Educational Importance...

Coda

Coda

Not John Watt
...so I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the worth behind certain subjects taught in school. And I got to thinking that some of the subjects that are taught really arnt all that important. I think the most important are these...

  • English- students need to learn proper grammar, diction, and how to express themselves through the written (typed) word.
  • Maths- A little self explanatory, but students need to know math concepts, since various math skills are needed for various occupations.
  • Science- students need to know the concepts of science to help better understand the world, and their place within it. Science and Technology go hand in hand, and since the trend has been that technology is not only increasing, but being embraced by younger generations as it progresses, knowledge of the technology is important.
  • History- Students need to know where the human race has been, in order to better direct it in the future. Without the lessons of the past, the mistakes of the future will be unavoidable.
  • P.E./Health- self explanatory again...students need to know how to live healthily (i.e-diet and exerciser) and they need to be exercised (gym)...

...as much as I am a proponent of the arts, I dont think they are necessary...not at a basic education level. I think that students should learn a little about everything...but that can come at a later time...(like 1-10th grades learn the subjects I outlined previously, and 11-14 grades focus on a well rounded art education (ala liberal arts schools)...then, after 2 years of college, they go into intense specialty programs that directly prepare them for their future occupation...

...if anyone cares, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter...are all school subjects necessary? which ones are needed, and which ones are excessive?...
 
As a Histoy teacher I may be a tiny bit biased here :embarrassed:

I agree with what you've said but would further add that social subjects in general teach critical thinking skills to a much deeper and better degree than most other subjects.

Maths and English really set the bar as far as education is concerned. You don't need to know pai to 400 numbers or be able to recite Shakespeare but if you can barely string a sentence together then there's a good chance that you're not very bright. Literacy and Numeracy are the 2 greatest skills you'll learn in school.

As much as I like to wind up my Physical Ed teacher friends that they do nothing but throw balls around, it is a really important subject for kids these days since they spend most of their time plonked in front of a computer and although you do get tonnes of shit P.E. teachers that give the kids a balla nd tell them to go and kick it around for an hour. There's also a tonne that really love teaching new sports and techniques and so on.


As for useless subjects. Home Ec would be top of my list. I'm not saying learning to cook or sew is a bad thing but unless you're schools are very different to ours, I don't really think a whole class based on learning how to make toast, cups or tea, fried eggs and how to sew a button is necesarry. At my school everyone got 2 years of that shit to begin with and whatever we were cooking was nothing more than a different combination of eggs, sugar, milk and flour every week. Totally useless and nothing that can't be learned in minutes online.

I wouldn't say arts is completely useless but as far as career advancement is concerned, a GCSE in English looks much better than a GCSE in music. I saw an article int he news the other day about newly graduated university students who couldn't find jobs. A tonne of them were psychology grads who were bitching like fuck. I couldn't help but think, if engineering grads are shit out of luck, what chance do you have with a soft degree like yours?

As for your idea. It sounds a bit too much like streaming for my liking which I don't like the idea of because it closes off a lot of opportunities for students but I do think, from my own experience, that English in particular needs something done about it at a primary level.

Each year the basic level of English of the S1 students who have come up from primary school gets worse and worse. I don't like beating on fellow professionals but there's something seriously wrong with how they're teaching English and Literacy in Scottish primary schools when well over half of the kids they're sending to us lack even basic knowledge of grammar and can't spell very simple words.
 
I would love to see you teach elementary school with only teaching math, science, English and PE. Have fun controlling your class and keeping them into it. Unless you want to make school only last 2 hours a day, it isn't practical.
 
I think P.E. is at best a waste of time, and at worst an institutionally approved platform for bullying. You want kids to have an hour to go exercise and burn off some energy? End the school day an hour earlier.

I'd cut P.E. long before I'd cut art, music, etc.
 
I think P.E. is extremely important, but the way it's taught is a joke... It should tie in with general health, how to live, and how to not be a fat, unhealthy burden on yourself and others... Look at all the out of shape, unhealthy kids these days... Their parents don't make them do any physical chores, they eat pure junk food and are practically diabetic at 12, and they rely on antibiotics and prescribed narcotics to survive...

