This draft was written long ago and doesn’t necessarily represent my current thinking.
What would I fix in school
I would start teaching the basics of decision theory and game theory (which means the basics of set theory, probability theory, and combinatorics would need to be included too). These fields have potentially much broader applications in life than, say, integral calculus, so if something needs to be cut from the math curriculum, it’s better to cut calculus or geometry.
There also needs to be teaching about cognitive biases, and how to recognize manipulation. We need the basics of ethics, effective altruism, and political literacy. Ideally, all of this should be tied together with the apparatus of decision theory, so students end up with a coherent understanding of rationality.
The literature curriculum needs a serious overhaul. Why on earth do we study so many Russian writers — are they really the smartest and most relevant? What problem are we even trying to solve with this subject? If the goal is to introduce students to local culture, why does it need to be in such volume? Why force students to read entire books instead of reading short summaries of those books? And if we’re going to study Russian writers, why specifically the ones currently being studied? What about giving students a wider selection and letting them choose what they’d actually want to read from it?
The literature curriculum needs to include books that are genuinely worthwhile regardless of culture, like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality or some other popular science books, like Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
History as a subject needs to actually help people understand what’s going on in the world, what place their country occupies in it, and how it differs from others (both pros and cons) — rather than tormenting students with demands to memorize a mountain of useless dates and events, and rather than cultivating so-called “patriotism” at the expense of objectivity and moral impartiality toward the populations of different parts of the globe.