Most people sense that school today is poor preparation for the world of work. I think there is a fundamental reason why: linearity.
School is a linear system. By that, I mean the material in classes is presented sequentially, in more or less equally-sized chunks. My school called these chunks “units”. In maths, the functions unit came before the differentiation unit, and so on. At the end of a unit there was always a test. Supposedly, the purpose of the test was assessment: tracking students’ progress. But a secondary outcome was standardising the speed of learning. Regardless of whether students forged ahead with the material or hung behind, they all had to take the same test at the same time. The structure of school calcifies the pace of learning, forcing students to march to the regular ring of the bell.
School rewards effort linearly as well. For example, when required to write essays, my school provided us with a mark scheme: a set of criteria which specified what “competencies” we had to demonstrate in order to achieve a certain grade. If you used 10% more “advanced vocabulary words” you’d get into the next grade band. If you only used one or two good transitions you’d fall into a lower grade band. The mark scheme suggested small improvements to make to our writing, which gave small, predictable increases in our grades.