What should be taught in schools?

After several recent discussions on the internet I've been despairing at people's lack of general education. In the UK our schools are becoming exam factories rather than educational institutions, and there appear to be similar issues in the states.
What do you think should be taught to produce highly functioning, well rounded citizens?
For my part
Sex education. From the age of 5. Heavy emphasis on healthy relationships and the context of sex. Something much closer to the Dutch model.
Politics. The Internet shows us that people throw around socialist, Marxist, fascist etc without really understanding what they mean. The right wing Americans who tell you that Hitler was a socialist and that America is half socialist, and the large number of people who confuse libertarianism and capitalism is really depressing, and must be a major factor in voter disengagement.
Law. People just don't understand the legal system, especially how jury trials work.

 

Define healthy relationships

Teaching politics in an unbiased way is incredibly difficult as the bias of the teacher is inevitably going to come through, especially in a country like the US, where Politics and religion are so tightly entwined.

Also, I think the more you understand politics, the less engaged you will become.

Why would the average person need to know this?

The current educational model (in the UK, at least), has been put together over many decades to offer the most rounded education possible. What would you remove from the existing curriculum to make way for all the other stuff?

 

Bloody languages.

Ok, I haven't lived in the UK since '99, so I don't really know how things are there concerning language education, but it needs to start taking languages way more seriously (comments from friends etc about their kids learning languages aren't the most positive). Even if it has improved since I left the UK, it's decades behind Europe, especially the Nordics.

It's kind of embarrassing that most people I have met after living in the Czech Republic and Finland can speak at least at least one language besides their own to a very high level, a third language to an intermediate level and then can comfortably bang off a few phrases to get by in a couple more languages.

Citizens of the world and all that. I really think learning languages can open your mind to other cultures and ways of thinking. And of course, learn one language to a high level and it's quite easy to pick up more and also understand your own better.

 

My missus is a teacher and quite honestly it appears more the like the current educational model in the UK has been put together by headlessly veering between an increasing number of poorly thought out initiatives before the previous initiatives have even bedded in. And mistaking being good at admin and number crunching for being good at teaching. In the current system a poor teacher that fudges the grades to get a child that's getting a D to getting a C will get more credit than a great teacher that takes a child getting F's or ungraded and legitimately teaches them to get a D.

 

Hold doors open for people behind you and thank people that do the same for you.
When someone lets you out in traffic give a little thank you wave. Always.
Don't put your feet on seats or take your shoes off in public. Do that at home.
When at the cinema, theatre or a comedy show SHUT UP and watch the show. If you don't like it leave and discuss it later. Keep your phone hidden for the entire show.
Only shout in public when warning someone they are in danger or trying to call a dog.
Exercise a couple of times a week. You don't have to go crazy but try and be active.
Evidence is important. Think about the evidence for something before believing it and be prepared to refine that belief in light of new evidence.
Other people around the world are a lot like you and share the same sort of goals you do. Generally you just need to get to know them a little bit to realise this.

 

This doesn't relate to the subjects being taught though. And surely a good teacher gets the D grade students to a C in the exact same way that you get an F student to a D.

I had (a couple of) good teachers who managed to combine teaching with exam preparation. It's not mutually exclusive.

 

You'd love it here! They used to have little things on TV during the adverts teaching that stuff as people just don't do it. One of the best ones was telling people to move away from the escalator when they get off at the top. 'Please' and 'thank you' is non-existent. Very few people will hold a door open for you and having 4 bags of shopping is your problem not theirs.

Not saying they're country bumpkins or savages here....oh, yeah, I am!

 

The two years I spent learning a third language weren't especially useful, home economics was completely useless, I never learned anything meaningful in CDT, and indeed with the latter two everything I know on those subjects I've largely learned as an adult from books and Youtube.
Many of those things could be achieved by combining PSE and RE.

 

What did you learn as a second and third language? How long did you study your third language for?

 

French for 5 years, German for 2.

 

Yeah, it would be totally useless if you only studied it for 2 years.

They really need to ditch French in the UK (edit) and replace it with Spanish for language 2.

 

I've bolded the important bits.

In the current system a poor teacher that fudges the grades to get a child that's getting a D to getting a C will get more credit than a great teacher that takes a child getting F's or ungraded and legitimately teaches them to get a D.

The current system doesn't reward good teaching. It rewards exam results. Now those two are obviously closely related and one can lead to the other but that's not the whole picture.
My wife is a good teacher (I would say that). She loves her subject, engages with the kids, tries to impart knowledge as well as pass exams and gives out grades that reflect the work. She never sits down in class as she's always going round and actually teaching. She works most evenings and weekends marking and constantly upgrades her subject knowledge.
She works with someone that teaches via OHP and blackboard notes almost exclusively and then sits down the whole time marking previous lessons so she doesn't have to do anything outside of school. She gives out grades that make her look good as a teacher rather than actually reflect the attainment of the child. She will mark a child down at the beginning of the year so later on she can mark that child as having progressed even though they haven't.

One is trying to be a good teacher and one is playing the system.

All teachers know that some years and groups are better than others. Some years they will get good results with a good bunch of kids and some years they will be doing well if they can get a group to be quite for 5 minutes and not kill each other. The current system takes none of that into consideration.

 

One thing I hate is when people say "I learnt X at school and never did anything with it".
That's myopic.
Many people learn art at school and never do anything with it but I've made a career out of it.
I hated maths and do my best to avoid it but I hear Stephan Hawking makes use of it these days.
That's the same with many subjects. Someone makes use of them to one degree or another.

 

Except I do a ton of cooking, and lots of metalwork, a fair bit of woodworking and some wiring and soldering, none of which is in any way aided by what I did at school.

 

Oh sure. I can see that. But that to me means that those subject need teaching better and in a more real world applied way rather than scraping altogether.
Rather than teaching kids to make a keyring out of acrylic there should be a wall in the school where every week some kids learn to properly measure, level, drill and rawlplug a shelf up. Then the following week they learn to take them down again and then fill, sand and paint the wall smooth for the next lot of kids.
Home economics shouldn't just teach "cooking". Every child should know how to prepare 14 fairly well balanced, economical and healthy meals. That way they can always feed themselves for 2 weeks before repeating a meal.

 

Any time someone says "I can't put Ikea furniture together me!" I lose respect for them.
It's easy. There are instructions and everything.
Teach kids that.
"Morning children...for today's lesson we are all putting together a "billy" bookcase!"

 

Its easy to list skills that could be taught in schools, but its important to ask - are these the things we should be teaching in schools? And if the answer is yes, then what do you remove from the existing curriculum, which is already very crowded.

 

Or we can re-frame what school is.
I've already identified areas where I think room could be comfortably made.
Indeed if you took Smitfire's proposals fro how CDT and HE should be taught, those things in themselves can be taught fairly quickly, which would in and of themselves free up more than enough space for the things I proposed.

 

Any religious or faith based indoctrination.