What Should Schools Teach?
Published March 10, 2004
A reader, James, emailed me a link to Mark Driver's piece, The Driver Course In Aggressive Living, which lists things that don't get taught in schools that we all need to learn:
- How to Get A Job
- The Renting Nightmare/Landlord Survival
- Moving: You Never Knew You Had So Much Junk
- The Broken Car
- Basic Scams of Total Bastards
- What Happens When You Don't Pay Your Bills
- How to Say No To Everything and Everyone
- Working For The Man: Budgeting a Future on $6.50 an Hour
- Stress Management: Don't Go Postal
- Having Babies Before 30: How To Ruin Everything
- Saving Money: The Truth Corporate America Doesn't Want You To Hear
Here is some my response to James, who asked if we should have "Real Life 101" classes in high school:
- I wonder what credit card companies would say about educational programs that teach students money sense. With all of the push to have a better school-to-business connection, what gets emphasized is that we need to create skilled workers (drones?). But if we actually started to teach people how to avoid getting duped by the grifters and cons from landlords to Martha Stewart, then I think there would be a quick reversal of the corporate support of such educational programs.
- It seems that the system somehow trusts that people will learn this stuff on their own. I don't understand how we so easily accept this "throw them to the wolves" way of doing things. I guess it is supposed to be up to parents to teach this stuff. But what if you don't have a dad or mom to teach you this stuff? Or what if he or she is just another duped sucker anyway? Some parents suck. Some would teach their children these lessons if they could. We should teach those eleven skills in our schools. I think that parents and students often get caught up in the grading system so they can get ahead in the great hierarchy. Maybe, unconsciously, we tend to trust in the idea that if you get a good education, then you won't have to worry about the problems related to those eleven lessons. Or if you go to a good school and get a good job, then you will be able to afford mistakes with some of those eleven.
- The list from Driver reminds me of Robert Fulghum's book, All I Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Driver's eleven list items do get dealt with to some degree in one type of class that I know of: it is a class for mentally-impaired/low IQ students. They do practical things like study how to do applications and interviews and how to function in the real world. It's weird that we assume that the general population of students is okay in these regards. Throw them to the wolves.
- There are some life-skills classes and parenting classes at our school. Guess who takes these classes? Typically it is poor, lower-class students who are not getting good grades--and who are assumed not to be "college material." I guess the other kids are assumed to be so smart that they can learn it on their own. But we as a society commonly embrace the notion that they don't learn it so well on their own--check out all of the common story lines that we see repeated over and over on TV sitcoms from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" to "Growing Pains."
- There are also classes that teach social skills and coping skills. Guess who takes them? Same answer as in the paragraph above with a lot of kids who have problems with drugs, crime and violence. Again, there is the assumption that the general population knows how to deal with problems. Drive down the road for ten minutes and tell me that this is true--you're likely to see all kinds of bad behaviors and a few crummy coping skills.
- One question I have about home schooling and that a lot of people have (see the "South Park" episode with the two home-schooled kids), is if they suffer in their social development. A lot of home-schooling organizations offer opportunities to link such students. I wonder if this can be effective. But when I look at the disaster that high school can be in terms social development, I'm not so sure that home schooling is a bad thing. That said, I value the experiences that I had in public schools--both the good and the bad.
- Dignity and respect
- Being prepared to be productive adults and life-long learners
- A safe, healthy, caring environment
- An environment where students feel valued and feel comfortable taking risks
- Connectedness and a sense of belonging
- Responsibility and accountability
- High expectations
- Acceptance and accommodation of individual learning styles
- Common, clear objectives
- A school where all students can feel success
- What Should Schools Teach?
- Published: March 10, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Culture
- Writer: Dirtgrain
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Comments on this articleComments
Oh, and I could use this training now:
Working For The Man: Budgeting a Future on $6.50 an Hour
re: Things you foster at your school:
I watched the news today, oh boy... and I think you should lose the "High expectations" part of the curriculum.
Other than that, it sounds good.
THINGS I WISH THEY'D TEACH:
* conflict resolution/anger mgmt. (heh)
* how to watch TV & news (see the late, great Neil Postman for more)
* how marketing works
Things I wish I had been tott in skool:
* spelling
* heavy petting
* counterfeiting currency for dummies
* * how to field-strip, clean, and quickly reassemble a Manlicher-Carcano
* * extra points for all students who actually get this joke
"A school where all students can feel success." Hmmm. That sounds like one of those "imparting self-esteem" kinda things. Grade school is fine for that kind of stuff, as long as there's some reading and writing going on. But later on, kids need to know when they're screwing up. If they're sitting in the back row wth their feet up on the desk in front of them, with a backwards baseball cap, chewing gum, and adopting that "lurnin' is for dweebs" attitude, they need to have a fire lit under their butts. They can feel success if they work for it. Otherwise, forget it.
Maybe the attitude of the kids in the back of the class would be different if they believed that they actually added value by being in the classroom. Somewhere along the way, most of those kids learned that they weren't worth anyone's time, so they act down to expectations.
