Besides, not only has declarative knowledge mostly not changed, procedural knowledge changes much faster–which is, of course, why it was not taught in schools, for a long time, apart from a few classes. Learning the specific skills for the work world were, and largely still are, learned on the job. so let’s see, which would have been better for me to learn back in 1985, when I was 17: all the ins and outs of WordPerfect and BAsIC, or U.s. History? There should be no question at all: what I learned about history will remain more or less the same, subject to a few corrections; skills in WordPerfect and BAsIC are not longer needed.