What schools are failing to teach our kids

[54-46]

Part of the issue is what parents are/are not teaching their kids. Many parents suck and basically delegate their responsibilities to teach this stuff to their kids. If you don't like what the school is doing, do it yourself.

[Ski to Be]

To identify their talents and diversify the curriculum earlier. It seems like schools are a training farm for everyone to sit in the same cubicle for jobs that may or may not be there when they graduate. Some may be great at coding, another at learning a trade.

[XavierD]

Someone should graduate HS with the following understanding:

-Excellence is the desired end state
-Failing is acceptable, being mediocre is not.
-You are not entitled to anything but the right to try
-The ability to learn calculus
-facebook/twitter/instagram/google are not on your side
-a working knowledge of at least one second language (preferably Spanish, Mandarin or Arabic, alternates are French, Russian, Korean, Japanese)
-a desire to keep reading for the rest of your life

[Steven S. Dallas]

I think a very basic behavior economics should be part of the junior high curriculum. Understanding what incentives people respond to, and why, is not only interesting in and of itself but creates a kind of empathy in a way we typically associate more with the humanities. It'd also be a good way to get kids who hate/are bad at/are scared of mathematics to engage with quantitative reasoning. Although I'm sure by the time my kids are in middle school they will be learning to code instead of to write in cursive.

Civics really needs to be improved, too, if only so I never have to see morons spouting off about how so-and-so's corporate policy infringes on their first amendment rights.

Tom and Ray Maliacci (Car Talk)

Nope.

[schuss]

Cooking. So basic and useful, but most people couldn't pull a stirfry together, let alone something more complex.

[frorider]

Every kid should know the answer to that plane on a treadmill 'problem'

[Phill]

Cooking. So basic and useful, but most people couldn't pull a stirfry together, let alone something more complex.

Hell no! If my tax dollars have to pay for some kid learning to boil pasta I'm moving Canuxico.

Watch 5 min youtube video on a stir fry if you want to learn.

[Jeffreaux]

Good lord, 4 pages and not a word about entrepreneurship? Our national prosperity depends job creators and we're producing less of them.

Attachment 190435

I have several middle-aged friends, unemployed with kids and college looming, just waiting and waiting for someone to give them a job. Ugh! But that's what society taught them to do, try hard and hope some benevolent employer takes care of you.

.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

So you can carry more home?

Good idea.

In a Polish suitcase, no doubt.

[gatorboy]

Very limited skill-trades (wood shop, electrical engineering, draftsmanship, car maintenance)....those are taught at one central "trade school" that kids are bused to. Most kids don't want to leave their HS and take a bus 30 minutes to these classes.

Schools do teach cursive (around the 3rd/4th grade)...but don't require it in future grades. Most of their work is done on computers, and submitted digitally (keeps costs down).

BTW - kids these days are far more empathetic than previous generations. Also, it's the parents that want "safe places" all the time, not the kids. Kids do very well with pressure and deadlines and high expectations. It's when they share these "conflicts" with their parents, the parents call the school Principal the next day and complain.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Very limited skill-trades (wood shop, electrical engineering, draftsmanship, car maintenance)....those are taught at one central "trade school" that kids are bused to. Most kids don't want to leave their HS and take a bus 30 minutes to these classes.

Schools do teach cursive (around the 3rd/4th grade)...but don't require it in future grades. Most of their work is done on computers, and submitted digitally (keeps costs down).

BTW - kids these days are far more empathetic than previous generations. Also, it's the parents that want "safe places" all the time, not the kids. Kids do very well with pressure and deadlines and high expectations. It's when they share these "conflicts" with their parents, the parents call the school Principal the next day and complain.

I think kids should be tested for aptitude early and then sent to trade, technical or academic type high schools AND without any sort of value judgment placed on the worth of the school. We don't put enough emphasis and value in the trades. I find it amazing how many "smart", college educated people can't do anything for themselves yet would never deign to send their children or go themselves to a trade or technical school.

Kids are very empathetic these days, too much so in my opinion. Unwilling to make any kind of judgement about others. They do pretty well handling stress if their parents are too overbearing.

[glademaster]

Kids are very empathetic these days, too much so in my opinion. Unwilling to make any kind of judgement about others.

This, but it's also my fucked up generation that is far to empathetic and touchy-feely. It's important to be empathetic and to relate to other people, but it can also be a crippling deficit.

[babybear]

I've always thought that schools should teach more entrepreneurial/business classes.
People are good at so many random things, yet lack the basic knowledge on how to start/run a basic business-
Would be great for tech school kids too