This is true, but I dont think high school was ever intended to be preparing kids for the labor market; I thought it was to teach a basic education for understanding the world.
Until maybe four decades ago, high school was exactly intended to prepare kids for the labor market. They taught conformity, punctuality, the three Rs, and civics. It was the final education for the great majority of people in the US, as few went to college.
But high school and college both got dumbed down, and now an education at a state university is comparable to high school in the first half of the twentieth century.
