What Should be taught in Schools?

[Zurkir]

Who the fuck knows what they want to do in the upper grades
There's even university majors for "I have no idea what to do"

Pretty much 1/2 of my graduating class already knew what they wanted.

Course, most of them were rich kids from well off families who could easily support any venture they undertook, so I don't think they're the example you're looking for. (Actually, a few of my classmates already owned their own businesses or helped their parents do their jobs by Junior Year)

I wanted to be a coach and teacher my senior year. Like with a vigor. Over the summer before I started college I then changed my mind to being solely a history teacher. After two semesters and seven classes I finally settled with a business degree. I feel like a lot of students walk a similarly comparable path leaving high school and going into college.

[Neanderthaland]

I think there should be a class on basic home-repairs and skills. Like what to do if your toilet overflows.

[Alcala-Cordel]

As someone with a strong interest in English, I think Shakespeare is horrifically overrated and I can't stand reading it. We have no good reason to put as much emphasis on him as we do.

You just hate anything cultural.

Now that's just not true. I'm fascinated by culture. Endemic customs, architecture, art, and literature.

I just hate U.S. culture and Shakespeare.

[New haven america]

Side note, congrats on that PhD, Gon.


And now for my relevant contribution. This is based on my own school experience, so I can't guarantee this is a universal problem. I find that my school, at least, has a complete lack of support for students that wish to pursue the psychological field. When I informed the administrator that I wanted to change my major to study psychology during my sophomore year, I was told that the best they had was General Healthcare, which, while relevant, does not provide that same level of support and learning as a class dedicated to psychology. As I'm sure most people can agree, the realm of psychological study has steadily been growing in importance amidst an immense spike of mental conditions. Depression runs rampant among the younger generation, which, for some, is debilitating enough to warrant the addled thought of suicide. For my entire life, I have been painfully aware of this, which led to me dedicating my life to the pursuit of psychology. Because of this, it is deeply troubling that schools such as mine (a large public school in a major city) would not value or support the study of psychology.

I am not sure how feasible it would be to teach psychology to high school students, but then I know next to nothing about first year psychology courses.

I think that up to their third year in school, kids should only be taught and evaluated about one language and maths, that is the two skills that enable people to learn everything else. Two hours of maths, two hours of first language, every day.
All other activities (music, drawing, other languages,...) should be in the form of play.

Kids tend to have short attention spans, I don't think this would work for them. Unless you do not mean 2 hours straight.

I learned psych in HS.

Most of it generally had to do with the human nervous system, active vs. passive thought and the biological and philosophical reasoning behind the 2, and mental disorders and how they develop.

It was actually a lot simpler than it may sound, but provided a good base for for things like college psych (Which I also took).

[Alcala-Cordel]

As someone with a strong interest in English, I think Shakespeare is horrifically overrated and I can't stand reading it. We have no good reason to put as much emphasis on him as we do.

That’s not entirely fair. Hamlet for example is a gem. IMO.

It's better than Romeo and Juliet, I'll give it that much

[New haven america]

Pretty much 1/2 of my graduating class already knew what they wanted.

Course, most of them were rich kids from well off families who could easily support any venture they undertook, so I don't think they're the example you're looking for. (Actually, a few of my classmates already owned their own businesses or helped their parents do their jobs by Junior Year)

I wanted to be a coach and teacher my senior year. Like with a vigor. Over the summer before I started college I then changed my mind to being solely a history teacher. After two semesters and seven classes I finally settled with a business degree. I feel like a lot of students walk a similarly comparable path leaving high school and going into college.

Not in my case.

Most of my former classmates graduated early and are working in jobs they wanted since HS. (Again, it helps having well off parents who can get you connections and experience you wouldn't have otherwise)

[The Reformed American Republic]

You just hate anything cultural.

Now that's just not true. I'm fascinated by culture. Endemic customs, architecture, art, and literature.

I just hate U.S. culture and Shakespeare.

Sure.

[Necroghastia]

Shakespeare. Seriously, Shakespeare is lit! I am biased because I'm an English nerd, but, like, Shakespeare is a staple of Western culture. (Not that Eastern culture shouldn't be taught.)

