Why do we go to school?

Today in my discussion group we talked about why we go to school and if our education system is the right way to go about education and schooling. We wondered if school should ever be madated by the state. Should we be required to attend 12 years of school? My answer to this question would be: yes! Yes, I'm an education major so I clearly support education and schooling but I also believe the idea behind required schooling. As humans, we develop knowledge over a period of time and our brains develop gradually. We need to have levels of schooling/education in order to keep up with our brains and not get behind. Why would someone want to learn 8 years of the basic math knowledge we gain in K-8 education in just 3 years. Some people just see some of the knowledge they are taught in school to be pointless and not worth their time but what is wrong with learning anything new? I firmly believe that all 12 years of school that we are required to go to are worth while. Yes, they are not as challenging as college and some of us don't remember everything we learned during those years. But you learned something new at that time and it's a backgroud knowledge. High school shouldn't be as challenging as college because our brains are not developmentally ready for that level of thinking and understanding yet. We are close but not quite there.
Maybe I just try to get the most out of the situations I am put in even if I wouldn't have chosen the subject or class on my own. It's a learning experience and hopefully you can find some way to apply it to your life. I chose to take a general biology class freshman year when I knew that I was an Education major. All of my friends asked me why I would want to torture myself with that subject if I didn't need to or could take something easier. I wanted to challenge myself and found the class interesting. I wanted to learn something knew, even if I would never need that knowledge for my career, I still wanted to know the information because it's new. Think about it. If we were only educated in the areas that we were interested in, what would our conversations be like with people that have other interests. I think this basic background of knowledge we get through 12 years of schooling help us to function in society. We have a basic background in many areas so we aren't an ignorant people in society. We can discuss topics with people that we haven't studied intensely because we have some knowledge of that area.
Only studying what you are interested and not being willing to learn new skills and knowledge limits you as person. You become interesting to fewer people because you're interests are so narrow. You don't have to be an expert to have knowledge in an area. You eventually will be focused in one area more than another but why limit yourself to one area? Schooling is there to expand your knowledge so you can be a more functioning and better person in our society.