NationStates

There's often a lot of talk about how to improve the education system in the US. Personally, there's one simple idea we can start with. Stop forcing classes on students that have nothing to do with their chosen field of study, or have little real world application like art or humanities. Not only would it save them time and money, but high schools could replace them with more useful subjects, such as teaching students how to file taxes. What say you NSG?

Don't be silly. Arts and humanities are useful and I shouldn't need to go into why. As for having a whole class devoted to teaching tax forms, what kid is going to listen to any of that, let alone an hour a week, every week of school?

Multicultural children's literature. Big dumb my guy. I had to take that shit and a multicultural studies class in college and they fucking sucked. Had some older white lady telling us about the African roots of black American culture (I always felt black American culture was far more similar to white American culture than to Africa but whatever) and bringing up other accidentally stereotypical shit too, like why Muslim women in the near East don't dye their hair because they wear hijabs (not all Muslim women wear those btw and Arab women actually dye their hair alot) and why white Americans are complicit in racism (pretty sure most white folks aren't racists but yeah, why don't you blame your own race for that while I defend them).

That was Multicultural studies. Multicultural children's lit was all this stuff about African children and shit. Imagine goodnight moon but it's some Ugandan child and he's hunting lions and whatever the hell else he does (this was an actual story btw although to be serious it had nothing to do with good night moon). Not only were we being forced to read literature that came from cultures no one even heard of, but they were literally baby books. Like come on.

I'm totally for cutting any classes related to social justice. Most of them are absolutely meaningless. Your future jobs wants to see your qualifications and knowing alot about theories of power and oppression doesn't make you look smart. It does quite the opposite

And before anyone says "but people gotta learn tolerance," I just wanna say right now that a college class cannot teach you to not be a racist. Either you aren't one like most people or you are one and college won't stop that. I'm pretty sure that without these multicultural clssses, 90% of people could still treat a person of a different race respectfully and not start screaming racial slurs at them

Mzeusia wrote:Don't be silly. Arts and humanities are useful and I shouldn't need to go into why. As for having a whole class devoted to teaching tax forms, what kid is going to listen to any of that, let alone an hour a week, every week of school?

If you really care about them, you'll tell them what they need to hear, not just what they wanna hear

An engineer wrote this.

Also teaching children pure technical skills is just silly, and services to only teach them to be mindless industrial drones. So I guess that's a win for the capitalists, but I thought we preferred our population with deep critical thinking skills, social awareness, and empathetic nature. It's kinda hard to teach all of those through fucking tax forms.

I like the idea of people getting some experience with subjects outside their degree. Education, especially higher education, should be about understanding more about the world, not just about getting a piece of paper that qualifies you for a job.

Rojava Free State wrote:

Mzeusia wrote:Don't be silly. Arts and humanities are useful and I shouldn't need to go into why. As for having a whole class devoted to teaching tax forms, what kid is going to listen to any of that, let alone an hour a week, every week of school?

If you really care about them, you'll tell them what they need to hear, not just what they wanna hear

Who is 'they' and what do they 'want to hear'?

Rojava Free State wrote:

Mzeusia wrote:Don't be silly. Arts and humanities are useful and I shouldn't need to go into why. As for having a whole class devoted to teaching tax forms, what kid is going to listen to any of that, let alone an hour a week, every week of school?

If you really care about them, you'll tell them what they need to hear, not just what they wanna hear

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. If the water consists of excruciatingly boring stuff, it doesn't matter how useful that water is. It would be good to teach kids more practical things, but is that really realistic? For some things yes, for tax forms, no.

Honestly. Burn it to the ground, spend the money issuing children books and let them be homeshooled, with tests at certain points to ensure they are actually learning.

The Emerald Legion wrote:Honestly. Burn it to the ground, spend the money issuing children books and let them be homeshooled, with tests at certain points to ensure they are actually learning.

So what would happen if they're not learning?

Ifreann wrote:I like the idea of people getting some experience with subjects outside their degree. Education, especially higher education, should be about understanding more about the world, not just about getting a piece of paper that qualifies you for a job.

Maybe, he's just utilitarian. Not criticizing at all, just saying he has a different perspective in iife.

Mzeusia wrote:

The Emerald Legion wrote:Honestly. Burn it to the ground, spend the money issuing children books and let them be homeshooled, with tests at certain points to ensure they are actually learning.

So what would happen if they're not learning?

We burn the parents at the stake obviously. [/sarcasm]

More seriously, what do we do if parents neglect their children as is?

The Republic of Fore wrote:There's often a lot of talk about how to improve the education system in the US. Personally, there's one simple idea we can start with. Stop forcing classes on students that have nothing to do with their chosen field of study, or have little real world application like art or humanities. Not only would it save them time and money, but high schools could replace them with more useful subjects, such as teaching students how to file taxes. What say you NSG?

my school has it required you take 2 years of financing... like taxes.. stock market.. all that economic stuff

Or let the universities decide for themselves what to teach? It's the student's choice anyway, and trade school is a thing.

