Hmm. Except for the politics/history and biology, the Canadian education system sounds a lot like the Duplin County, NC school system. I had an excellent US and world history teacher; thanks to her, I got a 5 out of 5 on the AP US History exam. I also have her (and my 10th grade English teacher) to thank for my ability to write essays. I took three courses under the biology teacher - basic biology, advanced biology, and environmental science. They were fun, informative, and didn’t skip over “controversial” topics (keep in mind, this is North Carolina).
I basically didn’t have any math after 10th grade. I had “advanced math,” which was supposed to cover trigonometry, but the teacher informed us that we “wouldn’t ever encounter that stuff again.” :rolleyes: I took an AP Calculus course; the teacher was also the coach for the girls’ varsity basketball team. He barely taught the material; making an A on his tests was a matter of memorizing the homework and, in the case of the girls, wearing skimpy clothes on test days.
Physics was not taught at my high school after my freshman year, even though the school employed a teacher more than capable of teaching it. (It wasn’t calculus-based physics.) My parents tried to talk the principal into placing me in the couse in 9th grade; he insisted that I wouldn’t be able to handle it, even though I was in a program that had placed me a year ahead in math courses.
As far as building and fixing things, I never relied on the high school for that; Dad taught me all of that material. He’s also covered in-depth financial and economic information with me.
Recipes like the ones in this thread, that you’re actually likely to make for yourself.
How credit cards work- what the interest rate means, what the minimum payment actually means, etc. I knew a lot of very smart people who got in trouble with credit cards in college out of ignorance.
How to do my taxes.
Basic critical thinking skills. I had a professor in college who had a great way to do this. On a day when he wasn’t there for class, he had us watch a movie and write a review of it. When he came back at the next class, he spent a fair bit of time telling us why he didn’t agree with the movie. A great lesson in “don’t believe everything you watch”. I don’t see any reason something like this couldn’t be done in high school.
I had one good math teacher in high school. Know what she taught? Business Math (the class you took if you weren’t smart enough to handle Algebra II and ended up dropping out of it). Best class I ever took; I use what I learned in there every day.
Other than that, my math teachers sucked. Unless you just had a gift for math, forget it. And it was best to pack a Y chromosome if you were taking Algebra II, as the teacher only had the ability to hear when a guy was talking.
Another thing they didn’t bother with was geography. We learned the continents and probably hit the highlights of each (France is in Europe, etc). I daresay 99% of kids at my alma mater couldn’t tell you where, say, Sri Lanka is, though.
If I hadn’t had a smart mother that insisted on teaching me at home what I wasn’t being taught in school, I’d have come out of high school dumb as a brick.
When I was in Grade 8, we were doing fractions and long division. On the first day of Grade 9 math, three walls of blackboard were filled with algebraic notation. The teacher said “Do this.” I didn’t even know what it was. It was never explained to me over the course of a year, when I got 0 on every test. At the end of the year, the teacher gave me 51 so I would pass and not have to take it over in Grade 10.
My mother taught me to read and spell before I went to Kindergarten. They had never encountered a kid who was already literate before going to school, and they freaked out and sent me for evaluation and decided that I was some kind of genius. They created a special program so that I could take Grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years. When I came back to Grade 6, I was two years younger than everybody, and an outcast because I was supposed to be smarter than everybody. Jesus Christ, people, I could just read. That was the total extent of it. I had no natural gifts of intelligence, I could read before the other kids. Was it worth getting beaten up and called names and being made fun of? No.
I was 13 when I started high school. I was the youngest, shortest kid there. Nobody would talk to me, the girls wouldn’t look at me, and then somebody started a rumor that I was gay. In a town of 2000 people. In 1971. I was attacked and beaten, had hoses sprayed on me, rocks thrown at me, FAG carved into my locker, and more. This led to my leaving school and town in the middle of Grade 12, and never going back. Is it any wonder that I have not a single good memory of school?
