Many of the things we teach in school aren’t just for the direct knowledge or skill. We largely don’t need to do arithmetic any more, but gaining the skill at doing it really improves our ability to deal with symbolic manipulation and abstraction.

I remember another parent ranting about their 3rd grade kids “stupid homework” since it had kids learning different ways of summing numbers. I took a look at the homework and replied “wow, the basics out set theory are in here!” We then had a productive discussion of how that arithmetic exercise led to higher math and ways of framing problems.

Similarly, writing produces a different form of thought than oral communication does.

History is a bit different, but a goal of history and literature is (or it least should be) to socialize students and give them a common frame of reference in society.

Finally there is the “you don’t know when you’ll need it defense.” I have a friend who spent most of the last 20 years as a roofer, but his body is starting to hurt. He’s pivoting to CAD drafting and he’s brushing off a some of those math skills he hated learning in school. And now arguing with his son about why it’s important.

Those are the fundamental defenses- that we are seeking not skills but ways of viewing the world + you don’t know what you’ll need. There are obviously limits and tradeoffs to be made, but to some degree yes, we should be forcing students (who are generally children or at least inexperienced in a domain) to things they don’t like now for benefits later.

People just have to want to like things. If they don't like something enough then a near-ubiquitous form of outsourcing is now available for them to get carried away with.

The "wanting to like things" is a highly undervalued skill/trait. It comes down to building a habit through repetition - not necessarily having fun or getting results, but training your mind like a muscle to think putting in effort isn't that bad an activity.

For those growing up I think this is not something that is taught - usually it is already there as a childlike sense of wonder that gets pruned by controlling interests. If education forcing you to do math removes any enthusiasm you had for math, that's largely determined by circumstance. You'd need someone else to tell you the actual joys of X to offset that (and I'd guess most parents/teachers don't practice math for fun), or just spontaneously figuring out how interesting X is totally on one's own which is even rarer.

I didn't have either so I'm a mathophobe, but I'm alright with that since I have other interests to focus on.

"Forcing" is a bit strong IMHO — I believe we've instead lost track of what is "passable", and everyone in higher education should be able to reach that and score a passing grade (D? C?).

Maybe professors are too stringent with their evaluation, or maybe they are not good at teaching people what a passable writing style is, or maybe students simply don't want to accept that if they don't excel at writing, a D or a C is perfectly fine. Perhaps teachers that look for good writing should have separate tests which evaluate students in both scenarios: with and without LLM help.

The same holds true for math: not everybody needs to know how to deduce a proof for every theorem, but in technical sciences, showing that ability and capability will demonstrate how much they are able to think and operate with precision on abstract concepts, very much like in programming. Even if coursework is a bit repetitive, practice does turn shallow knowledge into operational knowledge.

Reading, writing and math have been the constants utilized throughout life and as such have been core subjects carried through educational systems. I'm not quite sure what subjects and topics we would be teaching future generations that didn't include reading, writing, math and science. At the very least writing should be included in more subjects. The hidden feature of including writing in all subjects, as you might have seen in your history endeavor's, is improvements in critical thinking, formulating cohesive arguments and a clearer understanding of topics.

There are greater difficulties that people will have to do in their daily lives than being "forced" to learn how to read, write and do arithmetic. Maybe learning the lesson of overcoming smaller, difficult tasks will allow them to adapt to greater difficulties in the future.

To quote Seneca:

  A gem can not be polished with friction, nor a man perfected without trials.