@John @Edgar
looks like it's an argument between general education and specialized education. General education is passively good but actively bad. It makes you a well rounded person, but gives you nothing that will be used in life actively. Even though spelling, grammar, basic maths can be technically considered as general education, they are prequisites for a lot of things including life, so they will be used actively. I will leave them out of the category as such. Stuff like the arts and history are not requirements for life unless you make them your specialization. While those make you more well rounded, it's nothing that needs to be tested extensively to give a grade that determines your future. Those are the kind of stuff people are likely to either look up due to curiousity or randomly find via wiki articles or watching youtube. Now I know John is likely to pull up the, "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it arguement", and you will be totally correct on that one. My point, however, is that I believe it's something to casually absorb and not be forced to study.
@John
Students need to connect what they learn to where it can be applied properly. Sounds common sense to just use what is learned in class, but it takes practice to make it second nature. Practicing on a made up thing removes some of the elements that will be present in the real thing. It's like teaching a student the theory of turning a screw and for the lab portion you make students practice it by turning their pencils on an eraser. They got the basic concept down, but it will be so unuseful when faced with actual screwdriver. They will need to relearn. Since they are relearning, the are accessing more of recent experience rather than what they previously learned. At that point newly formed connections from the self learned way of turning a screw become more relevant than anything learned in class. Even though the theory previously learned might be quite relevant, depending on how the information learned got associated, the student might have trouble percieving value in it, and opt to relearn the theory from application. The student may see value in the previously learned theory, but not think to decide to recall from previously learned theory because of the disconnect; the new experience doesn't trigger experience of the old.
My point is that knowing and applying are two different things that can diverge if learned improperly. The brain is all about forming information and associating information with other information. There is much room for improper or inefficient association that will lead to the perception of the related information being useless because of it. It's important to couple the information being fed with the proper stimulus.
