Instead of being in the backrooms binning, I'd be on the salesfloor stocking.
Make it so school teaches you to understand and apply, not to memorize. Memorizing things is useless. The only place I can use the considerably useless portion of the things they teach in school is in my stories! That's one of the reasons I write; it allows me to use and apply the useless fluff I get from my school. I know that a lot of it isn't useless fluff, but you start to wonder how much of it you really need when you ask your teacher, "Why do we need to learn this?" and the teacher just shrugs and says, "The district requires that it be taught."
My young years are when it is easiest to learn, so I sure would hope that the adults would be taking advantage of that time to teach me everything I need to know for life later, rather than just saying, "O.K., here's something they need... But oh, what about this interesting fact that nobody knew before or will really use (unless they go into a field of study that involves those things)! Let's teach that too!!"
(in this economy, who couldn't?), but
I pretty well work for myself and I work for my sister,
so if I don't like something about my job, I can change it..