>people major in english
>wounder why they can't find a job
Why are people like this. Like what drives a person to get a usless degree.
1) They very likely don't think it's useless. People do get jobs with English degrees -- not as many as in some fields, but more than, say, become professional sports stars.
2) There are two entirely different reasons to go to college. Some people manage to combine them. But the theory that people go to college only to get a job, not in order to learn something, is actually relatively new.
3) As Róisín says: the training, education, and persistence necessary to get a degree in English, or in whatever other field(s) you're thinking of as useless, is likely to translate into skills likely to be useful elsewhere.
4) Whatever field one takes a degree in, there's no guarantee that work in that field will be highly available by the time one actually applies for a job in it -- let alone that the person with the degree will find that they personally do well in that field, or can stand to keep working in it long-term without developing major problems.
'It's impossible to learn all the facts in the universe'....sadly, that is true.
That's not sad, that's joyous! Think about this: suppose you could learn everything in the universe. And you accomplished that this Thursday. What would you do Friday, and for the rest of your life? Nothing left to learn. Never a new book to read. Never an unfamiliar plant to try growing, or tasting. Never a new comics page to wait for . . .
Learning is best done alone, one-on-one with a mentor, or in small groups of children with roughly the same level of competence under a good tutor or guide.
Probably depends on the person learning, and on the subject.
But I think there's considerable evidence that some, at least, learn best in groups of mixed competence, in which (under the guidance of teacher(s)) the more advanced teach the less advanced.
And I've learned a good deal, myself, both from having to frame explanations for other people, and from hearing perspectives of others, including sometimes others relatively new to the subject.