学校这个东西真的有用吗？

Is school useless? Why?
学校没用吗？为什么？

获得68.2k好评的回答@Asim Qureshi：

Around 99% of the stuff taught to kids over 13 will not be applied in their lives.
教给13岁以上孩子们的知识中约99%在生活中都用不上。

Schools teach theory which is perfect for those that go into academia, but useless for the 99% that don’t.
学校里教的理论非常适合进入学术界的人，但对99%不进入学术界的人来说都没用。

But unless you learn the theory you will not get a place at university.
但不学习理论知识就进不了大学。

And if you don’t go to university, you won’t get a good job.
进不了大学就找不到好工作。

Obey the system and the system will reward you…
遵循这个规律你最终会得到回报…

获得15.8k好评的回答@Ara Mambreyan：

It is my unpopular opinion that most schools are useless.
我的想法不怎么受欢迎，那就是大多数学校都没用。

Yesterday, I was doing the Computer Science Pre-Arrival Course of the University of Cambridge. I was reading binary numbers (e.g. 1101001). How do they transform to 16-base, 8-base or 10-base numbers. What are they? The part was several paragraphs long. No more than 30 lines. That was the time, I realized I wasted 12 years at school…Not only my school never told me what the “1”s and “0”s are but also we weren’t even told what are those transformations.
昨天我读剑桥大学的计算机科学预课时读到二进制数字(例如1101001)，二进制怎样转换成16进制、8进制或10进制数字。都是什么鬼？这部分有几段长，不超过30行。就在那时我意识到我在学校里浪费了12年…不仅学校从没教过我“1”和“0”是什么，也没教过我转换是怎么回事。

For 3 months, I was doing transformations like a robot. But all I needed to hear was what they were and I probably would have figured out how to do the transformations myself! Most schools do not educate. They train students.
我花了3个月的时间像机器人一样练习转换，但我需要听的都是这些是什么，我可能需要自己弄明白该怎样转换！大部分学校都不是在教育，而是在训练学生。

Many people would refute my argument by saying that, if one doesn’t go to school, he or she will have the same brain as a 4-year old kid in a kindergarten.
很多人会反驳说如果一个人不上学，大脑就会跟4岁的幼儿园孩子一样。

I disagree.
我不赞成。

That would only be the case if you didn’t go to school and spent all your time doing nothing. What if you self-educated yourself? What if your parents taught you the school-stuff in a much more fundamental manner?
如果你不去上学，一直什么都不做才会发生那种情况。如果你自学呢？如果你的父母用更基本的方式教你学校所学内容会怎样呢？

The only downside might be that the kid would not have as much social interaction as his/her compatriots but that can be resolved by attending extracurricular activities or meeting people outside. Even if that doesn’t work out as well as attending school for social reasons, that is a sacrifice I am willing to take, especially if the student is in high-school.
唯一的缺陷可能就是在家的孩子没有同龄人那么多社交，但也能通过参加课外活动或见外面的人来解决。即使由于社会因素这样解决效果也不如上学好，那也是我愿意做出的牺牲，尤其是上高中的学生。

Schools should not imprint information in student.
学校不应该把知识刻到学生脑子里。

They should teach how to learn.
他们应该教学生怎样学习。