ELI5: What purpose does reading novels in high school serve in a real-life job?

By forcing Drudgery upon you, and enforcing an Obedient mentality.

You wouldnt read that crap on your own, so its a test of your obedience and how much crap you can stomach. Its not about learning, its about how well you obey a "Because I say so" command.

Since the slavemasters of this world (eg, business owner) will demand Compliance and bestow Drudgery you have to be trained to handle it. At bottom dollar wages no less, to work 2 or 3 times as hard as the head of a business empire.

And if you cant your skills as a worthy slave are graded as such, showing how valuable a slave you are (which is why you're less likely to get "hired" if you have poorer performance or job history, its not because you cant do the work, its because you're resistant to taking orders thoughtlessly).

Original thinking and problem solving are not encouraged, only book learning and following directions the first time given.

This is the reason it takes 12 years of "schooling" to teach a person how to read and write. Then another 4-6 years of "secondary education" (college) where they really lay on the heat and see just how Obedient you are and the true depths of crap you will do (a Thesis... really?).

You don't learn anything in college, you take even harder tests and write even longer meaningless papers. The information you learn in class is just filler to be the subject matter for these procedures.

Thats another reason why in K-8, High School, and College alot of Papers you've got to write have a number of Words or Pages as their requirement. The process of "B-Sing" papers doesnt provide any kind of learning at all, in fact it represses any real learning there because its challenging the student to come up with gibberish to fill up the required paper length.

You would think, a more efficient term paper would be as Short, Succinct, and Detailed as possible. Compressing as much valuable information into as short and readible space as possible. This would fly with some teachers who actually read it, but for most teachers you're going to get an 85% grade at the most because of it even though your report is 3-5 times as good because of its efficiency.

Granted some other skills and information like math and science do take longer, but that should be dominating the curriculum and its not (instead we get this "writing across the curriculum" crap).

I mean seriously... you're still taking English classes in High School?

Its been proven that the english language can be taught in 3 years to a high degree of proficiency (mainly back in the 1800s).

Technical College is another matter, trade certifications too, you actually learn how to do stuff there.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread