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[Davey Cakes]

I agree with teaching Logic classes, but not necessarily pure programming. I remember in college that I was bad at coding, but good at understanding the flow of code and how a set of instructions and conditions leads to an outcome.

"Logic and Computation" is a solid course that builds on the fundamentals of critical thinking and problem solving. It's a good mashup of mathematics and reasoning that can have real-world applications without actually having students build programs with specific programming languages.

 

[INC]

Gardening and growing food, how to be self sufficient (can bundle some biology into this as well)

Remove religion, wanna teach religion, bundle it in with history as a way of teach how most wars start

 

[RedVIper]

Taxes and how to balance a damned checkbook. Oh, and civics needs to make a hard comeback.

Yeah no, civic in my country is just 4hours a week to talk about black people and gays

 

[Majmun]

Yeah no, civic in my country is just 4hours a week to talk about black people and gays

Also from the Netherlands by chance?

My civil teacher was gay and he constantly talked about. I'm gay so maybe he converted me.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Yeah no, civic in my country is just 4hours a week to talk about black people and gays

I meant constitutional civics, but yeah.

Not isolated racial division.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Financial Education I feel.

Money never gets talked about in a sense of how to manage it.

 

[Sidney Prescott]

More life skills should be taught. I left school not knowing how to set-up a bank account or anything like that. I left very unprepared for adult life, there are some things that subjects can't teach.

I think physical education shouldn't be mandatory, but maybe I'm alone in that feeling. It makes exercise feel like a chore, and it can make some kids really uncomfortable. Not every kid feels comfortable doing that, or changing with other kids. I know I didn't, I hated every minute of it.

 

[Starlight Lotice]

More life skills should be taught. I left school not knowing how to set-up a bank account or anything like that. I left very unprepared for adult life, there are some things that subjects can't teach.

I think physical education shouldn't be mandatory, but maybe I'm alone in that feeling. It makes exercise feel like a chore, and it can make some kids really uncomfortable. Not every kid feels comfortable doing that, or changing with other kids. I know I didn't, I hated every minute of it.

Social Skills as well are a must.

When people go into Interviews without them, they are expected to act a certain way and ask certain questions, but it is sadly not taught to you on how to bag a job that easily. I think some schools are experimenting with this but it's a very slow progress.

 

[Sidney Prescott]

Social Skills as well are a must.

When people go into Interviews without them, they are expected to act a certain way and ask certain questions, but it is sadly not taught to you on how to bag a job that easily. I think some schools are experimenting with this but it's a very slow progress.

Absolutely. I think more mock interviews should be done. I remember I was absolutely terrible on my first interview (still am). I didn't know what I was doing. I'm honestly surprised I even got the job I did right now, as I totally froze up in the interview. Thankfully, I guess they liked something about me.

 

[RedVIper]

Also from the Netherlands by chance?

No, this seems to be pretty common in the EU

 

[Starlight Lotice]

Absolutely. I think more mock interviews should be done. I remember I was absolutely terrible on my first interview (still am). I didn't know what I was doing. I'm honestly surprised I even got the job I did right now, as I totally froze up in the interview. Thankfully, I guess they liked something about me.

I got mine via a Works Trial, but was put in the deep end and got a lot of flak despite being new to it and someone else was teaching me who was themselves self taught.

Looking for jobs now and finding Interviews tough if not because they now give you a "Test" to figure stuff out, which is really unfair if you have never done that type of job before, locking a lot of potential people out and will in future reduce that talent pool as you have to get in the door first to even know what to do!!!!

Giving a positive impression certainly gets you in the door, so you have that for you!

 

[OmegaSupreme]

What schools are you guys going to where religion was taught outside of its historical impact? (which is huge) I think some of you are just trying to be atheist because you haven't said it in a few hours to anybody.

 

[Sub_Level]

Society has really improved since religion was taken out of schools.

People have become smarter, less violent, more tolerant, less depressed. Holy science has replaced it, and we've seen that 'science' cannot be manipulated or changed to fit a certain narrative.

I mean, isn't it obvious? We're sooo much better off.

