you can just put which numbered paragraph you want to debate or whatever works for you since pasting all of this will take most of your own space.