I have been pondering our (American and most Europeans) educational system lately. The book, My Ishmael, gave me the jumping off point for these (written) ideas. Although I have always known the following, beneath the surface. Howard Zinn is reiterating these thoughts with his tales of the beginnings of city/county-wide education systems and their use by the new capitalists of this country.
Throughout my education, a lot of classes and subjects just seemed so arbitrary to me. If you haven't asked the question, "Why do we need to learn this?", you probably didn't go to a public or private school in the United States. It is becoming more and more evident to me that the reason all of these classes seem unnecessary, is because THEY ARE!
Our education system is not designed to help you survive on your own or start a business (except for in higher education, maybe) or anything useful like that. No. Our system teaches you to be a good little boy or girl and be quiet in class; listen to your teacher; don't talk back or act up; and above all, if you don't know the answer, don't ask a question about it... just act like you know and let the teacher keep control of the lesson. God forbid, you learn by finding out something that is not in the text book. There's no way the school wants that teacher to give their own opinion either.
What our system DOES do, is to get you ready to be a good little worker (AHEM!)... employee and reject anything that is not fed you by the authorities of your given institution. The other thing it does is to keep the young folks, in an overpopulated country, out of the work force long enough so that their parents/aunts/uncles can keep their jobs/positions long enough to be duped into thinking they have enough money to support them for the rest of their natural lives. That's why we have soooo many subjects in school that really don't relate to much that is useful (example: Algebra 2/Trigonometry, what am I using that for now?) Before this country was overpopulated (prior to 1900, give or take a decade or two), children worked right alongside their parents, in horrible conditions. It took many years, deaths and strikes to get the 8-hour work day and child labor laws.
However, if I were to design an educational system from the ground level, I would start by teaching students HOW TO LEARN from jump. There is an educational philosophy just for that, called Study Technology, that I think would be perfect to teach children ages 3-5. The system teaches you how you learn, the common barriers to proper study (how to recognize their symptoms in yourself and break through them) and literacy using phonics and graded reading books. The next thing I would do is teach a basic curriculum, including history of the student's native country, history of the United States, basic math up to Algebra, Science (with lots of hands on experimentation, and the arts (visual media, music, etc) as well as life skills like cooking, laundry and budgeting, etc. Then after that curriculum was met (at the pace of the student, not by grade level), the student would be given a catalogue of professions and the like. Each of those core subjects, and their successive subjects, would be listed under the professions that require them. Then, students would be consulted yearly as to their chosen track. They will be asked whether they want to continue the current track or make a change. They wouldn't graduate until they are able to perform their daily life tasks and tasks of their chosen track, with proficiency.
Now how does that grab you? Feeling better about the future, at least?
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