People on average are absolutely less violent & more tolerant nowadays. Not necessarily because religion was taken out of schools, but the lack of correlation works both ways. Its amusing how many people glance over the fact that we slaughtered each other in two unprecedented world wars & countless regional conflicts last century.

 

[showernota]

People on average are absolutely less violent & more tolerant nowadays. Not necessarily because religion was taken out of schools, but the lack of correlation works both ways. Its amusing how many people glance over the fact that we slaughtered each other in two unprecedented world wars & countless regional conflicts last century.

Not sure what your point is about world wars, but I disagree with the first part.

It's been around 60 years since 'religion' was removed from schools. The US seems to have become a much more violent and unsafe place since then. Is it the sole cause? Maybe not.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Absolute basics of economy & finances should be obligatory. There are so many dumb people thinking money comes from air or that it can be easily printed. Same with managing a home budget, many people spend more than they should or they take high percentage loans without understanding how much money they'll have to eventually pay back.

Religion should definitely gtfo from schools. At least I'm glad that more and more parents in my country are removing their children from religion classes thanks to countless scandals and controversies revolving around church.

 

[Gp1]

It's beyond unbelievable that we are in the 2021 and we don't have some basic notions of economy and finances being taught in high school.

In:
Economy (Basic micro macro, inflation etc. it will help big time just by exposing some elementary shit that people say)
Finances (Related with the above. Basics in taxation, interest/yield, cashflow, household money management, basic investing, some notions in entrepreneurship etc.)
Logics (and by that some intro in programing)
Psychology

Revamp:
Sociology and literature the way is taught now (at least here)

 

[OmegaSupreme]

I was only taught about religion in a historical context in school. This was in Texas and rural Minnesota. Very Religious areas. So I'll ask again where are you guys being taught religion in schools?

 

[Virt McPolygon]

When I was in school a "home economics" class was taught. Basically taught students about cooking, personal finance, birth control, dangers of addiction etc. Just basic life skills.

But I think American schools shifted more toward college prep in the last two decades since younger millennials born in the 1990s call basic ass responsibilities "adulting" well into their late 20s and early 30s lol.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Physical ed and nutrition should be imperative. I'm of the opinion that having a fat kid should be subject to a yearly fine, unless it's for proven medical reasons. Obesity and bad physical shape have to be fought by all means.

Basic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology should also be required. A bit of pathology and first aid too, so we don't have those classic "I've been pissing blood for two days and my fever won't go away, what do I do GAF?" threads.

Religion is fine, as long as it's an all-encompassing discussion of religion and religions and not the teaching of dogma. I have no qualms with people believing in a god, but it must be clear that your religion isn't necessarily the "right one".

A bit of finance would be good. I wish somebody explained that to me.

Most of all, the most important thing is to get every single person to be able to read and write correctly in their native language. Too many people can't write to save their lives, too many people don't understand what they read.

 

[Sub_Level]

Not sure what your point is about world wars, but I disagree with the first part.

It's been around 60 years since 'religion' was removed from schools. The US seems to have become a much more violent and unsafe place since then. Is it the sole cause? Maybe not.

It simply hasn't become more violent. This chart only goes back 30 years to when there was a prevalence of violent crime, not 60 years, but the trend is clear as day:

One reason you might feel less safe is because information is more rapidly transmitted to you faster than it ever has been. You can hear what violent crimes go on around the country within a few hours of them happening, increasingly more often accompanied with actual video. You're exposed to more information on violence at a faster rate but that doesn't mean there's actually more violence.

And to reiterate, I'm not making the claim that taking out religion from schools is a good thing. I'm disputing your claim that there might be a correlation between increased violence and secularizing schools.

 

[Ten_Fold]

Things that should be taught in school:
Add a career path if you are into sports and have been on teams in your early years you will have long gym periods an things that will prepare you for college sports.

Programming: If your into creating programs (html,css,JavaScript and whatever is popular like react)they could do this for like 9-12 grade so you don't really need to go to college to learn.

IT support: once you complete 4 years worth of course work and your final exams will pretty much be A+, Net+, security+, you would be job ready outta high school.

Real Estate: 4 years of learning about real estate and how that works.

Things they shouldn't teach:
Forced required classes especially in high school.