I also think the arts are extremely important, too... And, we need vocational classes like shop and auto... It should all be about balanced living and a complete education, at least in K-12...
 
There should be mandatory classes in High School for life survival skills like budgeting, renting an apartment, personal investing, car buying, etc. I have no problem with covering all the basic subjects through High School, but I'm not sure an English Major in college should have to take a statistics class, or that a History major needs to take college biology.
 
Denverdave said:
There should be mandatory classes in High School for life survival skills like budgeting, renting an apartment, personal investing, car buying, etc. I have no problem with covering all the basic subjects through High School
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I couldn't agree with you more. I have been saying that for years.
 
Hell, let's take this one step further... If a kid can't graduate junior high (which would include a balanced curriculum), then he/she should be permanently rendered infertile, so as to never breed, and not allowed to ever vote... :)
 
Denverdave said:
There should be mandatory classes in High School for life survival skills like budgeting, renting an apartment, personal investing, car buying, etc.
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I'm all for this... in fact, it could be a two semester class that involves health as well. First semester is self-health... nutrition, exercise, cooking, cleaning, balancing a check book, buying a car, etc. Second semester is Community Health that could include things like immunizations, how money flows in a community, insurance, investing... all the things that people don't understand if they don't see how it directly effects themselves.





Back to the OP.... Music and Art are the food for the right half of our brains. I find that people who don't value math and science tend to be right handed people who are predominently left brained. If Music and Art were not a part of my life growing up, I likely wouldn't have made it through school or worse yet would have ended up a serious burden on society.

It was only through art and music that I was able to relate to things like reading, math, and physics.... I had to come back around THROUGH those things to find rhythms in numeric patterns, memorize passages using musical queues. I not only ended up with a scholarship going into college using these tools, but tested out of my math classes and was able to jump directly into computer science classes. Far cry from the kid in 4th grade who couldn't pass a timed math test.

Even students who are predominently left brained need to have that right half of their brain stimulated and inspired so that they can become complete people.
 
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I learned more about teamwork, organizing and discipline from band than any other place. Many subjects of "marginal" educational value on their own merits, often have deeper lessons involved. I know my kids probably won't need most of the skills they learned in Boy Scouts, but the lessons they got in teamwork, leadership and organizing were very important.

Still don't understand why there aren't classes on "real life" things like finance, buying homes and cars, applying for jobs, etc. I never had any of that shit in school. It would have been much more useful than some of the other timewasters I had.

EG
 
As I read all of these replies in this thread, it reminds me that as many different outsides of people are in the world, there are just as many internal differences as well.

Talk to ten people after an event and some will remember sights, some sounds, some smells, others can remember the number of people who were there.

Speaking of how important people like Shakespere or DaVinci are to the world... yet right there are two examples people were inspired by sights and sounds of the world around them. Art and music are simply different forms of communcation.... translating things that can't always be summarized in simple words or numeric form. They're feelings... intangibles... the grey areas between the letters and numbers.
 
...my real point is if your going to teach music and art, then teach it. In most grammar schools around here, art and music class is nothing more than "teacher needs a fresh pot" class...teach them like you teach the rest of the classes, and not some fringe class operating for $5 a day...those are the classes that always get the least funding...so why bother unless you are going to do it proper...
 
Wow back up a minute.

We have a "subject" called PSE (Personal and Social Education though it changes it's name all the time) that is mandatory throughout the whole of high school.

It deals with stuff like drugs, sex education, alcohol, job hunting, personal hygiene, social issues, life goals and so on.

It's a bit of a joke class for the most part because you're not tested or graded so no one really worries too much about it but are you guys saying you don't have anything like that or have I misread?

FWIW Trafalz. Ending the school day an hour earlier just = one more hour sat on the Xbox. Our school authority has started closing the schools earlier on Friday afternoons (depending on the school it's between 1 and 2 hours earlier) when they did a quick poll to see what the kids thoughts on it were, the vast majority of them thought it was great because they're weekend of sitting on facebook, msn, playstation or xbox started earlier...

Where I live it's very rare to see kids over the age of say 7 or 8 out on the streets kickin a ball around or even just hanging out, even during the Summer. 10 years ago me and my friends would be out every single night and every single day, even if it was pissing down we'd hang out in a close or somewhere we could keep dry.

