Believe me if you lived in Greece you wouldn't even touch that subject! I suspect very few of you know the educational system of Greece so I'll try to explain briefly ( If I make any mistakes just point them out,I'm trying to improve my english!) I f you don't want to know continue to the next paragraph :)
Children of ages 6-12 go to elementary school which is pretty much the same within all the educational systems (you focus on language ,mathematics, along with activities such as PE, drawing, music, computers etc mostly for gaining experience)
Then there's the first part of secondary education called Gymnasium ( that's the Junior High school) where you attend for 3 years and then the second part Lyceum( that's the High school) for another three years. At the beggining of the 2nd year of high school you have to choose among theoritical, technological and formal studies, each of which with its primary subjects (philosophy, ancient greek,latin,history and literature), (computer science,computer programming, maths ,physics) and ( biology,chemistry physics maths) respectively. You focus on them while having to attend general education subjects such as history, english language, literature ,maths etc but these subjects differ from your branch's ones! At the end of your last year in high school there are the final exams ( which I'm having this year,poor me :( )where your grades from your branch's subjects along with a subject from your choice and language give you the opportunity to pass in the uni. For example I want to be a biologist so I'm in the formal sciences branch and at the end of the year I am having exams on biology, maths, physics, chemistry,language and my subject of choice :maths from general education.
wow...that was sooo long! well, the main point is that we don't have the opportunity to choose the subjects we want so we can decide earlier about our future! For example (as I said above) I want to be a biologist and litterally live inside a lab ( I love thm sooo much <3) and instead of practiing my skills and learning what I need and will help me be better at the uni, I know classical mechanics and oscillations, waves and thermodynamics, functions, integrals and derivatives and in general almost everything considering maths that I am not gonna need when I go to the supermarket and ask my change back!!!
Sometimes I really ask myself if all those stuff I learn will be useful in my future life. The fact is that we are being taught so many things that we have to memorize, learn by heart like a poem and eventually forget about their very existence until the exams that there is no time to make sth your own and perfect it. All our subjects are taught and studied deeply without practical exercice and at least when it comes to formal sciences it's a pity.
Besides that there are only a few people who will talk to you about the great problems of our
time. They teach children that if you study and go to the university you will live a happy life but that's not it...Noone is going to tell you that you're going to be unemployed or lucky enough to find a job with salary enoug only to pay rent and electricity...Noone s going to tell you about drugs, to teach you to respect others and be honest no matter what, to make you understand that only a few people in the world will be brave enough to look you in the eyes and say " I don't like you and that is that". School is supposed to teach you moral values, ethics and humanism , not only provide you with knowledge that you are going to forget sooner or later...