If someone wanted to do real estate as a career, he wouldn't care about algebra or even Gym.

 

[Chromata]

Finance and nutrition should be taught better.

These are two cornerstones of modern living that are insufficiently addressed in schools. The decisions that people make from a young age in these fields can impact their adult lives significantly.

Most schools have mandatory physical exercise, but it's heavily centered around competition and fails to address healthy living. It's often taught that "exercise is good for you", but never explicitly why. It's also misleading because your diet determines your health far more than exercise does. Arming students with knowledge like what carbs, fats, and proteins actually are, how they're processed, what they do, etc. is far more useful towards creating an actual difference. This needs to be coupled with understanding what cardio actually does to your body, how that differs from weight training, how to structure a hybrid program, and where you get diminishing returns.

In terms of finance, a lot of students get thrown into a world of loans, credit, taxes, etc. and have no idea how to manage it all. Having a brush up on this is important, but what's even more important is learning about investing. Using your money efficiently and letting it work for you can literally change your life. Making good investment decisions when you're 20 will set you up so well for your 30s/40s. It also gives people a greater sense of financial independence and incentivizes people towards researching more about the world (since you're looking into the companies you potentially want to invest in). These days, a lot of the barriers to investing have been broken, which puts youth in greater danger of making terrible financial decisions. You don't have to look far to see how many people threw money they couldn't afford to lose towards Weed/GameStop gambles and lose it because they lacked experience.

 

[showernota]

It simply hasn't become more violent. This chart only goes back 30 years to when there was a prevalence of violent crime, not 60 years, but the trend is clear as day:

One reason you might feel less safe is because information is more rapidly transmitted to you faster than it ever has been. You can hear what violent crimes go on around the country within a few hours of them happening, increasingly more often accompanied with actual video. You're exposed to more information on violence at a faster rate but that doesn't mean there's actually more violence.

And to reiterate, I'm not making the claim that taking out religion from schools is a good thing. I'm disputing your claim that there might be a correlation between increased violence and secularizing schools.

But when you do look at the charts going back 60 years the trend still fits my point.

America's Faulty Perception of Crime Rates

America's crime rates are at their lowest point in decades. So why do so many Americans think crime is going up?

www.brennancenter.org

This is interesting, I'll have to look into it and see if there's more information on what caused the rising crime rates.

 

[nush]

What schools are you guys going to where religion was taught outside of its historical impact?

British schools, Christianity is correct, everyone else is wrong.

 

[TheMan]

Basic finance/economics. Most people could probably not explain what a stock is. When the talking head on the TV says the Dow is down 50 points, what does that mean? What exactly is the Dow? I honestly cannot answer all these questions myself but you hear these terms on TV all the time

 

[Hulk_Smash]

A course that specifically aims at what they want to do when they're older. Lay everything on the table so their future studies can be pinpointed to what they're actually interested in and not useless crap they'll never use again like fractions.

The problem with that is no one says they're interested in middle management or being a garbage collector. Although that may be their job for a long time until they can actively pursue their dream job.

 

[Davey Cakes]

Taking Public Speaking, Personal Finance, Intro to Business, and Keyboarding (especially) were all beneficial to me. However, they were all electives.

I definitely think that practical skills like Driving should be in there. I paid $300 for a course that consisted of watching safety videos from three decades ago and doing some regular street driving. Barely prepared me for the road test. And that same course was $600 only a few years later.

 

[Whoateallthepies]

Should be taught

Pig Latin
Asexual education - please stop these kids from breeding.

Should not be taught

Everything else

 

[Fbh]

Agreed on economics and personal finance, I've always found it weird that this isn't taught in school. My school spent like a whole semester on chemical nomenclature but they never taught us about the monetary system, taxes, loans, interest rates, stock, etc.
I'd also expand "physical education" to be more like "physical health" or something like that. I'd reduce the focus on sports (at least here it's like 95% sports) and add exercise, nutrition and maybe basic first aid.

