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Not only that, but co-workers from my own generation also don’t know how to fix their own computers, so I’m just surrounded by people that have no idea how any of it works.
I think that's the real crux of it. Most people don't know. There may have been a bump in literacy, but most people don't know, don't care, and don't need to. If we had better education, this kind of thing could be a core class. I had computer classes, but they mainly focused on typing and specific programs. Basically nothing about components, the command prompt, programming, different OS, etc. Granted this was many years ago, but I live in Florida. So, it's probably worse.
Counterpoint, most of the stuff I learned in my highschool A+ class (aimed at teaching you enough to pass a certification test that proves you can repair computers) was outdated already that year, and it's like 95% outdated now. Typing and business productivity app skills are still directly valuable for most modern people.
Most valuable skills are things like learning how to learn, critical thinking, judgement, understanding the value of time, humility, etc. I'll say that the A+ course was much better than most classes at growing those skills for me, but I could say the same thing about the construction course I took. American school system, at least when I was in it, is totally happy to output kids that only know math, science, english, and arts. It's hard to teach those life skills, harder to test for them, do we just don't.
Business apps are among the most useless things to teach, mainly because by the time they get out of school those apps already work very differently but also because they are useful to a very limited set of jobs.
Have to disagree, at least back then it was the first exposure most kids got to using a computer for work at all. Even if some of the content isn't useful for most kids, it still challenges kids to learn some basic stuff they might not otherwise. I do think it's a shame that it's required even if you already know how to do everything the course teaches, but that could be said about most classes. Everyone needs to know basic computing shit, forcing people to learn Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and some other random apps is a fine way to do that, and those apps aren't going anywhere in our lifetime, nor have they changed in a way that invalidates anything taught 20 years ago. I work with people who use a computer full time for their job and it's obvious they didn't take a basic course when they were in school 20-30 years ago, or any time since. I have nephews that are 11-15, haven't taken anything like that yet and they are totally inept with even basic shit, because it wasn't taught yet and most people don't just learn without instruction.
Your last point about usefulness to a very limited set of jobs is silly considering how much actual useless to 99% of jobs shit they teach in the core curriculum. If we didn't throw all this mostly useless shit at the whole of young society, some future great scientist, artist, mathematician, etc. would rot in ignorance, at least that's the theory. Hard to say if the American education system is working at all though.