Education Subjects in Schools (High School)

[ddcanz]

Occupational success and preparedness for life ahead comes by hard work and perseverance on so many levels.
School most importantly teaches you HOW to learn- not necessarily what is BEST to learn for a given individual.
It should always be up to the student and the family to position themselves for the best opportunity to succeed.
Crying against the system is pointless and just smacks of laziness and entitlement.
Take responsibility and move forward.

 

[sybian]

I was always looking at the far blue mountains, in the distance out the classroom window....Some teachers thought I was daydreaming ....Some figured out ,I was just planning the rest of my life.
School to me was a prison ,that I was just serving time in.

 

[204fun]

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to education, especially high school, focuses mainly on Math. In Manitoba schools kids are highly encouraged to take either Pre Calculus or Applied Maths as those are what are required for admittance into many faculties at Canadian Universities. I do not have an issue with this especially if a student is planning on attending post secondary at a four year university, however I feel that these students also need to be completing the course that is now referred to as "Essentials Maths." This teaches young people the things that will really come into play in their lives, concepts like how credit card interest works, mortgages (although at this point not many millennials will be able to afford a house), paying taxes or how to begin saving for retirement. There are far too many young people that are completely clueless when it comes to these concepts as they enter the real world and could be very easily fixed by including this in everyone's high school education.

 

[wetnose]

One of the best courses I ever did was Western Civilization. In 1 semester, we covered the progress of Western Civilization through the last 3000 years. Groups were allocated areas of interest like science, government, architecture, war and religion. Don't know if they still teach it, but I still remember some of the things I learnt.

 

[westwoody]

kids are highly encouraged to take either Pre Calculus or Applied Maths as those are what are required for admittance into many faculties at Canadian Universities. I do not have an issue with this especially if a student is planning on attending post secondary at a four year university, however I feel that these students also need to be completing the course that is now referred to as "Essentials Maths."

Even the great Richard Feynmen would have agreed with this.
Tensor Calculus is not going to be much use to most people. Students need to be taught how much their mortgage is really going to cost them, how much their credit card is gouging them. Teaching overly complex and nearly irrelevant math only gives students "math anxiety".
Curriculum is designed by university grads, who assume everyone else thinks like they do, and wants to go to university.
I basically wasted four years and would have been much better off not going.

 

[g eazy]

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to education, especially high school, focuses mainly on Math. In Manitoba schools kids are highly encouraged to take either Pre Calculus or Applied Maths as those are what are required for admittance into many faculties at Canadian Universities. I do not have an issue with this especially if a student is planning on attending post secondary at a four year university, however I feel that these students also need to be completing the course that is now referred to as "Essentials Maths." This teaches young people the things that will really come into play in their lives, concepts like how credit card interest works, mortgages (although at this point not many millennials will be able to afford a house), paying taxes or how to begin saving for retirement. There are far too many young people that are completely clueless when it comes to these concepts as they enter the real world and could be very easily fixed by including this in everyone's high school education.

This is the only real specific thing to pick on. It should be covered under career planning or something similar but the curriculum for that is/was garbage. The concepts behind the math is really just junior high level too.

My general beef is that emphasis on education has a huge disconnect with the labour market. The education system in general is slow to adapt (ie. introducing coding in earlier grades) to changes in our society.

 

[hydrargyrum]

I feel that there is too much of a social stigma against going into the trades now. In my own experience, it seems that people view the trades as the place where knuckle dragging idiots go, when it reality, it will usually set the individual up for a better future than a 4 year arts degree. I think that the most viable undergraduate degrees now are probably computer science or engineering, as they seem to be the most "hireable". In fact, I often advise my students to really think about what they want to do with their science degrees because they are often useless unless you have a dream to become a lab technician or cook meth etc.

In terms of high school education, I am of the belief that there should be a math course that focuses specifically on personal finance and money management. Being able to solve quadratics is all fine and good, and I do think that being able to critically think about a problem is a useful skill to have, but I think that more people would be better off knowing how not to end up in massive crippling debt.

 

[westwoody]

Two of my high school friends went into carpentry. They had been class clowns and stoners. After finishing high school they built garage packages, decks and fences.
They scraped by, barely, and went to trade schol at night while working all day.
Those two guys now own a company building luxury homes and are very well off. I would say they did better than anyone else from our graduating class...significantly better.

 

[westwoody]

In terms of high school education, I am of the belief that there should be a math course that focuses specifically on personal finance and money management. Being able to solve quadratics is all fine and good, and I do think that being able to critically think about a problem is a useful skill to have, but I think that more people would be better off knowing how not to end up in massive crippling debt.

Our whole economy seems to function because of people's financial ignorance.
Even clever people make incredibly bad financial decisions, I know a doctor who somehow lost money on his house.

 

[sybian]

Two of my high school friends went into carpentry. They had been class clowns and stoners. After finishing high school they built garage packages, decks and fences.
They scraped by, barely, and went to trade schol at night while working all day.
Those two guys now own a company building luxury homes and are very well off. I would say they did better than anyone else from our graduating class...significantly better.