I'd reduce school time in general too. I've always liked the system in places like Switzerland (at least from what Family that live there tell me), where some students aiming for the more academically demanding careers follow a more traditional route, and others start learning a profession at 15 (I think), at which point it changes to a system where you spend like half your time working a sort of internship at an actual company, and half of the time going to traditional classes aimed at your chosen career path.
Seems way preferable to the system in my country where everyone wants to be engineer, doctor or lawyer, and we forget that we also need talented, experiences and professionally trained electricians, plumbers, farmers, wood workers, etc.

 

[INC]

What schools are you guys going to where religion was taught outside of its historical impact? (which is huge) I think some of you are just trying to be atheist because you haven't said it in a few hours to anybody.

We have whole lessons called humanities, which is basically all religions, I mean its not a bad concept to understand all religions equally, you can even choose it as a GCSE (if its even called that anymore)

 

[StormCell]

Unlike some in this thread who want to preserve the teaching of philosophical topics and such, I'd rather trim school down to the very basic and fundamental areas that are important for functioning in society.

Kids need to know the following:
1. How read, write, and speak. Teach the primary language of the country.
2. How to do mathematics. Add (subtract), multiply (divide), algebra (solve problems) and so forth.
3. Scientific principle.
4. Local, national, and world history.
5. Physical education where kids learn to do exercises and be healthy and are also exposed to sports

Also for consideration:
6. Personal finances
7. Home economics
8. Workshop (basic maintenance and repair)
9. Basic job skills course

I'm sure I can think of more.

What I would absolutely not teach in primary school: religion, religions, sexuality, genders, philosophy, culture, diversity, globalism, populism, communism, socialism, activism....

Why? Because I feel like that is the property of the parents, and schools and state officials are trespassing all over it in the name of "it's good for the community" without giving an ounce of consideration that their culture is not the same as the child's home culture. I know that some parents aren't very sane or rational, but I don't need the state deciding for all of us what is sane and rational.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Actual history. Not whatever the hell revised history they teach these days. They even messed with the Alamo ffs.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

A series of "Real Life" classes that start at the beginning of high school and are revisited as well as progressed through a wide cross section of every day topics until final graduation e.g. learn to -

• car maintenance - change a tire, check the oil, fill the wipers
• turn on/off water and power mains
• change a fuse (car and house)
• use clamps/basic tools to fix common house maintenance problems
• finance, banking and how credit cards work
• taxes, savings and opportunity costing
• setup electronics
• manage a schedule and your time
• basic planning
• simple cooking skills and a healthy diet
• the effects of drugs and alcohol or addiction
• mental health and teach you can't do everything, admit when you're wrong, openness to learn
• failing teaches you things, it's how you deal with failure that is important
• doing things you don't like
• health is important
• perspective and perception
• basic social skills (things like group lunches, eating with each other, serving/clean up duties)
• personal hygiene
• helping others
• learning from your elders
• patience and perseverance
• entrepreneurship
• speaking/presenting to an audience
• media and marketing relations (understanding today's society)
• teamwork and collaboration
• vocational studies (give kids a chance to see, interact or at least a cursory glance of what is possible in terms of what they want to do with their lives)

There is a huge gap of what parents should teach and what schools should teach. A clear and designated part of the curriculum focused on helping kids become happy and functioning adults would do very well in many aspects of their lives and the wider community as a whole.

I feel religion should not be taught in schools or should at least be opt in and not the de facto standard. It's largely this way by parental choice of school anyhow.

Ideally these sorts of real life studies would be the governing decision making for more personalised high school classes per student or class allocations etc. Some students want to build, some want to run, some want to do math and we should keep a real world class while enabling them to branch into specifics of 1-3 major roles they could progress through.

 

[nush]

A series of "Real Life" classes that start at the beginning of high school and are revisited as well as progressed through a wide cross section of every day topics until final graduation e.g. learn to -

• car maintenance - change a tire, check the oil, fill the wipers
• turn on/off water and power mains
• change a fuse (car and house)
• use clamps/basic tools to fix common house maintenance problems
• finance, banking and how credit cards work
• taxes, savings and opportunity costing
• setup electronics
• manage a schedule and your time
• basic planning
• simple cooking skills and a healthy diet
• the effects of drugs and alcohol or addiction
• mental health and teach you can't do everything, admit when you're wrong, openness to learn
• failing teaches you things, it's how you deal with failure that is important
• doing things you don't like
• health is important
• perspective and perception
• basic social skills (things like group lunches, eating with each other, serving/clean up duties)
• personal hygiene
• helping others
• learning from your elders
• patience and perseverance
• entrepreneurship
• speaking/presenting to an audience
• media and marketing relations (understanding today's society)
• teamwork and collaboration
• vocational studies (give kids a chance to see, interact or at least a cursory glance of what is possible in terms of what they want to do with their lives)

AKA Life skills.