How to study. I never needed it. I never did it. Heck, I barely did homework and still had a B+ average. I test well and teachers knew I knew the material, so they just gave me decent grades. Well, when college came around and material was being thrown at me in a much faster format and I was expected to actually go out and learn independantly, I just didn’t know how. I couldn’t study efficiently, I couldn’t get homework in on time. I dropped out of college after my dismal Freshman year. I’ve always regretted not finishing.
I completely agree with the finance advice. Assuming the students are seniors, they’re about to become unwitting prey for credit companies without any warning.
Basic saving/investing/equity advice would make more HS grads alot more savvy.
Nobody tells a HS kid that he/she can get good credit, after a while get a motgage that costs as much as rent, and actually build equity! I wish I knew that when I was 18!
Most kids won’t care, but the ones that do would certainly like to be told ahead of time. (insert random violent swearing)
Second. Although my grades were very good my first few quarters, my time-management was poor. Trying to work 30 hours a week and taking 15 credit hours was not a good idea. I never figured out a good work/school system. The one quarter I did not have to work I got a 4.0 easily.
Funny how I was taught how to fence, yet basic money management skills (which the world freakin revolves around) escaped me. Guess they should have passed the last 95 tax levies.
Interesting what some people consider “academic topics.” If this were GD, I’d muse about whether the fact that some people see driving, anger management, balancing a checkbook, and changing the oil in a car as “academic topics” has anything to do with the difficulty the educational system is having in figuring out how to budget their time and what to teach.
I was lucky enough to have a class in basic economics and sociology (yes - one class that combined both) so I can balance a checkbook, spot a fallacy in an argument, play the stock market and recognize several types of advertising ploys. All of which has actually proven useful.
What I did not get was any real grasp of history, geography, politics, or mechanical stuff. Fortunately, I managed to get a good grasp on reading, and have been making up for these shortcomings since then - although I still suck at geography.
Calling these topics “academic” is a bit of a stretch. Calling them neccesary life skills is perfectly valid.
Basic life skills (sharing, tolerance, cooperation) are taught in kindergarten, adult basic life skills should also be taught to HS seniors.
“I can analyze Proust, but alas a shady car salesman can outwit me. Were I taught such simple things as practical compound interest, car payments, minimum payments on credit cards, loan rates and federal interest rates, I would not be a fool.”
I think it’s a greater pity that a teen not know what compound interest is, than not knowing a quote from Shakespeare. Which is more practical?
Insurance. It affects absolutely everyone and practically no one understands how or why it works.
No, this isn’t GD, but I would have to ask what is the purpose of school other than learning things that are valuable in life. I’m certain that being able to quote Shakespeare is a good thing, but IMO, being able to balance my checkbook is an even better thing. Academia isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I have often found people that are insanely intelligent but don’t have a shred of common sense. If I were stranded on a desert island, I’d certainly like a companion that could help me with practical information rather than someone that could only contribute calculus and archaic literature.
Tons of financial stuff. I really wish this could have been incorporated into my math courses: balancing a checkbook, filing taxes, basic structure of loans (e.g. student loans).
Additionally, histories of Mexico and Canada. They’re right there, but only got a mention in my history courses if they were doing something that directly affected the States (i.e. Canada’s last mention was in the mid-1700s, Mexico’s in the early 1800s…). Honestly, it’s only been my own interest that’s finally rectifying this. (OT: Anyone wanna recommend a decent book on Canadian history? For Mexico, I have Many Mexicos by Lesley Byrd Simpson.)
I judge that man
Despicable, who knows how much higher Atlas is
Than all the mountains of Libya, and yet
Is unaware of how an iron box is unlike a purse.
I’m surprised by the number of people who did not cover compound interest, loan calculations, bank and cheque balances etc in their maths classes. This was standard stuff in maths when I was at school. I remember doing numerous problems for homework in third and fourth form, with only logarithm tables to help us out.
