Do schools teach the right things?

[Calipornia]

What is the right things?
Personally, offering the widest range of possibilities to students is the right thing to do. It feels lie the best possibility for me. I also believe scoring is bad, and that if a child wants - he or she can and most likely will succeed.
I also believe schools are intended only to teach, and so they should not deal with behavioral issues. Teachers are there to teach, not to educate. This is why there are parents.

 

[twocows]

Philosophy should be required throughout high school and should be alluded to even earlier. Students should be brought up to question what they're being taught, regardless of what they're learning. They'll end up learning more about why something has been established as fact or (in the uncommon case) disproving something that the teacher thought was true, which is even better.

 

[Nick]

Just gonna put this here, which is what I replied to someone's thread about asking whether school was important in OVP - but I felt it was more suited for this thread and would encourage some new discussion:

School's important, but school focuses all it's time on less important things. I think the schools themselves are more concerned with meeting state expectations in test scores than they are educating people. The teachers within them are either with that or they're genuinely interested in furthering someone's life and touching them and shaping their lives for the better. There were a few teachers like that in my high school, but a large portion of them seemed more concerned with preparing us for standardized tests (which I'm against) than they were preparing us for the future.

I think school should focus more on teaching students things out of the book as opposed to having us memorize facts and blindly reply to tests with the fact they taught us at an earlier time. Studying is a joke for most classes - what you're trying to do is memorize what they teach you and repeat it when they ask you again, as far as I'm concerned. That's why the only class that interested me was English when you have to actually use your own experiences and formulate your own answers that way.

People learn in different ways, and the schools now are geared towards book smarts and memorization as opposed to innovation and creativity.

 

[Kura]

Kindergarten is pretty damn useless. I went in there knowing how to read, count, and write already. At home my parents would read to me. I would do puzzles. Draw. Just, play and be a child. Kindergarten is... teaching you to do that for some reason. You should already know how.

What I would have appreciated throughout elementary school was a stronger focus on math and science. And earlier

That and it was really dumb that even though people would fail elementary school they weren't being held back. They SHOULD have been held back.


I think they need to start teaching the basics of LIFE. How the hell do you do your taxes? How in the heck are you going to sew a button back on? Well some people don't know this even when they're older. Start teaching it in Highschool! The "Home Economics" crap taught there is a load of BS and it's not even mandatory.

It's mostly the school environment that makes some students slack; teachers need to stop talking down to their students like children and start talking to them more like a proper mentor.

 

[Mechanic]

I still until this day have the vague memory of when i was 3 my mom was showing this friend of hers that i was already able to write and read (at least a couple of things of course lol) properly. I remember kindergarten being a place for me to draw and that's the end of it lol. I remember i used to go without hesitation because of this girl that used boots that looked really pretty...

I just wish i can teach my kids easily all my mom taught to do at an early age :D

 

[Haguri]

I believe a couple things to an extent, but mainly that schools are too focused on the things that you stated.
I think that high school should be the starting ground to college. Not things such as the AP classes they offer, but classes that will get you ready for real life and what you plan to major in.

I am currently taking classes to become a Historian. I really wish that at the beginning of my Freshman year I would have been offered classes to go ahead and get me on that road, instead of being told I had to take "This, that, and this" in order to graduate.

I think having a variety of classes is nice, and most high schools will have that, but is it really right to be forced to take a certain amount of each one if that's not what you're majoring in?

English I can understand, but things like complicated math (Such as Trig, and Calculus) seem pointless unless you're going into a math or science field.

Maybe my view is stupid, but I know I would have much rather had the opportunity to have done more involving history than what I was able to do. I was limited because of the classes I HAD to have.

 

[The Nightmare]

That and it was really dumb that even though people would fail elementary school they weren't being held back. They SHOULD have been held back.

That is true, but in NZ its apparently illegal to repeat a year because when you finish a year, you move on to the next instead of staying or going back.

Schools do teach the right things but normally when they teach they would normally expect you to learn it or memorize it well because since you do tests/exams they would normally want to you to pass the test/exam well, mosts school teach right things but sometimes when they teach students, students can be caught not paying attention in class, looking out the window or talking with their friends but its not really the schools fault that the student didn't learn well unless the teacher didn't help the student properly. When teachers teach they would teach you things you don't know about or learn about and sometimes they can repeat something (e.g, volcanoes) that you already did last year or ages ago.

 

[User19sq]

Considering all of the states I've gone to school in, I gotta leave my answer as both a yes and a no. Each school, or rather district, has a different set of lessons that are to be taught. So, in conclusion, whether or not that specific school teaches right things or not is up to the student attending it.

 

[Livewire]

Looking at the state of America's education right now, it's hard to justify saying that they do. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good in this respect. There are many more bad school districts than good ones.

 

[pumpkinpie5]

The problem with my school is you learn nothing. You just review.
And you have to reward all of the other kids with constant snacks if you want them to keep trying.

