If you were in charge of Education

What would you change about pre-college schooling?  For example, what classes would you offer prior to college?

Philosophy
Sociology
Game theory
Physics
Business management
Stock market/real estate
Calculus
Computer hardware
Programming
Electronics
Logic
Study techniques
Vocabulary
Chaos theory
Quantum physics
Overview of everything in existence

LOGIC LOGIC LOGIC.

High schoolers just aren't learning how to use critical thinking, and that's why America is fucked up right now.  (I don't know about other countries.)  Also, from the list, Calculus and Physics.  And maybe Philosophy.  And most of the rest as electives.

Teaching people who don't want to learn makes no sense... unless you want to make them submit to authority.

>>19
Truth. Minors get their rights from their guardian, who gets their rights from the state.

Rousseau motherfucker, do you read him? The state obtains its authority from the consent of the governed, who surrender or limit some of their natural rights in order to establish a stable society. "We the People" and all that.

>>20
not that the people have much of a choice. olololol

>>20
Got me there. At least this is suposed to be true in a few states.

>>20
Is that from The Social Contract? Part of Penguin's Great Ideas series of books?

I read the Nietzsche one. It rocked.
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(this page of ranting is all assuming I could file a Sexual harassment suit against Bill Gates at all times and I basically have an endless pile of money and resources to go on. If you're wondering where I'm getting all my rant fodder from I work in a library that's not too far from the middle and highschool. I know what these little retards aren't learning.)

Start from the beginning and work our way up.

For starters. We don't give little kids enough credit. The reason why kids grow up to hate learning and school is because we sit them in a classroom and expect them to just hang out and be calm for 3/4 hour bursts while we teach them the same four things over and over again for the first three or four years of their schooling. There's no fucking reason why it took my teachers an hour a day for two years to teach me cursive, which is a subject we don't even need.

Kids should get electives from the first grade on. They already get the occasional suzuki class but I think we should go a little big further. Give the kids an hour at the end of the day,two or three days a week to pick subjects they're interested in. They can be computers, or animals, or more maths or history or whatever. The classes don't have to last more than a quarter so they can mix things up and experiment, or stick with what they've fallen in love with. We basically need to make it seem more voluntary and less like a chore they're doing because mommy says so.

All schools with bell scheduling get bombed. End of story. That was a stupid idea and nobody can properly learn shit in 45 minutes a day, especially since 20mins of that time is spent trying to get the class to calm the fuck down at the beginning and end of the period. We're block scheduling from here on out. No less than two hours will be dedicated to a subject so people can actually get into it instead of a little reading and handing out an assignment. These two hour classes will be separated with NICE LEASURELY FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAKS that actually allow the kids to stretch their legs and get their books from their lockers so the teachers can make their ridiculous binder demands without breaking the kids backs or resorting to rolling backpacks. (Why? Because I don't like them.) I had a teacher that grew up in China that would tell us every day that she could understand why our schools were in such a shitty situation because we never got any time to decompress in between classes.

Yeah, kids learn algebra in the fifth or sixth grade. Absolutely no reason why they shouldn't, and while we're at it let's stop teaching fourth and fifth graders the names of all the capitals like that's important. It's a pain in the ass for a year of their lives and they forget it a week after the test. Let's just replace all that frivolous education with world governments and possibly current events.

I'm completely revamping the honors program. Where I went to school the education was either remedial or college level. I'm completely abolishing all of that for the most part. From now on we're taking a cue from my local community college. From the seventh grade up there's English 1,2,3,4,5 (etc...) and in May there's tests for each of these. If a kid decided to take a test and gets an 80% or above on all the English 1&2 exams then he gets the joy of English 3. Just about anything can be tested upwards with the exception of a few senior level classes just to make sure the kid isn't playing the lazy genius card. The tests are optional and if you don't take them you just go for the classes in order. This way nobody's wasting space in a class that they don't need to learn.

I doubt all this would pan out in reality though.

>>24
>I doubt all this would pan out in reality though.

This touches on another reason why the U.S. public school system is so fucked up: politics. Public schools, being government institutions, get swept up in the game of "please the constituents" that most politicians like to play. This ensures that schools are perpetually mired in some sort of difficulty--budget, union, whatnot--and that the problem almost never is really fixed, because the people demand quick and easy fixes and their representatives give them these Band-Aid solutions.

