What infuriates me, looking back on it, was simply how much of my time the educational system was allowed to waste. Thousands and thousands of lost hours, some of them filled with pointless busy-work, but many more just squandered on inanity. At least some of the teachers would let you finish the daily penance quickly, and sit quietly in the corner reading something interesting. Too few, though.
I look at this way: early education focuses on learning to read and write and do arithmetic. The basic purpose is to give you tools whereby they can continue to educate yourself throughout your life. So basically, our early education aims to put our future education into our own hands.
Let me qualify the above a little. You might ask, well what are the purpose of high-school teachers or university lecturers? Once we are given these tools shouldn't we just be given the books to progress on our own? Hopefully, teachers are people who can take a complex subject and guide us towards an understanding of that subject. To me teachers are like guides through a jungle of knowledge. We need a guide so that we don't get lost. For me, a teacher is part guide and part "composer of problems". I consider teaching to be guided problem-solving. When I am teaching a course, I pose problems, whether it be in Math or Chemistry, and guide the students as they try to solve those problems.
And as for your comment about "wasted time", I am not sure what to think about this. The difficulty with learning is that we need repetition and reinforcement. Yes, I see a lot of pointless repetition, but we do need some repetition. I am presently struggling with improving my chess skills, as well as trying to learn to program an Arduino. Mastering these skills require a lot of repetition in order to cement that knowledge. Wish me luck.