 

[Durask]

But when you do look at the charts going back 60 years the trend still fits my point.

America's Faulty Perception of Crime Rates

America's crime rates are at their lowest point in decades. So why do so many Americans think crime is going up?

www.brennancenter.org

This is interesting, I'll have to look into it and see if there's more information on what caused the rising crime rates.

Many theories, one that I like is lead levels in the environment.

 

[kamkamkam]

Remove CRT completely. Drop humanities requirement.

Require basic law / government courses. Add a class introducing students to professional environments; how to talk, common terms, carry themselves in respectable manner etc.

 

[Arkam]

For the US publics schools

Add/Improve
- Do career assessment early and often. Start in Jr high and each year after do a pulse check on where the kid might want to go careerwise and where they are likely to succeed. So many kids could get ahead with proper guidance with this information. Apprenticeships/Internships could occur in later HS years.
- More PE/exercise. Should be every year k-12. Make sure diet is intertwined and connect nutrition with muscle growth and such. Make the body a temple!
- Personal Finance/Government forms/major purchases . Make sure teens actually understand how the real world works so they dont fuck themselves day 1. I am lucky that my "economics" teacher in HS was previously a car salesman and he took the time to explain how that business works. That should be core curriculum.
- Basic Computer Science classes. HS graduates should have the same knowledge as the current college CS sophomore
- Teach US History and Government/Civics in the same class. I was taught them both in separate vacuums. Takes the context out of the govt class material.
- Require a shop class. Be it Wood, metal, auto or what have you. But its important that you understand hand tools and basic structures.
- Have a unified and compounding history plan from grade 6-12. And its ok to skip stuff, cuz there is waaaay too much to cover in 6 years. Last 2 years need to be focused on WW1 -> present so these new adults understand how the modern world order was formed and how it ticks. For example your average person probably has an opinion on instability in the middle east... but no idea how those national borders were formed to cause the instability.
- I wouldn't mind a class that focused on tolerance and constructive and respectful debate. Embed a bit of agree to disagree(on this single topic) and still be friends.
- Should have Hackathons/Game jams instead of talent shows.

Remove/Reduce
- Stop Focusing on the EMOTIONAL significance of historical events. History is a set of facts we agree upon, save the morality for a humanities class.
- Band and Chorus should be extra curricular activities, not classes. Too many more important things and not enough time.
- Stop making History Factoids. I get it, you need to "test" if kids did the reading. But you can do better than "did the battle take place in: A.1527 B. 1529 or C. 1532" Focus on continuity of human existence within the scope (World, US, etc). Make sure the kids understand how its all connected. I didnt understand most of the big stuff til my late 20ss and early 30s. A whole lot of "OHHHHH" moments.
- Not sure why English is all four years of HS. Can probably get a bit more picky with the literature and get it down to two years. We should encourage reading all the time so there shouldnt be too much need to go over literature beyond the historical significance of contributions. Beowolf, some Shakespeare, Dickens, mark twain, etc. I think a lot of the (great) books that I read in English classes should have been done in humanities classes so we could really dive into the meat of the content and deeper themes. Lord of the flies alone would have been a great class.
- Reduce abstract math. In retrospect, I feel had the concepts of Algebra and Geometry been taught in the context of programming and modeling/design it would have made more sense.
- Stop forcing a second language. I have yet to see the real world benefit or value. I can speak spanish....kind of and NEVER EVER use it. Why did I waste 5 years on this? Who am I going to need to talk to in the US who does not speak English but speaks Spanish? Seems pretty niche. And that is Spanish, with us having a the great nation of Mexico right next-door. The rest of the languages are even less useful to most.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Why? Because I feel like that is the property of the parents, and schools and state officials are trespassing all over it in the name of "it's good for the community" without giving an ounce of consideration that their culture is not the same as the child's home culture. I know that some parents aren't very sane or rational, but I don't need the state deciding for all of us what is sane and rational.

