Sure, but you'd get the same distribution of answers for 90% of the mathematics anyone learns past about 7th grade. Or almost any other topic in school. The good things we use to introduce kids to good things get shit on a lot, but that's because most people go on not to ever engage with them or anything like them ever again, not because they're bad.

We do that so the kids who catch on and pay attention can understand what good things are, and maybe some of them go on to really dig deep on one or two fields so they can learn more about those good things, and hopefully they paid enough attention during their education that they at least don't think everything else is bad just because they never bothered to follow up on it or engage deeply or because they struggled with it (unlike [thing they think is good]) in school.

You can apply that same logic towards teaching kids trades or skills. Like forcibly telling kids to learn how to drive a semi because it's the backbone of our infrastructure. Doesn't mean they're gonna do it, but they should be exposed to it.

What I'm talking about is that our education system teaches kids a lot of pointless things, especially in the arts for the sake of thinking it is going to achieve some "third eye" opening greater good somehow. And people like me who decry it as some utter waste of time nonsense end up getting bashed because we should do it. It's just nonsense that does not need to be taught. If a shop-class kid is forced to read Poe, are we really helping him? Forcing him to stay back a semester to write a report on Poe when he is destined to be a welder, is that really necessary? Human civilization has done it for millennia, but now all of a sudden in this modern era students need a broad understanding of the world through the sub-par education system that is in the US?

I'm not buying it. If you can call the US education system "education." More like glorified taxpayer funded babysitting with some basic instructional stuff in between.

Your last line is a vast subject I'm not touching here. But as to whether a welder ought to learn certain things goes back to the priority that we teach all our students shared values along with the importance of critical thinking, and we prioritize this for students becoming welders or judges or programmers or anything else in our society. And one of my favorites for understanding history, societal values and reading between the lines is Huckleberry Finn, and I'm all for every student reading books like this and if many don't get it, that's unfortunate, but it's well worth trying. Art is often less boring than just telling someone an idea straight. I personally find good literature to be more likely to be remembered and truly internalized by the person. I'm a big believer in the lasting power of show, don't tell.