I am one of the two kids in my grade that understands astrophysics and doesn't fail horribly on tests...
I do that from reading at HOME. The most advanced unit we have done so far is chemistry.
When we did the astronomy unit, we just learned the name of our planets...

Sometimes I just want to go on to college...

 

[Joshawott]

They teach a lot of right things, but also a lot of wrong things.

One thing I'd like to address is drugs. Personally, I'm a little skeptical about the exposure of them to children of such a young age because their bound to want to try them. I learned about them in the sixth grade and thought that was way too early. I think teachers should wait until students are in high school and are more mature to learn about them.

 

[Ray Maverick]

If you fail in school, you fail in life. That's what they taught me.

 

[Cello]

If you have time, watch this interesting and funny little presentation on how the school systems kills creativity.



I completely and totally agree with Sir Ken Robinson and everything he says in this video.

 

[Nihilego]

They teach a lot of right things, but also a lot of wrong things.

One thing I'd like to address is drugs. Personally, I'm a little skeptical about the exposure of them to children of such a young age because their bound to want to try them. I learned about them in the sixth grade and thought that was way too early. I think teachers should wait until students are in high school and are more mature to learn about them.

Imo it should be done early. The more time you let people stay naive about them for, the more likely they are to do them without knowing the consequences. And you might say that no kids that young would do drugs, but it really depends on where you live imo. Where I'm from, the equivalent of "high school" is more than late enough for kids to have at least experimented if they've been able to get their hands on them. I think things like drugs, sexual health, etc. should be taught early.

If you fail in school, you fail in life. That's what they taught me.

This this this this this this this this. This is the sort of things I see schools doing way too much of - saying that education in your early life is absolutely everything. It's absolutely the wrong thing to teach. Schools have to help you learn what you want to do with your life by showing you all of your options and telling you what a working life is about. All I've ever got from my school is that if you don't get perfect grades and you don't get into university then YOU HAVE FAILED EVERYTHING EVER and you will never be able to live happily and comfortably. With more and more people getting into university and therefore more and more people graduating with degrees, university education is actually starting to mean less to employers. There are other ways around getting on with your working life and university is becoming less suited to people. Yet it's still what schools shove down our throats. This is teaching the wrong thing.

 

[Livewire]

Yeah, school helps you to have a better life, but you can still have a good life without it, if you find a good enough career or luck out in the employment area. But it's much harder.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

I think the schools focus too much on a "one model fits all" mentality over all else. I was a bored but very intelligent student and they did absolute **** all to help me become motivated to produce quality work, with the exception of a few teachers. They rarely acknowledged my learning style and never really worked with me, trying to force the almighty "curriculum" down my throat. When I completed the math portion of the curriculum they actually forced me to take ANOTHER class as opposed to having another elective since "I didn't have math credit requirements", which was complete bull just because I had enough credits to graduate right then in 11th grade and I had completed every math requirement. They have no leeway for people who are actually intelligent and want to learn different things than the crap that is forced down their throats.

As Cello noted as well, the school system does a superb job at producing robots, neglecting creativity outright. Most art programs that I went through had a budget of less than $100 to work with FOR A SEMESTER'S WORTH OF CLASSES. That is just plain despicable. The science department though gets a new textbook every two years it seems...

 

[Nihilego]

(feel free to carry on with the other discussion btw. i'm going to do so in a minute.)

On the topic of what schools teach, I had a thought earlier. Should PE / Sport / whatever you want to call it be mandatory, or could the time spent playing sports in lessons be better used? Should kids who want to do sport do it entirely in their own time?

 

[Huggie]

Believe me if you lived in Greece you wouldn't even touch that subject! I suspect very few of you know the educational system of Greece so I'll try to explain briefly ( If I make any mistakes just point them out,I'm trying to improve my english!) I f you don't want to know continue to the next paragraph :)
Children of ages 6-12 go to elementary school which is pretty much the same within all the educational systems (you focus on language ,mathematics, along with activities such as PE, drawing, music, computers etc mostly for gaining experience)
Then there's the first part of secondary education called Gymnasium ( that's the Junior High school) where you attend for 3 years and then the second part Lyceum( that's the High school) for another three years. At the beggining of the 2nd year of high school you have to choose among theoritical, technological and formal studies, each of which with its primary subjects (philosophy, ancient greek,latin,history and literature), (computer science,computer programming, maths ,physics) and ( biology,chemistry physics maths) respectively. You focus on them while having to attend general education subjects such as history, english language, literature ,maths etc but these subjects differ from your branch's ones! At the end of your last year in high school there are the final exams ( which I'm having this year,poor me :( )where your grades from your branch's subjects along with a subject from your choice and language give you the opportunity to pass in the uni. For example I want to be a biologist so I'm in the formal sciences branch and at the end of the year I am having exams on biology, maths, physics, chemistry,language and my subject of choice :maths from general education.

