&gt; Does everything need to be skill building and development oriented?<p>In short yes. There is a finite amout of time before you die, and that time is measured in years, not millenia . We spend ~12 years in school playing &quot;general education&quot; where basically we are conditioned to set times for work and hierchael authority. That is 15% of your entire expected lifespan, aka not time to spent lightly. Look at how quickly you learn new job skills and keep up with new technologies. Then look back at public school. Why does it take 12 years to move from addition to calculus? Why does it take 11 years to teach kids that chemistry is between atoms and to learn simple reactions are building blocks? Right now the amount of education that public school provides is laughable compared to how much you learn in a year on the job.<p>What would it be like if you only took 8 years to get through primary and secondary? That is 10% more time added to your productive shelf life. Better yet, those years have been saved on the front end, where your brain is most agile and plastic.<p>My personal feeling is that there is a lot of time wasted in the current public education model. When I was in school, I never percieved any A&#x2F;B testing, or relentless optimization of coursework. Instead everything was the same as it had been 10-20 years ago. At least now I get the sense that now people are starting to look for a better local minimum in the process of knowledge transfer.