What is the purpose of k-12 schooling? Job preparation or knowledge?

Question

I hear so many people complaining about school and that it isn't teaching students what they need to know. When I was a kid I always thought school was to learn as much as I could about a variety of topics, and to become skilled in reading, writing and math. I just thought of school as basic skills meant to be built on later (but I always knew I was college bound).
However, I often hear that education should be getting people ready for a job or job skills. People seem offended that students are learning things they won't be using at a work situation. 
If this is what school is for, how would schools know which jobs to teach students since there are hundreds of thousands of types of jobs. Plus what about the people who want to be the rocket scientist or medical doctors would they have to learn how to run a combine or something instead? 
What would happen to someone who wanted to be one thing growing up, but then changed their minds when they became a mature person who understood more.
Anyway, what is your opinion about what schools should be teaching students?

Dont Call Me Dude · Accepted Answer

The purpose of schooling today is to teach you enough to run machinery at your future work but not enough to place your society's rules in historical context and turn you into a leftist.

The Confederates ran into the same problem.  Uneducated slaves are not that profitable, but educated ones turn rebel.

This is the kind of mentality that prevails among people who think all education must be "immediately relevant."  The lessons of the "liberal arts education revolution" of the last century are lost on them, and they either don't understand that general education helps raise intellectual prowess, or they know and don't care and deliberately want people to be uneducated and easy to brainwash.

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wil · Answer

the school system is design to make you "do" things that you dont find intresting.........school is focus on the "do" so much that when we grow up, we are program to find a job to do........natrually we are born to create and expand our minds with no end...some of the most genius of our time had little schooling or basic (henry ford, descartes...ect) and yet they were able to discover, invent, build, and imagine way better than students with higher education. why? because they stepped out of the box where there is no limit

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What is the purpose of k-12 schooling? Job preparation or knowledge?

2 Answers