A nation should require all of its students to study the same national curriculum until they enter college

The above mentioned policy that is based on homogenizing the curricular program for all the students of one country may have some positive aspects coming with its implementation but also negative sides that might out weight the benefits of it.
On one hand, it is intuitive to conclude that the implementation of such policy would create a common level plain field for all the students, until college starts. In this way nobody would have a relative superior competitive advantage on the rest. At the same time a uniform national curriculum makes it easier for the national Department or Ministry of Education to assess performance on the different regions of their country, besides the fact that making changes to one single program is easier than giving to schools total freedom of choice and ending up with many curricular paths to evaluate. But is this beneficial in the long term? What are the potential drawbacks of such policy?
One reason why most modern Western nations allow for freedom of choice of curricular field of study even before entering college os a direct outspring of modern basic rights of each individual. In terms of the new International system based on principles of neo-liberalism a student should be free to make their own choices when deciding what to study.
A further reason for giving local governments and regions freedom to design their own programs springs from the fact that students have different sets of skills and may want to specialize in a specific group of subjects. Not allowing this would result in substantial opportunity costs for students since the time spent on some forced subjects is time that has not been spent on a subject of interest. In addition, students may consistently underperform on those required subject since they would decide that time would be better spent on something that creates positive utility for their future. This is the reason why schooling systems such as Italy and the United Kingdom allow students to choose their intended field of study since the first year of high school. British students go on choosing their A and B levels from a wide range of subjects and Italian students decide whther they want to focus on scientific studies, humanistic studies or more technical fields that allow them to rapidly enter the job market.
An additional question that could be made against the stated policy is how could the government know what’s best for their student and what’s the best curriculum to design. There may be the risk of setting up a curricular path because the government wants to create a specific and intended kind of work force to reach precise political objectives. Sometimes, a national uniform curriculum is established because a strong form of censorship exists. The Soviet Union is a perfect example of country in the past where a strong control and revision of the subjects was constantly enforced in order to force citizens into complying with the rules of the Communist party.
Lastly, shouldn’t a country foster talent by allowing them to focus even more on their respective fields of study? Albert Einstein is the pefect example of mathematical and physics prodigy that was forced into the standardized schooling system of Germany. Such a system may be detrimental to individuals that show talent for subjects that may not be included in the program but based on the common evaluation criteria, they may be considered not adequate enough for academic career.
In conclusion, a government should not impose such strong limits on its students. Despite the presence of potentially different curricular paths, a government can still impose some common guidelines and design some periodic common tests in order to assess the level of its students in the different regions of its country.