And life skills like personal finance that relate to adulting.

And history. No political agenda, just the facts--with everything up for analysis.

As someone with a strong interest in English, I think Shakespeare is horrifically overrated and I can't stand reading it. We have no good reason to put as much emphasis on him as we do.

Shakespeare just needs to be taught better. Granted, teaching Shakespeare better starts with not taking him as seriously as the stereotypical middle-HS English teacher does, and pointing out the dick jokes in every scene.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

You just hate anything cultural.

Now that's just not true. I'm fascinated by culture. Endemic customs, architecture, art, and literature.

I just hate U.S. culture and Shakespeare.

Me, a person who has interests in US history/presidents (while understanding both the positive and negative aspects) and Shakespeare (especially Hamlet [Like, I literally took words from Hamlet's soliloquy to form my nation name] [No ragrets, baby]):

HELL YES.
FELLOW HAMLET FAN DETECTED.

As someone with a strong interest in English, I think Shakespeare is horrifically overrated and I can't stand reading it. We have no good reason to put as much emphasis on him as we do.

Shakespeare just needs to be taught better. Granted, teaching Shakespeare better starts with not taking him as seriously as the stereotypical middle-HS English teacher does, and pointing out the dick jokes in every scene.

Exactly.
There's a Tumblr post or something that taught me that "nothing" is an innuendo. I will not post what it means here, but it makes the King Lear quote "Nothing comes from nothing" raunchy as all get-out.

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

If schools want to be free of religious influence, they should stop trying to push secular values down kids' throats and stop sitting on their double-standard high-horse. Teach concepts side by side or leave it to the home. It's like the people who write these curriculums are free from judgement just because they happen to be on the side of 'what's the new norm', encouraging the downfall of religious values to give way to earthly affairs. I see those posts.

[Drongonia]

Nothing. Just give kids above the age of 6 a backpack and send them off into the forest for the school year. Sure, they might not be literate but the ones that come back will be pretty damn resourceful.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

If schools want to be free of religious influence, they should stop trying to push secular values down kids' throats and stop sitting on their double-standard high-horse. Teach concepts side by side or leave it to the home. It's like the people who write these curriculums are free from judgement just because they happen to be on the side of 'what's the new norm', encouraging the downfall of religious values to give way to earthly affairs. I see those posts.

Let kids formulate their own opinions instead of pushing your opinions onto them.

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

Nothing. Just give kids above the age of 6 a backpack and send them off into the forest for the school year. Sure, they might not be literate but the ones that come back will be pretty damn resourceful.

Drongonia is anprim confirmed?

[New haven america]

If schools want to be free of religious influence, they should stop trying to push secular values down kids' throats and stop sitting on their double-standard high-horse. Teach concepts side by side or leave it to the home. It's like the people who write these curriculums are free from judgement just because they happen to be on the side of 'what's the new norm', encouraging the downfall of religious values to give way to earthly affairs. I see those posts.

You don't know what secularism is.

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

If schools want to be free of religious influence, they should stop trying to push secular values down kids' throats and stop sitting on their double-standard high-horse. Teach concepts side by side or leave it to the home. It's like the people who write these curriculums are free from judgement just because they happen to be on the side of 'what's the new norm', encouraging the downfall of religious values to give way to earthly affairs. I see those posts.

You don't know what secularism is.

From the constant controversies I see on the media and my own personal experience, I think I do.

[New haven america]

You don't know what secularism is.

From the constant controversies I see on the media and my own personal experience, I think I do.

Secularism is separating religious from public/state run institutions and treating all religious (Or lack there of) beliefs equally, including but not limited to: Christianity, Atheism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc...

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

From the constant controversies I see on the media and my own personal experience, I think I do.

Secularism is separating religious from public/state run institutions and treating all religious (Or lack there of) beliefs equally, including but not limited to: Christianity, Atheism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc...

Oh heck, I mixed that up big time. I meant to say if the schools are to be so strongly secular in the first place, they've got no place to try to dismantle the beliefs of its students. That's on me for my bad vocabulary

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

Secularism is separating religious from public/state run institutions and treating all religious (Or lack there of) beliefs equally, including but not limited to: Christianity, Atheism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, etc...