I wonder if we went to school together....same here.
I pounded nails for minimum wage building million dollar homes from 17 to 22 years.
The high school buddies that stuck with it, made a killing.
Another thing I'd like to mention.....in McLeans magazine a few years ago, the top ten occupations with a bright future for young people.....mixed sustainable farming was 6th Or 7th on the list....it seems I was ahead of my time ...Twice.

 

[westwoody]

I went to Whistler with them in 75 and 76 for summer jobs doing general labour.
Back then "Whistler" was just a Husky gas station, but we could tell it was going to be big.

 

[Ms Erica Phoenix]

I could write a book about the problems with the state of our schools & how they continue to fail your children & your friends' children & our society as a whole. I spent 20 years observing it. In the country with the highest literacy rates in the world, Finland, children don't start school until age 7, they don't begin classes until after 10 am, classes consist of 15 or fewer children, & children & teachers stay together for 7 years...

 

[islander1-1]

I could write a book about the problems with the state of our schools & how they continue to fail your children & your friends' children & our society as a whole. I spent 20 years observing it. In the country with the highest literacy rates in the world, Finland, children don't start school until age 7, they don't begin classes until after 10 am, classes consist of 15 or fewer children, & children & teachers stay together for 7 years...

Ms Erica... So good of you to chip in here (as i knew you would) with some wisdom. Damn, I wish I had an English and Drama teacher like you back then.. A new one here in our highschool is Politics. Several students getting involved at the provincial and federal level.. Then I learn on the news yesterday a new bill introduced by Andrew Weaver (green) to set the voting age to 16. I say Good plan get the kids involved early and actually have a say in the future.

 

[g eazy]

Ms Erica... So good of you to chip in here (as i knew you would) with some wisdom. Damn, I wish I had an English and Drama teacher like you back then.. A new one here in our highschool is Politics. Several students getting involved at the provincial and federal level.. Then I learn on the news yesterday a new bill introduced by Andrew Weaver (green) to set the voting age to 16. I say Good plan get the kids involved early and actually have a say in the future.

While this is a good idea in theory, it is currently terrible in the practical sense. I am moderate left and this is just Greens trying to increase their voter base.

 

[BobbyMcgee]

These should be taught by parents- they are life skills not necessarily related to any specific subject or field.

Exactly. only they are too busy out being their kids best friend, writing exempt notes for their kid who is still laying in bed and whining about how much teachers make while they bill out at $110 dollars an hour, “for cash”, so it is really $130 per hour.

 

[westwoody]

Sixteen year old kids are ignorant of the world around them. Voting should be 25, minimum.

 

[Tugela]

The things that are really important in life are not included in the list of subjects that are offered in school. Things like a good work ethic, how to work with others, or simply just showing up on time. These are far more important than writing a short story or finding the answer to a physics problem.

Those are things parents are supposed to teach their kids, it is not the schools responsibility to do that. The purpose of the school is to transmit information, hopefully in a way that encourages kids to learn for themselves (the only real way you actually learn btw).

The problem with society is that to a greater or lesser degree families are failing to do their part and instead the kids are basically dumped into schools to keep them off the streets until such time as they are old enough to live on their own. Parents expect the schools to be doing the sorts of things schools are not supposed to be doing. So of course it doesn't happen, and their kids go through their educational period of life not learning a whole lot of anything, then these same folks blame the schools when it is really themselves that failed the kids.

 

[Tugela]

Sixteen year old kids are ignorant of the world around them. Voting should be 25, minimum.

The human race evolved on the basis of people being effective adults by the time they were 13 or 14. That is how it has been for most of history, it had to be that way because life expectancy was so short for most of human existence that anything else would have resulted in the extinction of the species.

Modern society fails by not making kids fully responsible for their actions when they hit puberty, instead we keep them "children" for far too long. Your personality is shaped by life's lessons from the start of puberty until mid teens, after that you are pretty much going to be that person for the rest of your life. The "learning" part of brain development ends in early 20s, but it has tailed off drastically by then. Most of that development happens from about 12 to 15, but kids are so shielded from life's hard knocks in this critical period that many of them never develop the sort of maturity that their ancestors had.

 

[islander1-1]

The human race evolved on the basis of people being effective adults by the time they were 13 or 14.

Exactly.. Most of the Highschool kids I meet through my job are more aware of the situations around them than we were when we were kids. If they are old enough to drive, then they are old enough to drink, and vote. its called responsibility.

 

[johnnydepth]

Exactly.. Most of the Highschool kids I meet through my job are more aware of the situations around them than we were when we were kids. If they are old enough to drive, then they are old enough to drink, and vote. its called responsibility.

I find this interesting. Could you state what type of work this is and in what context the kids are involved? Rarely do I hear someone suggest kids today have more awareness? Awareness of what exactly?