Never learned astronomy in high school physics. Not properly, anyway.
At least in Alberta the only place you are really taught that stuff is if you take Financial Management or Math 24… at least they did about 4 years ago.
CALM (Career And Life Management) was a mix of things including budgeting, sex ed, writing a check… and that’s all I remember. Compound interest may have been covered in math class but I forget. Bank and cheque balances were FiMan, math 24 is merely ‘applicable math’ I was registered in it for a day. I took one look at the text book and said I’m outta here… because I already knew what was in the text.
They have since changed math here, but I am so glad I missed out on it. Anything that requires a $100+ graphing calculator so you can take the course makes me wonder…
It seems to me that, for many of the life skills topics (such as family budgeting, cooking, check writing), the schools don’t teach them because they assume you’re going to learn them at home. Ditto for sex ed (in some schools, anyway).
Of course, if this were GD we could muse about the role of parents in their childrens’ education, how many parents are poor role models, whether it’s the business of schools to teach things that should be taught at home, what should be taught at home vs. at school, yada yada yada.
[QUOTE=dnooman]
"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."QUOTE]
I challenge anyone in North America to show me a high school math curriculum in which interest rates are not used as one of the examples for using exponents.
I mean, I know we all have trouble with finances, but it’s just not true to suggest high school skipped this. You did learn about interest rates. It’s called MULTIPLICATION and EXPONENTS. Honestly, you cannot tell me that you graduated from high school and wasn’t taught how to figure out what 19% of something is, or what the concept of an exponent is. How hard is it to multiply X by 0.19? That’s Grade 8 material. Calculating compound interest is a little tougher but it’s all there in high school.
What I think we have here is people blaming human nature (the propensity to spend more than we earn) on high school, it being very fashionable to talk about how much high school sucks, and being a lot more fun than blaming themselves. It is simply not true that people get into trouble with credit cards because they weren’t taught the concept of multiplication in high school. People get into trouble with credit cards because they lack foresight and self-control. If you teach everyone credit card math you will still get people in their 20’s charging for bigass stereo systems they don’t need just because they want them. You will still get people who don’t want to budget because it’s just not a plesant subject. I got into trouble with credit cards and I knew perfectly well what the interest rate meant.
I feel your pain. I was in a very similar situation - I could read before I started infant school, and eneded up skipping the final year and starting junior and secodnary schools a year early. I then went on to university at the age of 17, too. Fortunately I had plenty of friends at school, but anyone that took a dislike to me had plenty of ammo.
I think, personally, that it’s a matter of application vs. theory. I remember a number of wise-ass kids raising their hands and commenting to a math teacher, “Dude. I am, like, never gonna need this in REAL LIFE.” In 11th grade, I had a math teacher who didn’t dismiss that comment, but went on to explain HOW mathematics apply to “real life”. He explained percentages in terms of interest rates, geometry in terms of measuring a window for curtains, and so on. We had a class-wide “AHA!” moment.
And, in general, I would suggest there’s sufficient theory presented in high school academics, but that application is too often neglected. Also, guidance is often lacking - had I a clue that math and geography were more germane to “real life” than, say, photography class, I MIGHT have chosenmy electives with more care. (Then again, I was a kid, so I might not have…)
I knew everything on this list. I had the good fortune to go to a very academically-oriented Jesuit high school in New York City. And I certainly knew who Joan of Arc was, because I went to St. Joan of Arc grammar school, also in New York.
But. . . I didn’t know many things. Perhaps because my high-school was so academically oriented, we didn’t have any kind of shop classes, so I didn’t know how to fix anything. Cars were a mystery. Because I grew up in NYC, I didn’t yet know how to drive a car. I knew nothing about the day-to-day practicalities of life (checkbook balancing, etc.). Because my high school was for boys only, I didn’t really know how to socialize with women.
I made up for it all in time, of course. But my first year of college (which was also my first time away from home for any length of time) was quite a shock to me.
Same here. I graduated in 1985 and my teachers (I had lots of American history, just not much world history) always meant to cover Vietnam but always ran out of time. And the commie thing was worse in Florida. We were actually required by the legislature (the Cuabn block in FLorida was very influential) to take a class called “Americanism vs. Communism” (what the heck is Americanism?). I was complainign to my mom once about never covering Vietnam and she said the same thing as Cluricaun, her teachers never got to WWII.
This is my problem too. I spent all of my college years (all 15 of them 
) pulling last minute all nighters. I was smart enough to pull it off but it’s not effecient. And poor time-management skills are causing me problems to this day.
High school student in Kansas City, Missouri from 1997 to 2001 checking in.
I actually had a teacher teach us about checkbooks etc., but it was in seventh grade. In high school Gov. and Economics was required in ninth grade. Why they didn’t require these classes for our senior year I don’t know (the teacher who taught that class thought it was stupid as well). More seniors have jobs and responsibilities than freshman.
I’ve never had a geography class.
(I just graduated from high school in June.)
I never learned about Vietnam.
I learned how to write a check in eighth grade, but I never actually wrote one until last year.
I never learned how to write a lab report that didn’t suck, although apparently it was taught.
Because I was ahead in math and took geometry in 8th grade, I had basically forgotten it by the time I took the SAT.
I was absent the day we learned the uses of “por” and “para” in Spanish, and no one ever went over it again, so it’s the one thing I still get confused on.
i wish i had learned more about basic electrical skills (this could fall in with general household repair 101), car repair, and more about finance.
I very vaguely recall being shown in Driver’s Ed how to check oil and fluid levels, but we never learned to parallel park, which I still suck at, 14 years later. More than once, in large cities, I’ve wound up hiking multiple blocks since I couldn’t squeeze into a parallel spot.
I graduated in IL in '92, and I passed the equivalency test to skip Consumer Education. I knew most of the answers from my voracious reading more than practical experience, though. Never did laundry until I went to college, or cooked more than sporadically. I can use a sewing machine, but I never took typing, which would have served me far better in the long run.
Never covered anything past WWII in high school history, and nothing about Mexico or Canada except what directly impacted the US. Everything I know about US History from 1945 onward is from my own readings or college.
My home-repair knowledge is from my dad, but I am ignorant of most car-related issues. I can change a flat and drive a stick shift, but that’s about it.
Hey, me too! Everything I know about building and fixing things I learned from my Dad. I know just as much about these subjects as he does. Which is to say, next to nothing. I am pretty good at changing light bulbs, and I would know how to change one of those old-timey fuses people had before circuit breakers were used.
Seriously though after reading this I am glad my parents valued education and we always lived in areas with good schools. I don’t think I took a formal geography class after 5th grade, but it was included in other classes after that. We also balanced pretend checkbooks in 5th grade but never after that. Luckily it stuck with me…it isn’t rocket science after all.