Education does not need more money thrown at it. We spend the 5th most per student globally. It needs a redesign and an assessment of what exactly its goals are.

At the moment, it seems as if it were designed around these goals:
    -Keeping kids occupied with busy-work
    -Learning a few necessary skills and many assorted factoids
    -A 4 year metric to help employers quickly weed out undesirables:
        "unintelligent" people
        unconventional people, creative thinkers, and people who don't submit well to authority
    And to identify these qualities:
        -Complacency, submissiveness, obedience
        -Willingness to do tedious, repetitive, meaningless work; to do that work well; and to complete it on time, even if you don't like it

Year amounts denote totals. Ideally, classes should be sliced up to be semester, or maybe even quarter, classes instead of full year classes and interspersed. This would enhance retention.

Mandatory courses:
-Remove PE? Shorten?
-Remove English
    -Grammar and writing skills should still be taught in one of the classes or a new class not listed
-Remove language
-Remove math higher than algebra (except as requirements for other courses)
-Remove geometry
-History:
    -Cut down on ancient history: gloss over it briefly
    -No memorizing of details like dates and places
-Science:
    -Needs a redesign: there's too much rote memorization and too many niche topics that students will simply forget and relearn in college if they really need to know them
        -Ex: Instead of memorizing all the parts of the cell, aim for a general understanding
    -Teach the scientific method

-Add economics: 1-2 years
-Add government: 1 year
-Add personal finance: 1 year
    -Buying a house/Mortage payments
    -Retirement funds and predatory practices
    -Buying a car and predatory practices
    -Paying taxes
    -etc.
-Add reasoning/rhetoric: 2-3 years, Teaches about:
    -Logic:
		-Premises, Conclusions, Arguments
	-Cognitive dissonance
    -Beliefs as part of identity
        -Attacking the belief becomes attacking the person
        https://news.usc.edu/114481/which-brain-networks-respond-when-someone-sticks-to-a-belief/
    -Cognitive biases
        -Confirmation bias
        -Backfire effect
    -Logical fallacies
        -Ad hominem
        -Strawman
        -Fallacy fallacy
        -etc.
    -Role of tribalism in ethics and reasoning and how it evolved
    -Constructing rational arguments
        -Find the core premise of the other side's argument
        -Find inconsistencies in their reasoning (ex: under that logic)
        -The socratic method
    -Common scams and bullshit
        -Multilevel marketing pyramid schemes
        -Homeopathic and other alternative medicine
        -"Natural" foods
        -Car salesman's book of tricks
        -Fake online reviews
        -The placebo effect
    -What open-mindedness looks like
        -Avoid reading things that you already agree with, and instead read opposing opinions more.
    -Emotional reasoning and statements devoid of content (ex: new age drivel)
    -Identify the assumptions in a statement
    -How to identify if a source is reliable
    -How to identify bias and spin in a source
    -Identifying and avoiding echo-chambers
    -The filter bubble
    -Disinformation on the internet
    -What makes a valid scientific study
        -Vaccines/autism study
        -Problems with media reporting of science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw
        -Grants, incentives, and replication:
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q
    -How to disagree (many seem unable to)
    -The urge to have an opinion on matters one knows nothing about (eg: adhering to a political party)
    -Evaluating motives
        -Conspiracy theories
        -Who benefits from this?

General changes:
    -School will start at 9:30 and end at 3:30 (Teenagers are biologically predisposed to going to bed later and waking up later):
    -Sports will not be funded using public money
    -Minimal or no homework