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i'm a little confused about the premise of the thread.
how can knowing more rather than less be a bad thing?
students are tracked already based on often quite crude measurements from elementary school forward. what would the point be of more of that?
i don't think the op states the main problems at all. in my experience teaching at universities, students come out of high school in general largely unprepared intellectually and in terms of some basic skill-sets for university work. for example, most cannot write an analytic paper. most have not been taught basic critical thinking skills. and it's not that the kids are stupid---not by a long shot---they just have to get walked through the transition away from the relatively low-level expectations of high school.
this is compounded by the absurd idea that 18 year old kids should be in university at all, when the fact is that most don't have a clue what they want or who they are. **the** dominant story i got from undergrads i kept in contact with is that one or another day, usually some time in their junior year, they woke up, hung over, and realized that they had to major in something.
so i think the underlying problems are two-fold:
1. high schools (and before) do not demand enough of the students. they do not in the main teach the basic skills required for university work---instead they teach the ridiculous tests mandated by no child left behind and other such nonsense.
2, there really should be some kind of non-military national service that kids go do at the age of 18-19. something that gets them away from school-as-normal idea and gives them a chance to think a bit about what they might want. and god knows there's a lot of things that they could be turned loose on, much of which would probably do a lot of good. all that'd be required is for---say----the national security state to be dismantled and military expenditures knocked down from their present levels of eating about a third (or more) of total federal outlays (depending on how you estimate the costs of both unnecessary wars and the maybe third in libya). but i digress.
i think starting university at 20-21 would be an excellent modification.
o yeah--and university should be free. but that's another story.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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