Studying languages usually gives better return than high school science courses which usually range from mediocre to sucky. Science is something you can read about on your own (the labs are usually the least useful part of high school science), languages you gain a lot more from working in a class.
Note that I went to Eleanor Roosevelt Center for Science and Technology several decades ago, the shop classes I took (Construction Technology and Technical Illustration) were fairly good and useful, the science classes were pretty mediocre.
I was also thinking of Heinlein’s advice to learn Math, Languages, and History, math and languages are really helped by having a teacher and working with others.
I’d agree that it makes sense to take subjects you can’t learn on your own, and avoid subjects that are poorly taught, but I imagine that varies a fair bit by school. My school’s language classes were pretty terrible; I learned Spanish from spaced repetition and watching movies, which is probably not optimal. In contrast, our science classes are decent, and I personally benefited a lot from talking things over with classmates (for a recent example, no one in my class understood thermodynamics, so we spent a couple hours talking it over together before someone figured it out.)
Studying languages usually gives better return than high school science courses which usually range from mediocre to sucky. Science is something you can read about on your own (the labs are usually the least useful part of high school science), languages you gain a lot more from working in a class.
Note that I went to Eleanor Roosevelt Center for Science and Technology several decades ago, the shop classes I took (Construction Technology and Technical Illustration) were fairly good and useful, the science classes were pretty mediocre.
I was also thinking of Heinlein’s advice to learn Math, Languages, and History, math and languages are really helped by having a teacher and working with others.
I’d agree that it makes sense to take subjects you can’t learn on your own, and avoid subjects that are poorly taught, but I imagine that varies a fair bit by school. My school’s language classes were pretty terrible; I learned Spanish from spaced repetition and watching movies, which is probably not optimal. In contrast, our science classes are decent, and I personally benefited a lot from talking things over with classmates (for a recent example, no one in my class understood thermodynamics, so we spent a couple hours talking it over together before someone figured it out.)