Middle- and high-school

This applies to public and private schools. I went to a private school, and it's all the same.

Problem

Schools lead children down useless paths, and don't produce functional adults anymore. Schools used to prepare kids to get out to the real world and get a job and be productive members of society that contribute to the smooth functioning of the world. Now they produce adults that can barely do arithmetic.

It's fairly well known that the parents' involvement is a good predictor of a child's academic results. That's true in the Congo as much as it's true in Kitchener. But the whole point of school is that the floor is raised up, and that children get sufficient training even if the parents have to go work and can't provide assistance to the kids. What's the point of sending a child to school for 6 hours a day for 10 months a year for grades 7-12 (6 years), if they can't be trusted to calculate change as a cashier at the end of it?

Those who can't do, teach. Teachers are unproductive members of society that couldn't hack it in the real world, but still want to power-trip over a bunch of children. So they'll spend months and years teaching niche subjects like:

Chemistry: I've literally never used anything from this class my entire adult life.
Logarithms: Same as above.
History: Same as above.
Geography: GoogleMaps, d'uh. It's current year; get with the times.
Sex-ed: Somehow our species did just fine before this became part of the curriculum. This is just pervy, given the number of scandals of teachers having sex with their students.
Phys-ed: The obesity rate makes it clear this class wastes everybody's time. Just give up already.

I could go on, but I think this is sufficient for the point that school is glorified daycare. They're just a place to stash the children while mom & dad do taxable work.

If you Google "history of modern public education", you'll see a bunch of hand-wringing about how this was created by the Germans to have an obedient and uniform workforce to curb an "unruly" population. I wish we'd get back to that. Instead, the current system has failed so much that it creates a bunch of useless crybabies that can't hold a job. It's so bad, that employers would rather not hire Gen-Z since they expect them to flake.

Those who can't do, teach. And now they produce more people that can't do. It's a rot. They're just producing layabouts. If they really cared about preparing kids for the real world, they'd teach useful things, like:

Filing taxes: That's a lot more useful that Chemistry.
Debt: Maybe then there'd be less credit-card and student-loan debt dragging young people down.
Investing: Perhaps even throw in a lesson about the power of compounding in there.
Budgeting: Because budgets don't balance themselves.

But, given the amount of financial stocks owned by teachers, I suppose it isn't in their best interest to have a population that actually manages their money well. It always comes down to the money. These teachers don't care who they misguide along the way.

Solution

Homeschool your children. You made them; you raise them. Or put them in a homeschooling pod with other children of the same age. Don't toss them into the meat-grinder of formal education that has a multi-decade track-record of producing adults that are unprepared for the world.

It didn't start out this way. Schools taught useful life skills and graduates were able to hit the ground running. Now they (a) don't teach useful skills, and (b) teach useless BS as a distraction. There's no excuse for this anymore. Schools have gotten so bad that when I drive past a school all I think is "These are all the kids that don't have parents who care about them.".