Disagree with you on this one - a state has to also make sure a society is cohesive and some ideas are shared by everyone. Your approach will result in various cultural enclaves which at some point will become subject to separatism and culture-based violence. This is exactly the problem in many European countries - enclaves of people who do not feel like they are French, or German, or Dutch simply because ages ago the government decided to be lax in the name of political correctness and due to post-colonialism guilt. Now we are paying the price.

- Stop forcing a second language. I have yet to see the real world benefit or value. I can speak spanish....kind of and NEVER EVER use it. Why did I waste 5 years on this? Who am I going to need to talk to in the US who does not speak English but speaks Spanish? Seems pretty niche. And that is Spanish, with us having a the great nation of Mexico right next-door. The rest of the languages are even less useful to most.

Disagree on this one a lot. As Haruki Murakami said - "Learning another language is like becoming another person". It allows you to appreciate different cultures and nationalities better, makes you less ethnocentric. The reason Americans think they are "the best country in the world" is precisely due to their limited interactions with other countries and people.

 

[Peggies]

I don't get all the flat "religion out" calls.
What's wrong with religion in a sense of the concept and history of different religions? It's important to know how they work and why they evolved.

Religion in my school wasn't about praying or reading the bible. It was more a kind of ethics class and that's not a bad thing - and I visited a private catholic school.
The only thing that was a bit odd was that we watched that movie "Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo" - a story about a young drug addict who ends up as a prostitute. Now, that was kind of disturbing to me.

However what I do find alarming is when the subject is taught by some weird clerical association, which happens in my country with a certain religion we don't wanna discuss here, ahem.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

However what I do find alarming is when the subject is taught by some weird clerical association, which happens in my country with a certain religion we don't wanna discuss here, ahem.

This is most often the case regarding Roman Catholicism, since the way religion is taught in school is subject to an agreement between a given country and the Vatican. So in the end you end up 'Religion' subject being in fact Roman Catholicism being taught by priests, nuns, civil Church servants, etc.

 

[Peggies]

This is most often the case regarding Roman Catholicism, since the way religion is taught in school is subject to an agreement between a given country and the Vatican. So in the end you end up 'Religion' subject being in fact Roman Catholicism being taught by priests, nuns, civil Church servants, etc.

Not sure where you went to school but as I said, my "Religion" class was not religious at all and certainly not taught by a priest or a nun - even though it was a catholic school.
He was a "normal" teacher for mathematics and religion.

 

[StormCell]

Disagree with you on this one - a state has to also make sure a society is cohesive and some ideas are shared by everyone. Your approach will result in various cultural enclaves which at some point will become subject to separatism and culture-based violence. This is exactly the problem in many European countries - enclaves of people who do not feel like they are French, or German, or Dutch simply because ages ago the government decided to be lax in the name of political correctness and due to post-colonialism guilt. Now we are paying the price.


Disagree on this one a lot. As Haruki Murakami said - "Learning another language is like becoming another person". It allows you to appreciate different cultures and nationalities better, makes you less ethnocentric. The reason Americans think they are "the best country in the world" is precisely due to their limited interactions with other countries and people.

The thing is that I also feel like this is a problem the US is beginning to struggle with. The funny thing is that it's the culture an ideology being pushed by the government that I have a problem with. I don't want to be cohesive or share some ideas with people I couldn't disagree more with. When you allow a government to oversee the cohesiveness of a people, you run the risk of activists sneaking into government and hijacking it to spread their ideas. This is what they are doing. It started with college teachers and eventually became getting an activist as the secretary of education, and now all schools are being pressed to teach the same foul ideology.

It would be one thing if we enjoyed the benefits that were meant to be guaranteed by statehood, whereby California can teach its progressive ideas while other states teach something else. Instead, every state in the union is going to be teaching CRT within 5 years because federal funding.

