# What should schools be teaching?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [September 4, 2025, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754 "2025-09-04T17:10:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/41 "2025-09-05T11:49:49Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> Things that are taught in school tend to be the kind of things that can be taught best in a classroom setting, by experts trained in the subject matter.
I wanted to add to this:
Things that are taught in school tend to be connected disciplines, not isolated skills. Subjects like Algebra, Chemistry, U.S. History, or a foreign language are webs of interrelated facts, concepts, skills, and proficiencies, most of which can’t practically and effectively be taught in isolation.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/42 "2025-09-05T14:26:12Z")
> [@PatrickLondon](#):
>
> Shouldn’t almost every subject teach, in its own way and however indirectly, propositions and arguments are assessed and proven/disproved? They’re all different ways of learning how to learn.
Yes. And that is good and valuable. But a standalone critical thinking course in schools is much less so, IMO. You need the context and background knowledge of the specific subject in order to be able to usefully evaluate information, so it’s better taught as part of existing subjects, and depending on the examples used in a standalone course, it would be politically contentious.
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
> >
> > Things that are taught in school tend to be the kind of things that can be taught best in a classroom setting, by experts trained in the subject matter.
>
> I wanted to add to this:
>
> Things that are taught in school tend to be connected disciplines, not isolated skills. Subjects like Algebra, Chemistry, U.S. History, or a foreign language are webs of interrelated facts, concepts, skills, and proficiencies, most of which can’t practically and effectively be taught in isolation.
Yea, I agree with all this. IMO practical skills would be better taught by youth groups like the Scouts, away from the academic setting. But I don’t know how popular such things are these days.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/43 "2025-09-05T14:39:31Z")
I don’t disagree, but I think that Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Ibsen, etc… are definitely not the way to get people to read. It’s musty, dry academic stuff, and most people are NOT academically oriented. I feel like a lot of people are actively turned off of reading for pleasure by being forced to read _ **Literature** _ in school, because they find it hideously boring and awful.
Have students read Stephen King, Tolkien, Tom Clancy, Palahniuk, etc… and other popular writers who write stuff that’s entertaining to most people. There’s no reason high school students can’t learn all that literary stuff from reading them, except that lit major types are snooty about their writing.
Maybe in the age of X/Twitter, it needs to be taught differently. Maybe in a more granular format- a chapter at a time or something?
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### Author:  [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/44 "2025-09-05T14:49:59Z")
Add me to any list of those thinking that Civics should be taught (early and often). My “US Government” classes taught quite a bit about the operation of the government, but didn’t teach anything at all about laws and courts. I’m thinking about some basics that would be useful in everyday life, like at traffic stops or in situations where a person might not otherwise understand how state and local laws work.
I’ll bet that a large number of my acquaintances would agree with the statement, “If I don’t think that I committed a traffic infraction, then I do not need to cooperate with the LEO who pulled me over.” Or, “If I believe that I am innocent, then I’m entitled to physically resist or escape from the LEO’s detainment.” Seriously.
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/45 "2025-09-05T15:56:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#):
>
> But….do they need to? I’m going to piss off English-lits but I don’t feel that reading Hamlet and Macbeth, as assigned, enriched me meaningfully to any extent. I’m not saying Shakespeare is worthless, but it’s distant-enough-unrelated that it should be reserved for college majors who _choose_ to major in literature. It shouldn’t be forced on high schoolers.
One of the difficulties in coming up with a curriculum is that the state is required to provide _all_ children with an education. I don’t believe it’s possible to ensure every student finds every single course to be meaningful to them. I thought my Health course was a waste of time. I didn’t need a whole semester to learn the importance of showering, not eating cookies all the time, and why wearing a rubber was a good idea. Maybe another student needed the course.
Before we ask what schools should be teacher, we should be asking what the purpose of public education is. The cynic will argue the true purpose of public education is to produce good little worker cogs to keep the machinery of capitalism running. If that’s the case, we can cut the curriculum by quite a bit. The idealist would argue the purpose of the public education system is to produce a well informed and engaged citizen necessary for a democracy to function.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/46 "2025-09-05T16:20:48Z")
Public education is IMO a bedrock institution for a healthy democratic society. It should serve a couple of purposes:
1. Inculcate in children the values and skills that we deem necessary for participating in the society that we want to be. This involves some values choices, and we should be explicit about that instead of pretending that there can be value-free education.
2. Helping students develop the habits, skills, and knowledge set that will set them on the path to the meaningful life they choose for themselves. This involves a combination of guesswork and humility.
One of the ways I try to meet the second standard is that I do a good half-dozen lessons or so on spreadsheets with my fifth graders. AFAICT, there’s nothing in our standards through high school that involves a formal teaching about how to analyze and organize data using spreadsheets, and that’s a crucial skill in a lot of modern fields. (Sure, it may be gone in a decade, depending on AI–but it also may not be gone; and even if it’s gone, the ability to understand data will remain a pivotal skill). Since I largely get to set my own curriculum with students who’ve mastered the core content, I’ll make sure to fill this gap. But I wish it weren’t a gap.