Don't believe me? My child's kindergarten teacher talked to me about "the good kids" and "the bad kids" in her class. You know, those BAD five-year olds. Wonder where they'll be sitting in high school?
i wish they spend less time on memorizing stuff and more time on learning how to think, problem solve and write.
the best courses i had in college were the ones where there were no 'regular' tests. instead, everything was based on writing assignments.
multiple choice testing is fricken' useless.
Things I wish I had been tott in skool:
(copy and paste from Shark -- thanks)
What the Pledge of Allegiance means (who is this Richard Stands guy?)
What the words to the "Star-Spangled Banner mean (what the hell is a rampart?)
Let's restrict the rest to ages past Grade 6 (just a few things off the top of my head).
Comparative religion
Public speaking
Fundamentals of ethics
Appreciation for jazz and classical music
How to tell science from pseudoscience
Basic Roman history (screw the Stamp Act)
Basic Greek history (same deal)
The expansion of Christianity and how that affected Western Civilization
Astronomy, to the extent that I can begin to appreciate the size of the Universe, the scale of things, and where the Earth is relative to everything else (forget planets)
Geology, to the extent that I might appreciate the age of the Earth and the changes it has undergone over the last 4.7 billion (or thousand million) years (forget rocks)
Biological evolution, to the extent that I might appreciate when life began, a gut appreciation of the Pre-Cambrian era, the Cambrian Explosion, the major extinctions (forget creationism).
What it's like to work in various fields -- accounting, law, construction, education, biology, engineering, business, and a bunch of other things (forget the entertainment industry).
What Carcano brought to Mannlicher's original design.
a related college anecdote....i had to retake Economics 101 ('cuz i took it as an elective my first semester, when i was dumb enough to think i should be a mechanical engineering major...what the hell was i thinking?!!!) and the prof i ended up with gave exams consisting of nothing but true/false questions.
now, on the first day of class this is exactly what the teacher states. i look around the room and a bunch of the kids had looks on their faces like they just had won the lottery.
well...turns out that the questions were true/false + explain why. yep, twenty questions where you circle T/F and then write a short paragraph backing up your answer.
oh, those smilin' kids did not like that at all...not one little bit.
And if some of the budding business tycoons scored a 5 out of 20, how and why does the instructor impart to them the notion that they are "feeling success?"
A good instructor would help the student feel success by helping him/her prepare better for the next test without imparting the notion that the student is stupid.
Right off the top of my head, I can name three young adults, in their 20's now,who were moved up a grade in school because of their intelligence. Their IQ scores were INSANELY HIGH.Of the three, 2 of them ended up in the military, 1 has had babies three in a row, all different fathers, and not married, working at a menial labor kind of job.All three had problems with drugs and alcohol for a time, and were from poor, southern white mountain families.
I strongly agree that life skills should be taught to all the students.
Duane, your list is great. Thanks for saying what I was too tired or blank to say.
History! Man, do they even teach history any more?
Same for music and art?
I missed high school completely. They wouldn't let me in the door because my hair touched my ears. Seriously. You think kids nowadays have friggin' self-esteem problems..?
BTW: I do agree w/somebody up there that self-esteem is highly overrated. Also popularity. I think the worst punishment and retarding factor in an adult's life is to have been popular in school. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
BTW: I skipped HS and went to the library instead. Now THERE'S a cool school! Read everyb book I could get my hands on; Got in college w/no problem.
Apparently, all I missed from HS was the sex in the back of a VW.
Boy, do I regret that.
the library?
isn't that the place where they keep the computers? so that you can get stuff on the internet?
;-)
hiya dirtgrain,
I'm interested in publishing your piece on what should be taught in schools but isn't in my homeschooling mag, if you agree...
Beverley
Driver is correct. All eleven points raised are important to successful adult life. However I think he (and most who commented) are missing an important point -- Where should these subjects be taught and who should teach them?
Most, if not all education in the area of life skills and social development are really the responsibility of parents, not schools. Unfortunately, too many parents today lack the skills (time, inclination, desire?) to teach their children how to survive as adults. They've abdicated the parenting role and turned the responsibility over to the education establishment.
One result is things like the fight in California over moral issues being taught in schools which Cal Thomas recently wrote about (3/4/08 column).
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/13602)
Excellent post!
It's ironic that as colleges and universities are relying less on SAT scores to predict a student's level of success in college, public schools are being forced to standardized-test the living crap out of kids starting in the third grade [or earlier].
My town's schools now have full-day kindergarten that focuses on having kids reading at or above a first grade level by the end of the year. Why? Because school jobs and funding will depend upon test scores.
What's left out: social and emotional development. I could write a book about the problems my child encountered in the first five weeks of kindergarten this fall. It wasn't pretty. We took her out and "held her back" a year, just so she could be a kid and take a breather from the *pressure of kindergarten*.
What's wrong with that picture?