 

[Amory]

basic finance, for fucks sake

it's completely absurd that this isn't part of a standard HS curricula this day in age.

the conspiracy theorist in me wonders if there's a coordinated effort to stop kids from learning not to spend money they don't have

 

[MaestroMike]

Nutrition, cardio and partner dancing haha also mma

 

[Dark Star]

I wish schools actually cared about their students, but almost no public school would put in the effort to improve their curriculum without the right funding. You have to go to college to experience the real learning, but even then, it's kind of phoned in like the professors are reading from textbook or powerpoint slide instead of explaining things in layman's terms. This is why so many students give up on high level math/science after high school, or their first couple semester of college, because it's not taught in a way that grabs their attention.

I think schools should enforce basic accounting, finance, etc classes. The world would be a better place if everyone HAD to take a "how to do your taxes and understand mortgage and be an adult" kind of class. I know these are electives in many schools, but how many students actually care enough to enroll? I for one spent my electives doing useless stuff like photography lol.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

It would be one thing if we enjoyed the benefits that were meant to be guaranteed by statehood, whereby California can teach its progressive ideas while other states teach something else. Instead, every state in the union is going to be teaching CRT within 5 years because federal funding.

So is your issue with government-mandated base curriculum or simply with CRT that you disagree with i.e. if government mandated the opposite would you oppose it? Surely you can see how each state doing its own thing can in a few decades lead to secession - 'we are completely different than the people from other states, why do we need to be part of the same country?'

 

[TrainedRage]

Paging TrainedRage

Thanks for the page! I was actually having this conversation with a coworker last week. We used to teach things like mechanical engineering, wood working, life skills class (balance checkbook, loans etc) and lifting and exercise training. Now there is a big push for STEM. But it's pretty clear the kids aren't too interested in making 1 tiny robot over the course of an entire semester.
IMO we need to bring back self care classes and trade classes. Also we have like no clubs at the Highschool setting. Pretty sad.

 

[dave_d]

For the US publics schools

Add/Improve
- Basic Computer Science classes. HS graduates should have the same knowledge as the current college CS sophomore

As someone with a BA in CS I'd consider this really unrealistic. I mean I've worked with enough software engineers that had little to no understanding of data structures and Big O notation (both introduced in CS 102) I doubt we'd get HS grads to know even that much, let alone discrete math, computer hardware (with assembly language programming) or intro to algorithms to be blunt.

 

[StormCell]

So is your issue with government-mandated base curriculum or simply with CRT that you disagree with i.e. if government mandated the opposite would you oppose it? Surely you can see how each state doing its own thing can in a few decades lead to secession - 'we are completely different than the people from other states, why do we need to be part of the same country?'

We're already at that point. It's because of the government mandated stuff that I've begun to think that we probably aren't the same country as the progressives. When we weren't at this point, we had always said that this nation wasn't theocracy, and we had always warned our friends and families about wishing for state-mandated religious stuff for this very reason. When you ask for the state to choose a religion, you run the risk of the state choosing the one you don't want. Even if today it was christian prayer in school, tomorrow could always be muslim, which is something I won't accept. So we have none of that in school. The same should apply to a lot of other fluff stuff.

There was a time when I would have agreed with you, but seeing how far apart one nation can drift has opened my eyes to the prevailing culture war taking place. I would rather return to my ancestral roots as a viking and a german and get back to doing what we are best known for.

 

[Durien]

Do:
Finances
Civics
Basic Computer (NOT CODING!!!!!. A semester of what a computer is, how it works, basic security, how to upgrade one. Final is building one out)
Problem Solving...no regurgitation, actual problem solving
Nutrition and Health should almost be a required class for one semester every year in high school. How to eat right, how to take care of yourself physically and emotionally, etc


My son is in 9th grade and took is taking an intro to computers class. He's coding using some weird app to do it and not actually learning anything about computers

As far as what not to teach:
Indoctrination (democrats/republicans are evil, etc)
Cooking. Seriously, this is an out dated class. There are a million ways to learn how to cook now. Some schools have culinary arts programs (my high school did). This is fine. I am talking about, "you'll be graded on how well you make cookies."