Oh heck, I mixed that up big time. I meant to say if the schools are to be so strongly secular in the first place, they've got no place to try to dismantle the beliefs of its students. That's on me for my bad vocabulary

You probably were referring to cases of militant anti-religious indoctrination of students in schools--I may need to find evidence of this, though.

[Drongonia]

Oh heck, I mixed that up big time. I meant to say if the schools are to be so strongly secular in the first place, they've got no place to try to dismantle the beliefs of its students. That's on me for my bad vocabulary

You probably were referring to cases of militant anti-religious indoctrination of students in schools--I may need to find evidence of this, though.

To be fair, for every hardline religious extremist there's a militant atheist reddit-tier "you can't have religious opinions because that's dumb" person. Neither of those people should be teaching children about anything.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

You probably were referring to cases of militant anti-religious indoctrination of students in schools--I may need to find evidence of this, though.

To be fair, for every hardline religious extremist there's a militant atheist reddit-tier "you can't have religious opinions because that's dumb" person. Neither of those people should be teaching children about anything.

Yup.

[Zurkir]

You probably were referring to cases of militant anti-religious indoctrination of students in schools--I may need to find evidence of this, though.

To be fair, for every hardline religious extremist there's a militant atheist reddit-tier "you can't have religious opinions because that's dumb" person. Neither of those people should be teaching children about anything.

We have a few of those here. Both of those extremes are equally as bad. One forces their own religion on others while the other thinks all religion should be expunged and any who endorse any sort of religion should be punished.

[The H Corporation]

All of you have great ideas!!

Here in Mexico education needs a reform

The school needs to teach actual things that would help a person get a job of the career of his preference (Literally the hardest thing is not school but how to find a job), a complete overhaul of how to teach History since many things were censored to not hurt National Heroes and blame everything to the 'Villains' of our history (EX. Benito definitely made efforts to help Mexico but he was about to become a dictator just like Porfirio Diaz who made Mexico prosper in many ways but in history books he is made the villain of the story focusing mostly on the bad things he did, forgetting all of his work as a general in the French Intervention of Mexico and other stuff as well), more efforts in teaching foreign languages (You only study the basics of English and very low amounts of people have the privilege to actually being taught English at it's fullest (Like me) and same goes to adding more languages to teach like French, Chinese, German! You are lucky if you managed to become Bilingual sadly ), give proper S*xED (No need to explain someone probably knows what I am talking about (Censuring because reasons)), it could be awesome if schools give free psychological counseling for the people who need it! (This to reduce the amount of suicides or even to prevent shootings in schools. This will also help the students who can't afford a psychologist).

And I ran out of ideas

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

You probably were referring to cases of militant anti-religious indoctrination of students in schools--I may need to find evidence of this, though.

I'd refer to the 'france bans hijabs for under 18s' thread. Although it's only indirectly related to education, it's still an example

[Madrinpoor]

Rational thinking skills, and how to form your own opinions instead of teachers giving it to you. And then other life skills, like driving and taxes. And maybe how to do some trades, like sewing or fixing cars. As an elective maybe? There should also be sex ed. And basic science, religious schools shouldn't be able to not teach science. That's idiotic. Also there should be a non-Westerncentric history. A non-US praising history that shows how issues have many sides and allows students to take their own side and make their own opinions. There should be civil discourse and debate, and students should learn how to do those.

[Spiritual Republic of Caryton]

Rational thinking skills, and how to form your own opinions instead of teachers giving it to you. And then other life skills, like driving and taxes. And maybe how to do some trades, like sewing or fixing cars. As an elective maybe? There should also be sex ed. And basic science, religious schools shouldn't be able to not teach science. That's idiotic. Also there should be a non-Westerncentric history. A non-US praising history that shows how issues have many sides and allows students to take their own side and make their own opinions. There should be civil discourse and debate, and students should learn how to do those.

So you want people to make their own opinions but you don't want religious people to be educated the way they want so they can strengthen their own opinions.

Seems legit.