Things You Wish You'd Been Taught In School

[Memory]

Alright, folks, we're talking K-12 here. University-level is also welcome if you feel strongly enough about it or as a casual footnote, but the focus in here is schooling years of approx. 18 and younger.

We're also trying to be, just a little, realistic. In the sense of working within the confines of the current general systems of education. Again, if you feel strongly about discussing some fantastic utopia-like ideals or scenarios, I FEEL YOU . But the focus is more on reasonable requests, desires, possibilities, etc.

I'll go first:

"I wish the K12 schools I went to had had computer science / tech curriculums."

This is a weird example, but this type is also welcome. In this case, I phrased it a bit personally, and am emitting a bit of "change-past" vibes. Your wishes can be totally impersonal. I don't think that's the right word, but we're rolling with it.

Funny that that's my wish... I don't think it would've made a difference. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Melooon]

This is a good topic idea

We actually did have a computer class in school, but they just taught us how to make folders and put folders IN folders?? (omg that was an intense day).

I feel like as teenagers we would have mocked this idea mercilessly; but Id have loved a class that taught you how to build relationships and manage emotions - i.e. how to maintain friendships, getting along with parents, resolving arguments, making friends, working through grief etc - I think that would have helped a lot of people

Aside from that; we had a few classes about how to get a drivers licence and plan a holiday etc - but a proper class on how to do things like, how to do taxes, how to register with a doctor, how to buy insurance, how to shop smartly, how to vote and run for election, how and when to get legal advice etc.

I actually ended up learning a lot of these things from old films intended to be shown in US schools in the 1940s ... the info is solid.. if a bit out of date at times
How Do You Know It's Love? (1950)
Shy Guy (1947)
Your Thrift Habits (194:cool:

[Memory]

I think the topics in school were actually fine. I learned a lot from it, really, that I still keep in mind today: random tidbits like India's history with the partition into Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example.

The problem is the format. If all you can ever think about at school is how to keep quiet, focused and at maximum strength for the exams, then you will fall off and never really consider the things to learn things to internalize, only things to be able to repeat at the exam. When I learn something out of free interest, I can spend days on it, and then I completely internalize it into my day-to-day knowledge that's imprinted in everything I do. When I am forced to learn something of someone else's choosing in someone else's timetable, I make a mental note of it and that's it.

The Montessori concept (ironically, one I learned about during Paedagogy class, which was basically psychology with bells and whistles at our school), works with the "focus phase": that feeling you get where you can immerse yourself for hours in a topic forgetting all time. You can choose your own topics to learn about within certain parameters as long as you are able to tell others about it. The entire school is a rather free space where you can walk around and every room has books, posters, libraries, plenty of games and interesting things to immerse yourself in a topic with if you care; like a geography room full of maps and history books. And if something catches your eyes, just work on it on your own and present it at the end of the year for a grade. If YOU need help, feedback and guidance, that's what the teachers are for.

In contrast to traditional schools, where you are forced to be productive at times of day that you might not be motivated to learn, much less about the only topic you are forced to put your focus on at that moment, the Montessori model is better for kids with ADHD and basically everyone who likes to learn what they themselves care about at their own pace. Unfortunately it isn't too profitable for the economy and it's a change from what people are used to, so Montessori schools are all under the umbrella of "alternative private schools" here and basically unattainable for working class families.

For example, people always say "we should have been taught how to do taxes at school instead of useless crap we never need again", but when they actually taught taxes in school, nobody learnt anything because they were all focused on the final exam and how to keep still and focused even when they were not in the mood.
So yeah, I think it's not a lack of topics in school that's to blame, but the entire structure of school (which is ultimately an economic choice that would not have to exist were we in a democratically planned economy, but alas). If you feel that's utopian, fair, but I thought it was in spirit with the thread because it's actual, real schools that do it better right now.

[Onio]

Business, personal accounting, taxes.

[memo]

I thought about this yesterday, and as ironic as it sounds I am extremly serious: how to line bedsheets with blankets while making the bed, so that they are at the same exact length once it reaches the upper side (the pillow zone) of the bed.

[Cele]

Literary classics etc? I mean, when I see some foreigners online who can see symbolism in a story and compare it to Greek mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare, well anything like that, I'm quite jealous. Not that we didn't have books we went through a trillion times but it was always like the same two and we never even read them or analyzed the language or words or anything, just went over the plot every few years.

And poetry? Not boring poetry but important poetry? Something with interesting messages or backgrounds. Even folk poetry? Learning to recognize the traditional poetic rhythm? Learning to produce in it? I'm sure I would've hated poetry at school but. But. Would my vocabulary be better now? I'm sure it would.

