I think he's right about learning useful stuff. For kids who aren't academically minded, far better that they get the chance to learn a useful skill, without the stigma of being considered less valuable for it, which seems to be the way things have gone - bring back woodwork and metalwork and polytechnics, BUT, without the value system that says that doing a 'tech course is somehow less valuable than a university degree.
For a lot of people, I suspect, the sort of stuff people are most bored by at school (Shakespeare, latin, etc) is actually the sort of thing you come to find interesting later, when you have a little life experience and some things make more sense. Perhaps we should use school to train people (whether that is to train them to 'do something useful' or to train them to think and study in order to go on and be lawyers and doctors), and have an option in middle age to take a year or two out to do a more 'academic' subject, if you want.