> [@bump](#):
>
> I don’t disagree, but I think that Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Ibsen, etc… are definitely not the way to get people to read. It’s musty, dry academic stuff, and most people are NOT academically oriented. I feel like a lot of people are actively turned off of reading for pleasure by being forced to read _ **Literature** _ in school, because they find it hideously boring and awful.
I largely agree.
Shakespeare was deeply hilarious to people in his own time, because he used contemporaneous language and joked using contemporaneous cultural touchpoints. Today, if you learn enough about his language and about his culture, he’s really funny (and really moving)–but that’s a significant lift, and it’s not one that a majority of folks are willing to make.
When I teach literature to kids, I generally limit myself to books written in the last couple of decades. Not because older books are _bad_, but because there are plenty of incredible newer books, and those newer books are written in a contemporaneous cultural context. We will have great, deep discussions.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/47 "2025-09-05T16:31:41Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> I don’t disagree, but I think that Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Ibsen, etc… are definitely not the way to get people to read. It’s musty, dry academic stuff
Hemingway is “musty, dry, academic stuff”?!
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/48 "2025-09-05T16:34:20Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> Have students read Stephen King, Tolkien, Tom Clancy, Palahniuk, etc… and other popular writers who write stuff that’s entertaining to most people. There’s no reason high school students can’t learn all that literary stuff from reading them, except that lit major types are snooty about their writing.
That would indeed be a lot more fun, but fun is in the eye of the beholder. I like Shakespeare. I don’t like Tom Clancy. (Palahniuk would never fly in a classroom.)
There has to be a balance, I think. Something for everyone. But there are plenty of classic books that are a lot more accessible than Chaucer.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/49 "2025-09-05T16:40:52Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> That would indeed be a lot more fun, but fun is in the eye of the beholder. I like Shakespeare. I don’t like Tom Clancy. (Palahniuk would never fly in a classroom.)
To be clear, I agree with teaching modern authors–but not really this list. There are tons of great modern authors I’d choose from, including NK Jemisin, Carlos Hernandez, Jason Reynolds, and the like.
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### Author:  [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/50 "2025-09-05T17:26:00Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Poor kids. Adults already have to spend so much time at work, we could at least let children and teens have more time for themselves. I think we underestimate how many important skills are learned outside school, too.
I mean, we don’t have to disagree, but if we want to teach more, it’s better to have more time than _further_ throwing kids behind the bus if they aren’t keeping up with the artificial time frame. And I did say either/or. While it varies dramatically from state to state and accounts for different climates, a 10-12 week summer break seems to be more or less the average. And in the US there are a lot of concerns about [Summer Learning Loss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_learning_loss) (though agreed, there does have to be some life-fun-growing balance) given that length of time. Again, I feel 6-8 weeks would be better, and I’ve seen suggestions for 4 (though often with an additional one week break like spring break stuck in there).
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Teaching anything touching on the culture war is now about as controversial as teaching religion in school, so yeah, this is a strike against adding subjects like critical thinking to the curriculum (quite apart from the fact no one actually knows how to teach it). But it wouldn’t be an issue for adding a financial management course, would it?
I disagree, current movements are totally ON teaching Religion and social grievance while pushing factual information out of school. History, nope, in certain states, you have to teach various “Lost Cause” Civil War philosophies, and can’t mention how bad a slave’s life was, or the genocide of the native population, and of course, teaching “recent” history (anything in the last 40ish years normally) has almost always been ignored. Science? Teach Evolution? Oh, nope, it’s just a theory, and creationism has to be given equal time. In fact, one of the reasons I think English Lit. is often ancient tomes is because they’ve been approved, and getting any agreement on newer stuff is a major challenge.
Sure, _finance_ could conceivably be taught without _as much_ Religious grievance baked in, but there are plenty of sects that are becoming MUCH more mainstream that women, for example, need to be tutored in classic female roles about taking care of house, spouse, and kids, and have no need of such skills. A trend, that if anything, is accelerating _right now_.
And of course, such things as this long thread:
> [@They are trying it again- Ten Commandments](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/they-are-trying-it-again-ten-commandments/1003134):
>
> [https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4730255-louisiana-require-ten-commandments-classrooms/](https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4730255-louisiana-require-ten-commandments-classrooms/) Louisiana became the first state in the nation to require the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms. Gov. [Jeff Landry](https://thehill.com/people/jeff-landry/)(R) signed the Republican-led bill Wednesday that got some bipartisan support in the Louisiana Senate to display the Ten Commandments in all public elementary and high school classes. The Courts have made it clear- you can not do this. EXCEPT as part of a historica…
Show exactly what the intent is for the future of our schools, and I doubt there’s any reasonable assumption of good faith in the fig-leaf they used to pass it.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/51 "2025-09-05T17:32:37Z")
I also feel like maybe there should be a sort of “How everyday stuff and institutions work” body of knowledge.