wow...that was sooo long! well, the main point is that we don't have the opportunity to choose the subjects we want so we can decide earlier about our future! For example (as I said above) I want to be a biologist and litterally live inside a lab ( I love thm sooo much <3) and instead of practiing my skills and learning what I need and will help me be better at the uni, I know classical mechanics and oscillations, waves and thermodynamics, functions, integrals and derivatives and in general almost everything considering maths that I am not gonna need when I go to the supermarket and ask my change back!!!
Sometimes I really ask myself if all those stuff I learn will be useful in my future life. The fact is that we are being taught so many things that we have to memorize, learn by heart like a poem and eventually forget about their very existence until the exams that there is no time to make sth your own and perfect it. All our subjects are taught and studied deeply without practical exercice and at least when it comes to formal sciences it's a pity.
Besides that there are only a few people who will talk to you about the great problems of our
time. They teach children that if you study and go to the university you will live a happy life but that's not it...Noone is going to tell you that you're going to be unemployed or lucky enough to find a job with salary enoug only to pay rent and electricity...Noone s going to tell you about drugs, to teach you to respect others and be honest no matter what, to make you understand that only a few people in the world will be brave enough to look you in the eyes and say " I don't like you and that is that". School is supposed to teach you moral values, ethics and humanism , not only provide you with knowledge that you are going to forget sooner or later...

 

[Alley Cat]

.

(feel free to carry on with the other discussion btw. i'm going to do so in a minute.)

On the topic of what schools teach, I had a thought earlier. Should PE / Sport / whatever you want to call it be mandatory, or could the time spent playing sports in lessons be better used? Should kids who want to do sport do it entirely in their own time?

Yes definitely yes. If for no other reason than it increases the learning capabilities of all other classes if it is utilized properly by giving the kids a break, fresh air/whatever, and it just refreshes them before their next lesson. I don't know the exact brain science behind all this, but I'm watching it in a video by some douche-y guy that is teaching us how to be better students.



That aside, I don't think that we are taught the right things in school. I can't say much for other schools, but I know that in a lot of schools in California, because of the state standardized tests, teachers are forced to teach what is going to be on the test, rather than actually teaching you what you need to know. They just don't have enough time and have to only pick and choose what they deem vital based on what the state is telling them.

However, that isn't even the worst of it. School makes you learn, but a lot of schools don't promote learning. They don't teach you how to learn effectively, and moreover, a lot don't even let you, making you keep strict and uniform to their methods. They don't nearly focus enough on reading, which is just essential to developing brain power. As a matter of fact, they ruin reading for a lot of kids by forcing them to read books that they don't want to read or find extremely boring. Which in contrasts makes them equate that to other books and shy away from reading.

I think the schools focus too much on a "one model fits all" mentality over all else. I was a bored but very intelligent student and they did absolute **** all to help me become motivated to produce quality work, with the exception of a few teachers. They rarely acknowledged my learning style and never really worked with me, trying to force the almighty "curriculum" down my throat. When I completed the math portion of the curriculum they actually forced me to take ANOTHER class as opposed to having another elective since "I didn't have math credit requirements", which was complete bull just because I had enough credits to graduate right then in 11th grade and I had completed every math requirement. They have no leeway for people who are actually intelligent and want to learn different things than the crap that is forced down their throats.

As Cello noted as well, the school system does a superb job at producing robots, neglecting creativity outright. Most art programs that I went through had a budget of less than $100 to work with FOR A SEMESTER'S WORTH OF CLASSES. That is just plain despicable. The science department though gets a new textbook every two years it seems...

I suppose that just a bad pick from the pot. My school motivates all students to excel. They offer after-school tutoring, the teachers are available any-time during their preps, we have a counselor if you need to fix any irregularities in your schedule.... you can even take two open periods in your junior and senior year provided you've earned all your credits from the previous years. We don't have very many electives, but it's untypical to find a Senior's schedule that isn't loaded up with electives/easy classes as opposed to the harder ones.

The problem is though, that schools in general just tend to neglect to nourish their students.

 

[droomph]

I believe a couple things to an extent, but mainly that schools are too focused on the things that you stated.
I think that high school should be the starting ground to college. Not things such as the AP classes they offer, but classes that will get you ready for real life and what you plan to major in.

I am currently taking classes to become a Historian. I really wish that at the beginning of my Freshman year I would have been offered classes to go ahead and get me on that road, instead of being told I had to take "This, that, and this" in order to graduate.

I think having a variety of classes is nice, and most high schools will have that, but is it really right to be forced to take a certain amount of each one if that's not what you're majoring in?

English I can understand, but things like complicated math (Such as Trig, and Calculus) seem pointless unless you're going into a math or science field.

Maybe my view is stupid, but I know I would have much rather had the opportunity to have done more involving history than what I was able to do. I was limited because of the classes I HAD to have.

Yeah ever heard of Finland's Education system? Your description matches that to a tee. :justsaying:

Looking at the state of America's education right now, it's hard to justify saying that they do. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good in this respect. There are many more bad school districts than good ones.

AMEN BROTHA