It doesn't happen these days so basically forcing the kids to take P.E. is the only way the majority of them will get any form of exercise whatsoever.
 
Coda said:
...my real point is if your going to teach music and art, then teach it. In most grammar schools around here, art and music class is nothing more than "teacher needs a fresh pot" class...teach them like you teach the rest of the classes, and not some fringe class operating for $5 a day...those are the classes that always get the least funding...so why bother unless you are going to do it proper...
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that's a completely separate issue from the one in the OP. i don't necessarily disagree, but it's a different discussion.
 
My kids high school has a manditory health class where they cover sex issues, medical stuff (cancer), drugs, smoking, basic psychology, etc. And it is graded.

The charter school my kids attended for elementary and middle school had dedicated teachers for art and music and all the kids took both every year.
 
Coda said:
...my real point is if your going to teach music and art, then teach it. In most grammar schools around here, art and music class is nothing more than "teacher needs a fresh pot" class...teach them like you teach the rest of the classes, and not some fringe class operating for $5 a day...those are the classes that always get the least funding...so why bother unless you are going to do it proper...
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Now you're getting into a debate that includes state budgets and the mindsets where art and music are the first jobs to be hacked when times get tight.

I taught at a local art academy and honestly, I would LOVE to teach high school art for a living..... but instead I am a network engineer.

My wife is a school teacher... and has her Masters Degree...and is recognized by other administrators in the school system as one of the best teachers in the district... and my salary is still substantially more than hers.

Until our society recognizes that GOOD education is the driving force of innovation, future business, well rounded members of society with lower crime and violence... they'll continue to treat elementary and high school as a necessary evil to force kids through as cheaply as possible until they're old enough to be shoved out into the world to figure things out on their own.
 
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baimun said:
Until our society recognizes that GOOD education is the driving force of innovation, future business, well rounded members of society with lower crime and violence... they'll continue to treat elementary and high school as a necessary evil to force kids through as cheaply as possible until they're old enough to be shoved out into the world to figure things out on their own.
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...this adds to my point. If you are going to offer something, you should do it properly, and not just according to the bear minimum. I think that Art and Music are incredibly important, but not when they are taught has toss away classes. I am in favor of MASSIVE educational reform...especially when it comes to colleges, and how they prepare you for a career...but that is another can of worms entirely...
 
Coda said:
...this adds to my point. If you are going to offer something, you should do it properly, and not just according to the bear minimum. I think that Art and Music are incredibly important, but not when they are taught has toss away classes. I am in favor of MASSIVE educational reform...especially when it comes to colleges, and how they prepare you for a career...but that is another can of worms entirely...
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But art and music are like Pizza.... a little bit, that's only okay, is still better than none at all. :helper:
 
I can't see really ditching any of the subjects taught in primary schools. They are all important, especially when taught well. My high school, like 25 years ago, had a class that was required for ALL students related to the 'life skills' mentioned here. Things like budgets, checkbooks, interest, insurance, conflict resolution, and the like. Of course, it was rural NH, so we also had to take forestry classes. :messedup:

Oh, and I absolutely agree that most teachers are underpaid. You want to improve schools, the key isn't testing the students, as they are more or less a constant, the key is to raise teacher's salaries so you recruit the BEST teachers you can. Make those positions desirable for recent college grads (money wise), and you will raise the quality of education. As I see it where I live, maybe 80% of the teachers are dedicated pros who love teaching and would do so as long as they could afford to do it, and 20% leeches doing the minimum work required as they probably couldn't survive working in the real world. Raise salaries and make the jobs ultra competitive, and those crappy 20% will drop off.

I never understood this country's issue with funding public education, all the way through college. Every politician talks about American innovation and drive, but most cut the crap out of education and just 'hop' the innovation will continue, when all the while we are slipping behind other countries that take education seriously. Why can they not see that a properly educated work force in more productive and makes more money (and pay more taxes) that a poorly educated one. I contemplated NOT writing this, as it touches the political arena, but I think every side in politics is guilty of shorting education, and I didn't take a specific political side, so I will leave it here.
 
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