Cans of Tuna Versus Learning Trees

In "Signing a Paper is All it Takes Not to Drop Out", I said that in order for there to be a point in going to school, curriculum had to serve a purposeful purpose. Curriculum nowadays does not allude to any use outside of school. Shouldn't what we are learning be something we can apply and use in everyday life? Why are names and dates so important? Why do we need to know the quadratic formula? And why do we need to know what the significance of an orange is in a poem?

Teachers rarely know the answers to questions such as these because they don't even know why we need to know all those things. Yes, maybe finding what role an orange plays in a poem helps build up critical thinking skills, but analyzing poems for weeks at a time destroys any potential poetry loving by students and leads to an extreme hatred towards going to school. Aren't there other ways to build critical thinking skills without these horrendous consequences? Are there more applicable methods of instilling critical thinking skills in students?

A curriculum that provides applicable information to students would be one that gave answers to all my previous questions. One where math classes taught you how to use the quadratic formula in everyday life. One that did not analyze poetry but allowed you to enjoy poetry. One that made you ponder what is truly most important in life and gave you the right frame of mind to solve real world problems. 

The same type of classes would be available but there would be an emphasis on concepts and no information would be given without reason or use. Students would no longer be cans waiting to be filled with tuna, instead, they would be their own individual trees, learning and growing through applicable knowledge...