I think kids need to be taught what to do in case of Alien Invasion.
QFT. Absolutely, teaching students – and I mean GIRLS – how to check their oil, change tires, replace a faucet washer, turn off the water if it’s spraying everywhere, etc. When I was in school it never occurred to anyone to teach girls such things; boys learned by osmosis, and my father thought I didn’t need to know. Also: basic sports for girls! Basic baseball statistics and BCS rules. All boys should know how to buy sheets.
CPR as in cardiopulmonary resuscitation? For half a year? The procedure that’s taught in a matter of hours to large groups?
My school system handled this well - as part of our “Health” class we had a unit on First Aid, and got First Aid/CPR certifications. I think it took a couple weeks or so to go through the various topics.
Self-defense for boys and girls, in high school (maybe middle school?).
How to argue/quarrel constructively. Make a game out of it (win or lose points by what you say, instantly lose if you hit or swear or something). How to think using logic. Starting grade school.
Critical thinking, starting in grade school: how to evaluate what you see in advertising, in popular culture, in politics. What are they trying to sell you and how are they trying to do it?
How to be a good citizen…? How it hurts everybody if you break society’s rules.
Languages should start in grade school, not high school.
High school: how and when to get married and how to be married.
Middle school: when to start having sex and why, and why people used to wait until marriage to have sex. I think kids grow up now thinking they’re supposed to have lost their virginity before they graduate high school, that it’s okay as long as they use birth control. Aieee!
On Plumbing…
Shit flows downhill, don’t lick your fingers, paydays Thursday. You are now officially a plumber.
Just kidding, it’s what we used to say to plumbers on the jobsite years ago.
I had an elective shop class called “Home Repair” That was basic plumbing, drywall, roofing, painting, electrical, insulation, etc. It was easy and a lot of fun.
Economics. Almost everybody on both sides of the current healthcare debate seem to be ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, basic Supply and Demand concepts.
Personal Finance.
Interest the bank pays to you . . . good.
Interest you pay to the bank . . . bad.
Lying to the bank about your income to get a mortgage . . . Are you frigging nuts?
This! Along the same lines, I think if every high schooler graduated knowing that A=>B is not equivalent to B=>A, the world would be a better place.
Also, statistics. And a critical thinking class - I’m thinking something along the lines of reading articles and associated graphs, and then pointing out how the presentation of data can be manipulated (e.g., by cutting off the bottom of graphs, etc.) as well as how the choice of words can affect how something is portrayed. Of course, I don’t know who would actually teach this class…
Basic probability and statistics. I mean really basic. One or two generations of the fundamentals, and we could kill most of the scams perpetuated on our populace (like lotteries, extended warranties, and half the insurance policies out there). It would also make it much harder for politicians to lie to people if the people understood statistics at least a little bit.
Shop classes, unfortunately, have been disappearing at an alarming rate, even out here in blue-collar Montana. I’d like to see the whole concept restructured so that every single student learns the fundamentals of how things around the house work (toilets, sinks, circuit breakers, GFCI outlets, furnaces, water heaters…), and how to do basic troubleshooting on cars, along with basic maintenance (oil, water, tires, wiper blades…).
YES! Yesyesyesyesyes.
The high school my son goes to does this. Students go out and find news stories, and then they discuss them in class.
This one is kind of specific to my area (Tucson, AZ), but I wish they would teach everyone Spanish. Thirty years from now, isn’t Mexico still going to be only 45 minutes away? Do you think the Hispanic influence is going to be more pronounced or less pronounced? The same logic applies to learning to balance a checkbook - let’s teach something useful.
I taught this class at a high school last year :). The one time in my life my poli sci degree has been not only useful, but relevant.
I think you’re on the right track - I’m 3/4ths of the way through the book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, and it explains EVERYTHING that is going on now. One of the most important lessons for kids to learn is that they AREN’T special, and they DON’T deserve a life of ease just handed to them (they won’t get it, anyway, but they’ll be less disappointed and less likely to be entitled assholes).
Heh…there’s a comedian (i think it’s Greg Geraldo…) who has a bit like this (paraphrasing):
“It’s all about self-esteem in the schools now. Build the kids’ self-esteem, make them feel good about themselves. If all the kids have good self-esteem…what’s going to happen to our porno industry? These women don’t just grow on trees! It’s takes a lot od drunk daddies missing a lot of dance recitals before you decide to blow a goat on the internet for $50. And if that dissapears, where does that leave me with my new high-speed connection?”
Total agreement on budgeting/checkbook/finance, though to be honest in high school I doubt I’d have really appreciated it.
Not having kids and being 25 years removed from high schools I don’t know if it’s core now, but I wouldn’t let anybody graduate high school or college without having some rudimentary knowledge of web design and maintenance. I was in grad school for librarians just 9 years ago and the only course I had that taught it at all was Unix (and no place I have worked uses Unix; most use html or web editors).