Val and Aquinas, I totally agree with you. I read Kio Stark's book, Don't Go Back to School, and realized that darn I didn't need those master's degrees in the end to learn something, never mind the PhD work. Oh well.
Between the schools, families (as Val pointed out), overemphasis on standardization and testing (as Aquinas pointed out), etc. we've got a lot of tinderbox societal issues. So there's plenty of places for improvement. I do somewhat agree that even in an ideal school situation, it's debatable whether you will actually find out the way you learn or why you need certain knowledge/training/material.
Most schools, and I'll include colleges here, operate on a linear path with linear textbooks and linear tests. Well, that's fine and dandy but I'd say flipping burgers probably gives you more an inkling and a concept on how things operate in a chaotic, unpredictable manner despite the standardization within the fast food industry. And let's face it, not everything in life goes so linearly and is predictable with empirical standards and measurements.
