First, I don't believe you're correct about social cleverness not helping drivers, line workers, or office drones. If anything, the more basic the work, the bigger the rewards for social cleverness are, as you use your relationship with your superiors, peers, and inferiors to influence the work day. (This could be becoming less true with fully metrics-driven establishments like Amazon warehouses.)

Second, is that society (where a huge number of people are consigned to that type of labor) a society that you're interested in continuing to build? If so, continue to support the methods used in modern school.