The problem is that our high school education in North America is moulded to fit the needs of for-profit universities, who in turn mould their education on the needs of large, for-profit corporations. You can't really drop general math requirements, because universities won't take those kids, and in turn, your kid won't land an awesome job with whatever Fortune 500 company. We have two streams for each high school course here in Canada, academic and non-academic. They're usually labeled with numbers, so that English 10-1 would be academic grade 10 English and 10-2 would be non-academic.
The idea behind this is basically good. You don't really need to be able to do an in-depth analysis of the graveyard scene in Hamlet in order to...well, actually, in order to do anything. But you especially don't need it to be an accountant, a mechanic or a chemical technician. It's probably good to be able to do it if you're going into university humanities. The problem is that university entrance requirements are getting tougher and tougher and they demand you have academic-level courses when you graduate. Back when I started HS, two thirds of students in grade 10 were taking non-academic Social Studies, and one third were taking academic. 15 years later, those numbers have reversed. Parental pressure is tremendous, because so many of them want their kids to go to university and to do that, you often need academic-level Social Studies. This results in a lot of kids who realistically should be taking -2 courses ending up in my -1 courses. They then often struggle to pass, require outside tutoring, and are generally put under insane and unnecessary pressure. And for what? To often end up right back in non-academic courses because you simply cannot pass them. To say nothing of kids who barely pass and have gained very little from the whole experiences or the kids who are so weak at Social Studies, they have to take 3 years worth of non-academic classes, then back track and redo every one of those at academic level because it's the only way they'll pass.
And don't even get me started on how in grade 12, you don't really teach so much as spend all your time preparing kids for one stupid exam at the end of the year that we can't get rid of because universities complain.
