WHY should they learn calculus and trig? . . . And if you have a child who is heavily passionate about science, how much knowledge do they need on the parts of speech?
Two answers, plus a corollary.
1) We need educated citizens. There is no substitute for having broad knowledge of how the world works in many domains, in order to be able to evaluate the issues of the day.
2) Different fields of knowledge affect each other in surprising ways. You can't really be a well-rounded practitioner of any field without a basic working knowledge of lots of other fields.
and: 3) Autodidacts can be really annoying.
Admittedly the man who has educated himself is in a better position than the man not educated at all. But his work is sure to bear the mark of his limitation. If one studies the work of the self-educated . . . what one notices at once is the spottiness and therefore awkwardness of their knowledge. One forgives the fault, but the fact remains that it distracts and makes the work less than it might have been. One finds, for instance, naively excited and lengthy discussions of ideas that are commonplace or have long been discredited.
- John Gardner, The Art of Fiction