To be clear, I'm blaming everyone, not just politicians. We the people need to demand real reform, even if it's potentially painful or time-consuming. To give an example, my state of California established an exit test several years ago. Passing it is supposed to be required for graduation. Problem is, the requirement's been repeatedly deferred because parents whined that their little Johnny wasn't passing the test. I've taken it, and let me tell you, the test is so goddamn easy a fucking dog could pass it. Hell, I think some first-graders could pull it off. And there are high school seniors who can't?! That, my friend, is a personal failure, not a failure of the system. This is further backed up by the fact that this year, something around 85% of incoming seniors have so far passed the test. The parents of the 15% that didn't, though, are probably going to blame the teachers, schools, government, and everyone except themselves and their children, and go whine to the Legislature, which will most likely delay the requirement again. Sigh.

Most kids are coming out of school are practically illiterate and totally ignorant of history and the world outside of mainstream pop culture. Instead, as OP suggests, of trying to teach more advanced courses (in an inevitably dumbed down way) that will only benefit the top 10% of students, public schooling should focus on providing solid foundations for further study, and making the average graduate not look like an ignorant idiot.

I do think "logic" would be a good idea though, going through all the logical fallacies people use every day, and teaching people how to tell a good argument from a bad one. There should be a real history of Western Civilisation taught, instead of just a multi-year long MLK wankfest. Grammar should never stop being taught. How often do you see people using "double negatives" for negative statements, and not knowing the difference between "there", "their" and "they're"? Get rid of the "soft subjects" the dumb kids all take (because they are easy), and make sure they at least leave school with literacy in English, and a knowledge of history and georgraphy. Calculus is in fact better left until college so it can be taught in a more rigorous way (from its foundations in analysis) to more gifted students. 85% of kids will never need to use calculus once they leave school, yet most of them still struggle with basic arithemetic and the understanding of basic concepts such as probabilities and ratios. And how about actually teaching math in an intuitive way, instead of just giving kids formulas and not telling them where they come from? I never saw a single "proof" in math class at my school. How about going back to teaching from Euclid's Elements, which builds everything up logically and intuitively from axioms?

A nice essay here on math education. Even though I don't really agree with everything in it.

http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

All I have to say is that we should teach kids about computers and programming using some 6502 based computer. Modern computers are too complex for the average teenager to understand completely (as in what each register does, etc), but an 8-bit CPU is simple enough that any high schooler can learn the ins and outs of it within a year or two. Personally, I believe that you can't write good high-level code until you understand assembler and the nature of your target machine, so program in 6502 ASM as well, none of that BASIC bullshit.

Additionally, by working on such an old machine, you limit the chances of students spending their entire period browsing the internet and playing Quake with each other.

I would teach the kids to love nature and others around them.

>>54
I agree with you on that point. Java/BASIC should NOT be the first thing people learn.   If the kids try and fail at Assembly language, then they can pick up Java.  Essentially this weeds out the incompetents at an earlier age before they get into CompSci 101.

More generally, there needs to be more of an "experimentation" mindset in high schools. There has been a large shift in the past couple of decades by parents to shove their kids through as many organized activities as possible.

While structured activities does help their social development and work ethic, by removing unstructured activity, creativity is stifled.


Also, (empirical) science classes are not structured in a "discovery" manner.  High school chemistry classes are structured so that the laws of nature are presented with not enough focus on how they were discovered.  What's even worse is that all chemistry tests are essentially math tests where you have to use the rules of chemistry to solve problems based upon what is observed in the problem.  But in reality, it is our observations that define our models, and I don't think that this is stressed enough.

Finally, I would demote English to an elective.  After middle school, English essentially turns into discussion about Shakespeare, Poetry and Novels, which are of no more importance than any other arts course.  In high school, perhaps one half of the English course could be mandatory: language fundamentals, improving writing style.  The second half would be an elective: literature, technical writing, rhetoric, philosophy, whatever the student wants to do.

>>61

I forgot to mention George Carlin, who asked, "whatever happened to just playing with a fuckin stick in the front yard?"