I’d say that these things would be a start:
- A basic overview of the legal system - civil vs. criminal, reasonable doubt, and so forth.
- A basic explanation of how insurance works, and what that implies.
- Basic IT concepts.
- How basic economic concepts work. What markets are, what cost is vs. pricing, why they aren’t really that related, how coupons work, and so forth.
- Taxation concepts- marginal tax rates is a big one here.
- Why conspiracy theories are what they are, vs. actual explanations or valid ideas.
- How hard it is to keep a secret on a large scale.
The genesis of this was seeing a person posting on Nextdoor just now lamenting about how State Farm won’t insure their _ **21 year old** _ roof in North Texas, and wondering how that can be legal, what their recourse is if nobody else will insure their roof, etc… And I have no doubt that if State Farm had insured it, they’d be griping about the extortionate premiums, deductible, etc… all because they don’t understand something as basic as insurance.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/52 "2025-09-05T17:53:31Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Would one of the teachers here (or parents of teens currently in high school) mind outlining what is currently taught in high school, and which bits are optional?
I may be one of the few Dopers who has a child currently in high school. It’s a large, but typical, 4 year public high school in California. Here are the graduation requirements:
1. 4 years English
2. 3 years math
3. 2 years science
4. 3 years social studies. Typically that’s 1 year each world history, US history, and US government and/or economics
5. 2 years PE
6. 2 years foreign language
7. 1 year visual or performing arts
8. 1 semester ethnic studies
9. 1 semester life skills
10. 11 semester equivalents of other academic electives
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### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/53 "2025-09-05T18:07:09Z")
If you don’t mind my asking, what is covered in ethnic studies and life skills? And what sorts of things get covered in the 11 electives?
I could imagine a lot of what we are discussing as “civics” and “personal finances” could be addressed in "life skills” and “US government and/or economics.”
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/54 "2025-09-05T18:23:30Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> The genesis of this was seeing a person posting on Nextdoor just now lamenting about how State Farm won’t insure their _ **21 year old** _ roof in North Texas, and wondering how that can be legal, what their recourse is if nobody else will insure their roof, etc…
Heh. I’ve been going through that process, and am currently waiting on photos from our roofer of our brand-new roof so I can send it to our insurance agent so he can shop a cheaper plan for us. For my first half-century of life, I had no reason to know that insurance companies don’t want to insure houses whose roofs are 20+ years old. I’m not sure that should count as basic knowledge; I learned about the extortionate premiums only once it applied to me.
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/55 "2025-09-05T18:25:28Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> I don’t disagree, but I think that Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Ibsen, etc… are definitely not the way to get people to read. It’s musty, dry academic stuff, and most people are NOT academically oriented.
It … isn’t, though? The _language_ and some of the cultural references are a barrier for many high school students, as is often the case with older literature, but the _content_ is anything but musty, dry, or academic. Shakespeare wrote popular entertainment! Hawthorne wrote (among other things) some hauntingly creepy Gothic stories. (I’ll grant that _The Scarlet Letter_ isn’t ideal high school reading, but more because high school students haven’t got the life experience they need for it to hit home. It’s a hell of a novel, though, a slow-burning tale of secrets and hypocrisy and revenge, with an intrepid heroine who survives religious abuse and gets away from her controlling husband, much against the odds. It is definitely, _definitely_ worth re-reading as an adult.) And I, personally, disliked Hemingway when I read him in school (I suspect most girls dislike Hemingway, but that was not really considered to be a problem at the time), but I wouldn’t describe his work as particularly dry or academic.
I do agree that teaching (some) contemporary genre fiction in high school is good, but it’s not a magic bullet. Like @Spice_Weasel said, fun is in the eye of the beholder, and most contemporary fiction also has a fairly narrow appeal. Clancy’s novels, for instance, are clearly written for a very specific audience that enjoys a particular kind of story and subject matter. (As a side note, I think they wouldn’t work as lit-class texts precisely _because_ of some of the same elements that made them popular. Clancy really, really wasn’t looking to challenge his audience’s ideas about who the good and bad guys are or about America’s place in the world, but rather to flatter the prejudices they already had – which is absolutely fine if your main goal is to tell an entertaining story and sell books to that audience, but there is a reason we want assigned course reading to do more than that. There’s spy fiction that _does_ do more, and some of it might work well in a lit class, but it’s not simply about “lit major types” being snooty – some books inherently DO have more depth and raise more interesting questions than others.)
Curricula also need to strike a balance, because practice and experience with reading older or otherwise-more-challenging texts is _how_ people come to enjoy them, and because one reason why we read fiction is to be pulled out of our own world and our own cultural assumptions, and that isn’t going to happen as much if you’re _only_ reading contemporary books, however well-written.
It’s complicated. It’s not really possible to design a curriculum where most students are going to enjoy most of the things they read. The best you can hope for is that all of them enjoy _some_ of it, and that they get exposed to a variety of different literature including stuff that they may not immediately like, and that they get some new techniques in their reading toolkit and some new perspectives on the world.
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### Author:  [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/56 "2025-09-05T18:58:32Z")
Haha, @suranyi beat me to it! (I am also a Doper who has a child (10th grade) in a large, typical, 4-year public high school in California.) But I can answer some of your questions. Our requirements are identical to @suranyi ‘s, except that I don’t think we have a life skills requirement, and there is an option to fold ethnic studies into one of the English classes (which is what my child did).
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> If you don’t mind my asking, what is covered in ethnic studies and life skills? And what sorts of things get covered in the 11 electives?
>
> I could imagine a lot of what we are discussing as “civics” and “personal finances” could be addressed in "life skills” and “US government and/or economics.”
In my kid’s ethnic studies class, they learned about things like privilege and identity and intersectionality, and (since my kid’s was folded into English) read various pieces of fiction that dealt with such things – e.g. she read _All American Boy_, which is about a black boy that is (unfairly) accused of shoplifting and beaten by a white officer, and they read _Raisin in the Sun_ at the end of the class. Interestingly, the thrust of her particular class seemed to be talking about Black and Asian-American issues – as far as I can tell they stayed very far away from talking about anything involving Jews or Arabs, and there was actually very little about Hispanic issues given that a large fraction of the school is Hispanic, so I kind of feel like they were trying to be as non-controversial as possible. Even so, it is a wildly controversial class. Some of the parents of her friends absolutely hated it, some of them loved it. I have mixed feelings about it.
As I said before, I can’t talk to the “life skills” class.
US government and/or economics should cover some of the “civics” ideas, yes. (My kid hasn’t taken those yet.) The only economics class at my kid’s high school is Macroeconomics, so it wouldn’t really teach them anything about personal finances.
Electives include any other class the kid may want to take, so in addition to what I consider “true” electives like media arts (where my kid learned how to use photoshop and video editing software), everything else counts as well: additional math/science classes (e.g, if my kid takes physics, chemistry, and biology, the third one would be an “elective”), more than 2 years of a foreign language, etc.
I’m really happy my kid is taking World History, which I didn’t have to take when I was in high school for some reason, because I think it’s really useful to have that base of knowledge. She didn’t have very much knowledge going in because her previous school was not great with history, and she doesn’t read very many books for fun. I am shocked by how many things she didn’t know; this week her World History assignment included reading about foot binding, for instance, which I’d totally known about when I was her age because of reading books that were set in ancient China. From my point of view, it’s far and away the class I’m most glad she’s taking. (She is really into math, so she’d do the math anyway, she doesn’t need school for it, and she could probably study science on her own as well.)
I also think English is probably the most _useful_ class she’s taking. Some because I think it is in fact useful for her to think about literature more than she does, but most because her writing is not great and she’s definitely getting a lot of practice in writing things other than proofs. I also think in principle that foreign languages are great (she’s taking Spanish) although in practice she’s not learning very much. I remember learning about twice as much in my first year of a language as she did in first-year Spanish. Probably because I had an honors class and they’ve gotten rid of those at her school.
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### Author:  [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/57 "2025-09-05T19:05:55Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#):
>
> they learned about things like privilege and identity and intersectionality,
Well, TIL there is something called intersectionality.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/58 "2025-09-05T19:17:23Z")
What I’m getting at is that even though you may not have realized it, you do understand why they might not. Insurance is a sort of gambling, and they don’t want to bet on things they think won’t pay out.
Many people don’t think of it that way; they think it’s some sort of subscription service plan type thing.
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/59 "2025-09-05T19:23:55Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#):
>
> Well, TIL there is something called intersectionality.
It’s a big deal, too. Must be, considering the government is trying to ban people from talking about it.
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### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2025, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-schools-be-teaching/1022754/60 "2025-09-05T19:35:28Z")
For ethnic studies they actually get to choose among several different classes. Examples include African-American History, Asian-American Studies, Ethnic Women’s Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, Mexican American Heritage and even Philippine Heritage Studies. (There’s a large Philippine community here.)
For life skills it had some of what you mentioned, plus a section on time management, how to handle peer pressure, stress management, and similar issues.
As for electives, it’s a huge school so there’s a very long list. Everything from Differential Equations and AP Physics to Music Production, Journalism, Cybersecurity, Forensic Science, Economics, Psychology and many more.
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