Rojava Free State wrote:, like why Muslim women in the near East don't dye their hair because they wear hijabs

My hijab wearing gf would like a word with her I guess, she colors her hair all the colors of the rainbow lmao

Tertiary education in the States has a very good reputation. It's expensive, yes, but a large part of that is that it's a federal country with really weird ideas about economics.

Trying to fix primary and secondary education in the US by altering the curriculum at the tertiary level is... a very weird idea.

And, frankly, it's the science subjects that are more irrelevant to everyday life than social sciences and humanities. Aside from talking to a former colleague who studied genetics at uni, the last time I had a conversation about genetics IRL was the last time I had to study it. Similarly, no-one gives a fuck about ridge regression or gams. I don't think I've ever talked about carbon polymers or had any particular reason to care about them since I was 16. (And, if I did, it wasn't in the context of what we did in science at school but rather the economics or politics of plastics.)

We live in a human world created by people. It is the subjects that are about people that are everywhere.

You can't define "useless". If you could define "useless" it probably doesn't refer to the subjects you criticise. You can fix what's not working by changing what is... but it seems unlikely that this is the case.

might be a bit of a challange to reach a consensus as to which are the "useless" ones.
to me its business and sports which are useless, and those propiganda classes that pass themelves off as history.

all the sciences are good and all the arts. its everything else that's mostly a waste.

(political science isn't a science though and neither is economics)

Valrifell wrote:

Rojava Free State wrote:
If you really care about them, you'll tell them what they need to hear, not just what they wanna hear

Who is 'they' and what do they 'want to hear'?

Kids. They may not be thrilled about a tax return class but they need to learn it, unlike world history which while interesting is simply not necessary for them to function in the world

Goldstandardstan wrote:Or let the universities decide for themselves what to teach? It's the student's choice anyway, and trade school is a thing.

Rojava Free State wrote:, like why Muslim women in the near East don't dye their hair because they wear hijabs

My hijab wearing gf would like a word with her I guess, she colors her hair all the colors of the rainbow lmao

Both of my ex girlfriends are Arabs and they both dyed their hair stuff ranging from black to blonde to auburn red to pink, but hey, the multicultural studies lady spoke. All yall Arabs gotta start conforming to the stereotype because this liberal white lady said it's true so it has to be true. No fun allowed for the brown kids anymore I guess

Ifreann wrote:I like the idea of people getting some experience with subjects outside their degree. Education, especially higher education, should be about understanding more about the world, not just about getting a piece of paper that qualifies you for a job.

Ifreann you say that as if most human beings can be made well rounded citizens when in fact many if not most are either average intelligence imo if I'm having a good day, and fucking dumbasses imo if I'm not having a good day. I deal with hundreds of folks a day and can tell you these people cannot be educated into intellectuals. They just aren't capable

Rojava Free State wrote:

Goldstandardstan wrote:Or let the universities decide for themselves what to teach? It's the student's choice anyway, and trade school is a thing.


My hijab wearing gf would like a word with her I guess, she colors her hair all the colors of the rainbow lmao

Both of my ex girlfriends are Arabs and they both dyed their hair stuff ranging from black to blonde to auburn red to pink, but hey, the multicultural studies lady spoke. All yall Arabs gotta start conforming to the stereotype because this liberal white lady said it's true so it has to be true. No fun allowed for the brown kids anymore I guess

Dyed your hair? 50 lashes

But who will clean my house if there are no liberal arts degree holders looking for pennies to pay off their student loans ?

The Emerald Legion wrote:

Mzeusia wrote:So what would happen if they're not learning?

We burn the parents at the stake obviously. [/sarcasm]

More seriously, what do we do if parents neglect their children as is?

We have the cop from the village people handcuff them, throw them down on the ground and curb stomp them to the song YMCA

Goldstandardstan wrote:

Rojava Free State wrote:
Both of my ex girlfriends are Arabs and they both dyed their hair stuff ranging from black to blonde to auburn red to pink, but hey, the multicultural studies lady spoke. All yall Arabs gotta start conforming to the stereotype because this liberal white lady said it's true so it has to be true. No fun allowed for the brown kids anymore I guess

Dyed your hair? 50 lashes

Nah, off with they fucking head. And if anyone at Fox news tries to blame this on islam, let them know the liberal college professor made you do it

Imperial Joseon wrote:

Ifreann wrote:I like the idea of people getting some experience with subjects outside their degree. Education, especially higher education, should be about understanding more about the world, not just about getting a piece of paper that qualifies you for a job.

Maybe, he's just utilitarian. Not criticizing at all, just saying he has a different perspective in iife.

Nothing I said is incompatible with utilitarianism.

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Rojava Free State wrote:

Goldstandardstan wrote:Or let the universities decide for themselves what to teach? It's the student's choice anyway, and trade school is a thing.


My hijab wearing gf would like a word with her I guess, she colors her hair all the colors of the rainbow lmao

Both of my ex girlfriends are Arabs and they both dyed their hair stuff ranging from black to blonde to auburn red to pink, but hey, the multicultural studies lady spoke. All yall Arabs gotta start conforming to the stereotype because this liberal white lady said it's true so it has to be true. No fun allowed for the brown kids anymore I guess

I don't think that your disagreements with one thing one teacher you had said is a very good reason to cancel all classes on the same subject.