Important question, wtf is wrong with schools today?

Question

they go crazy to have kids go to school but where is the life skills courses they should be teaching? when i got out of high school i knew literature, music, needle point, history and mythology. which did jack when it came time to fill out my first job application, not to mention tax time the next year, banking and checkbook management. why can't schools teach useful skills like tax prep, cash register operation, basic first aid, drivers ed (remember that? i just learned they took it out), job search and application prep basic computer repair (not build from the ground up, just replace a hard drive or do a clean os install)? why is it that the highest form of life on the planet doesn't put as much effort into it's young as a duck? most animals teach basic survival skills, why not humans?

Answer 1

Why should they teach that sh*t if kids today aren't that willing to learn it. My parents are the ones that taught me the basics of life and the skills that are required to live it. Parents should be teaching their kids from the start...

Answer 2

It would be nice to push Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. That would help in all you have listed. Basic first aid was covered in phy-ed and health class. Most school cant cover the insurance for drivers-ed. Schools around here have computer class you can take just to get the basics then off to Tech school. Tax prep take a bookkeeping class. Cash register? to many out there to teach how to use. Now its scan, push amount given, it tells you the change. (To have fun) Get a bill like $12.68 hand them a $20 and .18 and watch them kids freak. A simple math skill puts them in a mental melt down.

Alright LARRY non political correct your heads not in the hole.

ALLI The government stepped in its called NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. Now the only way a kid can get expelled is a felony. All the teachers I know want it to go back to state control.

Answer 3

I know I would have had trouble if it wasnt for one of my classes. Alot of states dont teach things like that or politics or any of that stuff thats gonna help us make a change in life. I had to take American Gov. and Economics. It was a mandatory class for me to take to graduate. It showed us alot about how tax works. How politics work. how to vote. How the economics work in our country how money makes its rounds then it gets thrown out. And we even had a guest speaker from a school who talked to us about careers and jobs. He taught us how to fill a job application. and how to dress and answer our job interviews. I honestly think that ALL STATES should make a class like this mandatory to prepare the seniors for life. After all we are the future.

Answer 4

well brother u are extremely lucky to have learned all that. where i live, they dont teach such skills. infact, schools and educational institutions have evolved into a business. there is a drastic change of motives that is why no one pays much attention towards the things that have to be taught.

leave aside these extra skill courses, the students are taught the core course half heartedly and by the end of the year, the students just memorize all the stuff and have no development in concepts and they even pass the exams like this!

when i used to be in school, things were better i am a victim of bad career counselling and doing a major in which i have no interest. it's just that education has become a game of money and people dont really care that they are ruining other people's future.

Answer 5

If you are serious about this then you need to get the government involved. The government controls the syllabi that are used in the schools and as a result, the subjects taught.

Things like interest rates, inflation and deflation are taught in mathematics in Australia. My primary school helped me start a bank account (also Australia). We have life skills courses and most schools have special tutoring for those with trouble with literacy and numeracy which is government funded.

Don't get irritated and patriotic when I say that the difference I see is that it is compulsory to vote in Australia. Kids who are satisified with how the system has treated them are more likely to keep the government, those who haven't vote against. I would hate to know what percentage of people vote in the US. You guys really need to distill some fear in your government. Clearly it's not properly representing you and until you get masses behind you, nothing will change.  I don't mean to be anti-American if that was how it came across, there's just so many of you. Stand up and change the world to the way you think it should be ! :)  

Answer 6

In Illinois, they actually make it manditory to take Consumer Education which teaches all of these skills to make sure that young adults are learning it.

I don't know what they are forgetting in your state, but I am required to learn these skills in MY school.

That's a shame its not nationally manditory ='(

Answer 7

politicians started to control curriculum

Answer 8

I am infuriated by all the criticism leveled at schools because they don't raise your kids for you!! The trouble with you and people like you is you don't take any responsibility for the children you produce.When I went to school, I was taught the basics: yeah, reading , English, mathematics,basic science, and history.My parents didn't expect the school to feed me breakfast and lunch. They didn't expect the school to teach morals or s*x ed. or provide enough after school activities to keep me busy until someone MIGHT be home when I got there. Now, if a kid gets in trouble or fails a subject, it's the teacher's fault....it's always the teacher's fault! Maybe if this country spent as much on education as they spend on dog food we might get some competent teachers, and if the family wasn't an endangered species, maybe the parents would assume some responsibility for raising their kids. I've devoted my life to educating your kids, and have taught everything from 7th, 8th, and 9th grade science to organic chemistry to pre-med students at the university level. Stop dumping all the blame for the igniorance of all the life skills an adult needs to live on the educational system in this country and accept the responsibility for raising your own children....Or better yet, try teaching for a while and put up with the spoiled brats and the irate parents and lack of respect and the lousy pay. Then maybe....just maybe, you'll appreciate the sacrifice that many of us have made to do the best we could under impossible conditions because we loved your kids, and now and then, if we were lucky, changed the life of one soul and will be remembered for giving all we had.