>You end up with a you-know-how-to-learn-for-life idea, but that's always been unsatisfying for me.
Public schooling (in the US) will always feel like it's torn between the two extremes of giving a strong liberal arts, "learn for life" education and giving a strong vocational, "useful in the real world" education. In my experience, it's actually neither. Education is an equalizer.
>What I'm getting at is whether you can really learn anything without having some sort of intrinsic interest, and whether it's worthwhile to force people to learn stuff that they will forget even existed in a few years.
Yes, 100 times over, to both of them. The former is not like riding a bike, but maybe like cooking a favorite meal you haven't made in years. An adult might have forgotten the quadratic equation, how to apply it, and how to use it, but give them 5 minutes of instruction and most will be right back in the swing of things.
The second half, though, is so important, that I think it's worth quoting again.
>[Is it] worthwhile to force people to learn stuff that they will forget even existed in a few years
It is incredibly important to force people to learn stuff that they might forget even existed in a few years. A free and appropriate public education is one of the greatest things we as a civilization can provide to our citizens. Education is possibly the greatest civil right we possess.
If we, as a collective people, do not mandate schools offer classes on how to analyze text and history, write a persuasive essay, solve advanced algebra and geometry problems, and the natural sciences, then some schools simply will not offer those courses. If we do not mandate that every student take these courses, then some students will not take those courses. And if they don't have access to these courses, then they don't have equal access to higher education. (Not to mention how important some topics in Algebra I and II are to managing your finances and understanding compounding interest.)
These will generally be the schools and students that are already the most disadvantaged. The inner-city schools that are counting every dollar. The children of the drunks that you mentioned, the children of loving and well-meaning parents that work three part-time jobs that simply don't have the time to follow up on the minutia, and the special education students that are just as smart as their peers but require support to show that. These students all deserve the opportunity to take those classes. If the classes aren't required, they might not even get that chance.
To put it another way: I'm guessing you and your peers were likely exposed to computers by the time you were, I dunno, 16? Not all of you went on to work in tech and post on Hacker News. But all of you had the opportunity to work in tech and post on Hacker News. If you didn't ever get to interact with a computer until you were an adult, and even then you had to seek it out yourself, how would that change things in your life?
Education has to do that for every student, in every subject.