I only remember going through a few poems... one was Sappho, other was Lorelei, third was a poem that was made into a song and it slaps even though it's very niche... I'm sure there were more but yknow. It wasn't that much. And these memories are all from upper secondary school.

We actually did have a computer class in school, but they just taught us how to make folders and put folders IN folders?? (omg that was an intense day).

Apparently kids these days don't understand folders because they just save things on their phone in that same cloud "black hole".

[Wobblegong]

there were plenty of interesting electives and clubs at my school I was just too burnt out to really get into anything

recently I was thinking it might be cool if schools did like a local history class... like focused on specific things that happened in the area. But I guess that could be a really boring class if you live in the middle of nowhere

also I think meditation would be good to teach in school also

the Montessori model sounds like something I would've liked, I think a balance between mandatory classes and independent learning would work really well

honestly I wish I got more out of school in general

[Memory]

The one thing I asked my English teacher each year in high school was if we'd get to do any creative writing that semester. The answer was always "no."

In elementary school, the English/Language Arts classes always included a creative writing portion and I loved it, but it was totally absent in high school. I did eventually get to take a creative writing course at university, but the professor was a bitter old nutjob with tenure who did absolutely zero teaching and spent most of his time griping about fanfiction and his one-sided rivalry with another professor that everyone loved.

[Memory]

Apparently kids these days don't understand folders because they just save things on their phone in that same cloud "black hole".

I can confirm. I tutor young adults who are just a few years younger than me (I was born in 2001, they were born in 2004+) and since most of them never grew up around forums, old game modding, having to fiddle with drivers, antiviruses, the registry and so on, and literally only had phones, tablets and maybe a laptop, they are unfamiliar with how to properly use a file system. For them, desktop computers feel like "work tools" to them like a printer, and not like an all-rounder that you spend your whole free time in front of. They don't have a concept of a file system beyond the very basics, don't know about file types or what they mean other than "pdf is a document", and so on. Some of them even struggled to follow an install wizard on Windows!

[Melooon]

I can confirm.

Oh god!! You mean we are gonna have spent our youths explaining computers to our parents and now we are gonna have to spend our old age explaining them to our kids This is actually a serious issue!

[Memory]

Oh god!! You mean we are gonna have spent our youths explaining computers to our parents and now we are gonna have to spend our old age explaining them to our kids This is actually a serious issue!

Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. After all, maybe our kinds of computers do actually become obsolete and knowledge in that area isn't really relevant anymore. It could be our little hobby.

[RodFireProductions]

Oh god!! You mean we are gonna have spent our youths explaining computers to our parents and now we are gonna have to spend our old age explaining them to our kids This is actually a serious issue!

I'm graduated from high school last year, and I was having to explain to my peers how to use Google Docs in more ways than just typing stuff and doing the most basic of formatting. The same peers who had been using Google Docs the same amount of years I had been because we had the same classes that made us use it. It stresses me out.

You would not believe how many young people don't know how to look into the settings of applications.

I wish school took the proper time to actually show kids how to use the electronics in front of them instead of just saying "use this".

[Memory]

I'm graduated from high school last year, and I was having to explain to my peers how to use Google Docs in more ways than just typing stuff and doing the most basic of formatting. The same peers who had been using Google Docs the same amount of years I had been because we had the same classes that made us use it. It stresses me out.

You would not believe how many young people don't know how to look into the settings of applications.

I wish school took the proper time to actually show kids how to use the electronics in front of them instead of just saying "use this".

Even that is strange, because we actually knew how to use office suites properly with format templates and all. Google Docs itself is kind of a distortion, since you're just working on Google's servers using a flimsy web interface instead of your own computer.

[RodFireProductions]

Even that is strange, because we actually knew how to use office suites properly with format templates and all.

We weren't taught how to use office suites nor did we ever use them. The only time I've seen those brought up is in college.

My high school actually had us all use Chromebooks, so Google stuff was what we had to use. Because of that, I actually not hate using the Google stuff and hate Chromebooks (both can be quite slow). I brought my own laptop to school my senior year because of how tired I was of it.

[Memory]

My high school actually had us all use Chromebooks, so Google stuff was what we had to use.

That's actually pretty terrible from many standpoints, privacy, freedom of choice, monopolization, Google being a terrible corporation anyway, and the software freedoms of the end user. But mostly school kids being spied on and having their data sold, and being taught by the school system that that's okay and obligatory.

Meanwhile my school switched to GNU/Linux and LibreOffice in 2014.