Not to mention the perspective it can offer people. There are so many things repeated throughout history which could have been avoided had people focused more on an objective understanding of the past.
Moreover, structure of history classes is mostly time-based, without much correlation beside when something happened. But history could be split along different axes. How much connection is there between Russo-Swedish War and French Revolution, anyway? Why teach them one after another only because they happened at the same time?
The object of high school history wasn't to teach you the names of all the kings of England. It was to give you a context to understand the modern world. [1]
"Let's try and breeze past this useless mumbo jumbo as fast as we can; we have a LOT of web frameworks to cover!"
On the other hand, done properly something like this could become a fine mentor/apprenticeship program for kids that don't want to follow the typical college route.
I guess it's easy to be reactionary about this piece because the author is so flippant about the uses of things outside of programming, and the fact that his enthusiasm seems to over-shadow his daughter's.
If you're really interested in history take a college level course. Grade and high school history subjects often contain absurdly simplified material -- sometimes to the point of incorrectness. One can miss high school history entirely and end up better informed.
This generally doesn't require dropping out of school. Most public high schools offer AP/IB courses, which are the equivalent of 1st year college courses. And, at least in my county, once a student surpasses that level, they are free to pursue subjects at the local community college, while finishing up the rest of high school with their classmates.
For example, much as you describe, I scaled back my high school senior year to less than a half day in order to make time for community college courses. If I did not partially pull myself out of high school I would not have had enough time to pursue my education.
Looking back decades later I am pleased with my choice.
For some reason, 90% of the time was taken up repeatedly poorly covering a small set of topics: the "fertile crescent" through Greece up to just before Alexander which I suppose satisfied some sort of ancient history requirement, jump ahead to spend a ton of time on the Age of Exploration, a brief stop at colonization and the War of Independence, a bunch more time on the Westward expansion/Native Americans (most time of any single topic or time period, easily) and then memorize a few terms related to the Civil War (Anaconda Plan, four or five important generals, half a dozen battles, etc.).
"Conestoga Wagons" and "Longhouses" must have been answers to test questions in at least five of twelve grades. "Ferdinand Magellan" in at least three.
The overall course of study left one with such an incomplete and disjointed understanding of history as to be nearly useless. I learned more history from 200-300 hours of various not-primarily-educational video games in the same time span than I did from school. We didn't cover American history well, let alone Western history, and certainly not world history. A single semester of Freshman world history in college covered more material and did it better with three hours a week and at a fairly leisurely pace.
[EDIT] I should clarify that my phrasing "fertile crescent through Greece up to just before Alexander" implies a much more complete coverage of early civilization that was actually achieved. Fertile crescent, Tigris and Euphrates, Phoenicians invented the alphabet, name-drop Peloponnesian War and Socrates on a fill-in-the-blanks test, aaaaand moving on to Christopher Columbus.
Because, you know, fuck History. What use is that?