What's the Point of High School?

If a diploma is nothing more than a standardized passport to the 20th century, then it's time to abolish the high school diploma as we know it, says Grant Wiggins in "A Diploma Worth Having."

Diploma requirements focus on content coverage, not meaningful learning; crowd out personalized and engaged learning; and make high school boring, Wiggins opines. Standards committees, including the common core, merely "replicate the past that they feel comfortable with rather than face the future" and are out of touch with what should be the fundamental lens for requirements: how well does high school curriculum prepare all students for their lives?

Is requiring two years of Algebra more important than classes on parenting, wellness, or ethics? Is learning textbook chemistry more useful than understanding economic systems?

Vocational courses can be as demanding as upper-level science and math courses, and greater student choice in high school curriculum can be a gateway to opportunity, Wiggins says. He proposes a forward-thinking, client-centered, flexible approach to high school requirements, with a new set of key courses that prepare any student, regardless of career or college path, for successful adulthood.

What would you drop, add, or change about high school curriculum?