I agree completely. However, when designing a new surgical technique or a better mouse-trap you have to be able to do it in nearly ANY environment. Your job, profession, or avocation is not going to coddle you at all, most likely. If you can't learn calculus in a lecture, then you should recognize this and learn how you are going to learn it, then learn it and pass the test. If you cannot, then (under this more brutal theory) you are unlikely to do so when it really counts.
Also, many many kids are unfit for STEM fields, Law or Medical school, yet go into school as if they are[0]. The cutting has to occur for the good of society and the students themselves.
My '5A: Intro To Physics' course was notorious for the cutting. The attrition rate was 90%. This was intentional. If you could not contend with the bad grades, the stress, the material, and the work in that class then you were out. Better now than in 3 years. My graduating class year was about 7000 people, of which 20 were in physics, a rate of 0.3%.
But education systems are a product of political and, consequently, economic belief. We believe in a nominally equal distribution of power, but we also believe that most people are destined to be industrial cogs, with disproportionate power going to an elect few. That's what our school systems reflect: niceties declaring equality while applying a rigorous filter in order to determine the worthy.
Well, it is one (flawed) was of sorting people out. There are better ones, I'll admit, but none will ever be perfect. We are dealing with people after all.
I wouldn't say "niceties declaring equality while applying a rigorous filter in order to determine the worthy". This is just too dour. Filters have to be set. I mean, people without arms just can't be fluent in sign-language. Like wise, people that just can't do calculus just can't be rocket scientists. That is not to say these people are not valuable elsewhere. Hell, I can play guitar a tinge, but I would say a guitarist adds more to life than I ever will. Similarly with a dance instructor. Their talents are what we do all this engineering for.
Worth is not economic, it's internal. What some guy in a tower thinks matters is not what you should think. College, as much as it is a cliche these days, is about teaching you to learn. Whatever that is that you do learn. At then end of it all, you can't take a coin, transistor, or chord with you into the grave.
