edit: If you decide to read my entire post, please have an open mind or don't bother. I wrote it fairly quick and did not revise it, so don't take it word-for-word. Also, I typically refrain from conversations like this, but I have decided to give my input and only once. I will not reply to any bullshit replies, and I think everything here is self-explanatory.
For someone who did really well in school and has a bright future, I believe school did a great job in preparing me for the real world. Often times, we may never use certain things we learned in school in the real world, but we may use the fundamentals we learned to apply them to another situation depending on your job/career.
Obviously they had to design a system that will help get you ready for whatever you decide to do in the real world. I believe we have a decent system that allows the average kid to figure out what they enjoy and decide what they want to pursue in college, thus really being able to learn what they are actually going to apply to the real world.
The one thing I do disagree with as far the way schools teach, is they tend to repeat last year for the first half of every year, and then add on some extra things that year before you move on to the next grade. Basically, they will reiterate a large portion of your previous year for the first few months of the new school year and then add-on some more.
As for the USA, we are ranked very low for our academics. At the same time, I may not be a genius, but I feel like I learned enough from my public school to be able to do whatever I want and have the tools to make it big in the real world. There are many countries above the USA as far as academics and those kids will spend an average of 4-5+ hours a night studying, but is it really necessary? Well, I guess it actually is unless you take your i-phone for instance, for granted. The tools I've learned will allow me to start a business, invest in stocks, maybe become a broker, and many more endless opportunities. Now, I could go to college if I wanted to learn how a motherboard works and what not if that's what I really wanted to do. So even though the USA may be behind on academics, we do have a nice college system that provides endless opportunities to learn whatever it is you'd like. And lastly, even our public schools have accelerated and/or advanced classes if you are a fast learner, giving you the power to really put your brain to work and at its full potential.
Yes, I did some rambling, but to reiterate my answer to your question. Yes, we in fact do learn the right things in school. Whether you may never use algebra in the real world (though I hope you do), you may still use the fundamental process in solving an algebraic problem to a different problem in the real world. Also, our school systems give you a bit of everything so that you can decide what you love, whether it's English and maybe you want to write speeches for the president or maybe it's math and you want to become a broker, or an architect, or maybe you like science and want to become something related to science. As you can see, they can't just teach one thing, as there are thousands of students at one school and they have to have a system that is able to get to each individual kid, and that's teaching them everything and allowing them to decide what they want to pursue. Also, some high schools are better than others and have better classes to choose from than others. Once you get to high school, you're usually able to pick your classes and that allows you to go with what you enjoy the most and prepare you more for the real world. Lastly, at my high school, they even had a program where you could go to a trade school and you focus more on a craft, rather than academics.
With all that being said, we really do have a pretty damn good school system whether some will disagree with others, coming from someone who really took advantage of every opportunity in high school, I can genuinely say that it did a pretty good job for me.
Before I post this message, I must say it but stereo-typically, the type of people who ask this specific question are usually the ones who are failing high school and don't really pay attention. If that's the case, maybe you should give school a chance and stop making excuses. Personally, I used to have arguments with teachers and say the same thing, 'When are we going to even use this in the real world?!' and I was right at the time, but retrospectively, I now realize that even though some of those algebra laws I may never use in the real world, some of them come in handy quite often, and even if that's not the case, learning algebra and teaching your brain to think a certain way will help you be able to think outside the box and apply your abstract thinking to maybe a business plan or improvement.