Math: “when are we ever gonna use any of this in real life!?”
Later: “why didn’t they teach us how taxes work!?”
To be fair, these are very different skill sets. To this date, I’ve yet to have an urgent need to get the area under a curve.
FreeTaxUSA takes care of calculating my taxes. It only tells me well after I have purchased something in telling me what kind of records I should keep if I want to claim that thing for a deduction.
I could have used the latter more than calculus.
They really do ought to teach economics as part of compulsory education
Good schools do.
Privileged schools do. Don’t want the plebs letting daylight in upon the magic that is used to fuck them.
You’d figure if capitalism is as great and infallible as they say it is, they’d want to teach everyone all the details in school.
I suspect if they actually did teach personal finance (in all schools), the labour pool would shrink tremendously and there’d be far less consumer purchases.
Probably actually. We had mandatory personal finance to graduate high school, and they gave us one major take away message – don’t spend more than you have. You could take out loans for things of course but your monthly payments plus everything else needed to be less than your monthly take home pay.
My school was a bit special though. It was a public school but it gave students a lot of freedom and was structured to be more like a college experience. My understanding is since then, the hammer has fallen and it’s become more “traditional”
Or rather, I’d say by not teaching you how to capitalism they’re giving you the fish instead of teaching you how to fish, letting you get screwed over
They used to
Honestly, there should be a yearly class like english, math and science for “general education”. Like how to do taxes, basic first aid, how to apply for jobs/make a resume, what to expect when you rent an apartment, how and when you should seek therapy (and what it’s like), how to manage stress in a healthy manner, and very basic cooking.
I’m betting it’s not implemented because it’s incredibly hard to standardize and test this kind of stuff. But a general ed class would be nice for these types of things that don’t easily fit into another class.
Calculus is useful, but it’s significantly less useful in an average person’s daily life than knowing why their resume is getting instantly tossed in the trash at every single place they apply to.
The biggest problem today (and I suspect even when you and I were in school) is that education is in the shitter for a good segment of the population.
In theory, school should be teaching how to learn, which includes skills like where to go if you need help with something, critical thinking, how to use public resources, etc. To a large extent, most of this I learned in college, not in high school.
My middle/high school was more concerned on passing exams than in actual teaching. And, based on articles I read today, schools are more concerns about making sure “woke doesn’t get taught” than in actually educating students.
And if we’re being extra honest, the government should just tell us how much we owe each year. Because they know.
They don’t., even if it’s just that different levels of govt don’t talk to each other
FUN FACT, the financial body in your government does your taxes for you every year, they use these numbers to see if you messed up, or if there was anything that they were not aware of that you put in your taxes, that they need to adjust for.
if you have nothing to claim outside of normal employment income, in many places, you can sign your tax return and send it in blank, and they’ll just do everything for you.
Taxes don’t require even High School level Math, much less something like trigonometry or high-level algebra.
On the other hand, personal finance should absolutely be mandatory in schools.
In my school personal finance was something everyone was required to take their freshman year.
Taxes don’t require even High School level Math, much less something like trigonometry or high-level algebra.
You overestimate the minimum level of math required to graduate high school (in the United States).
When I went to school (about 20 years ago, at a suburban school in the North East), to graduate, you need to pass 6 semesters of math. You could achieve that by taking:
- Algebra 1 (2 semesters): very basic algebra
- Geometry (2 semesters): not sure if the remedial level covers proofs or it is just memorizing the names of shapes and how to calculate the area of them
- 2 math electives: very basic classes like Problem Solving, a class that teaches students how to read word problems and apply basic math skills to solve them
You overestimate the minimum level of math required to graduate high school (in the United States).
Well…no, I don’t, because I graduated HS in the United States…
You overestimate the level of math required to complete your taxes. Because there’s nothing more complicated than basic multiplication and division.
I agree. A 1040 is just a long arithmetic word problem.
I was disagreeing with you saying that high schools teach everyone trigonometry and advanced algebra.
I was disagreeing with you saying that high schools teach everyone trigonometry and advanced algebra.
Well, I didn’t say that so…
Instead they taught us how to use graphing calculators to draw shapes and lines
A skill I only later used when developing a game jam engine using c++ for the windows terminal
So true! So much of my my schooling, specifically mathematics, has only ever been useful for programming. A few years ago I used Pythagoreans theorym to make sure my hole I dug for my patio had perfect 90° angles, and that is honestly the only time I’ve ever used anything beyond basic math outside programming.
My high school math was also entirely based on the graphic calculator. I spent most of the time playing dope wars.
They did teach us basic tax in year 7 in Australia, donno if they still do
Actually one of the best courses I’ve taken against this kinda thing was a “Logic” course in the philosophy track in college that had a huge section devoted to how media tries to manipulate a person. Not typical high school stuff but maybe it should be, and fully up to date for social media. There’s a practical course for the 21st century.
When I was in 3rd grade, I had a teacher who did a week-long lesson about recognizing propoganda. She talked about how talking or displaying something a certain way can alter how you think about it.
Looking back, this short propoganda course for 3rd graders wasn’t in any official lesson plan, wasn’t in a textbook, and may not have been on the up-and-up with the school.
It may have been, it’s relatively common for something like this to be included in coverage of Vietnam and the cold war. Current events related blocks are also often put in social studies curriculum and propaganda is a often a suggested tie-in.
While your teacher sounds like they went above and beyond, they probably weren’t working against the system. And that’s coming from a burned out ex-teacher. We have issues in our schools but for the most part curriculum designers are trying to help. For every terrible Florida-like headline depicting a leap backwards there are many steps forward taken under the radar
Yeah, this was a bit later for me but I remember a whole school year in like 7th or 8th grade that was all about dystopian literature and Nazism. Then it continued a little more in specific classes in HS. While I don’t remember an overt discussion of American propaganda there was a lot of discussion around 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and the portrayal of Jewish people in a book I can’t remember. Which I think broadly covers the ideas propaganda.
I know other groups read The Things They Carried (I think) which may have covered American propaganda more directly since it’s about the Vietnam war.
I’ve had a long ongoing rant/debate (not really a debate because we all pretty much agree with each other), that logic, and critical thinking should be the focus of earlier education. Sure, focus on the skills everyone needs, like writing and such, but when you get to highschool, we should be focusing more on core logic and critical thinking skills.
Teach a person a thing, and they’ll know it… maybe. Teach someone to think, and they’ll be able to figure out anything.
Let me first say i agree but also let me be little bit hopefully constructively critical.
There is something called (backwards) rationalism.
… a defense mechanism in which apparent logical reasons are given to justify behavior that is motivated by unconscious instinctual impulses. …
Rationalism also uses logic but not in sense as e.g. math of physic does. So logic is not enough in this broad sense.
So I think that basic science is the way to go in the early education stages alongside with teaching of accepting self critique and mistakes. Showing that everyone can be wrong and can become better at the thing by fixing their mistakes.
So in other words philosophy could make sense in high schools to some degree.
There is also a danger in having a lack of understanding around logic, as Norm so eloquently shows us.
Corporate psychology…
I was super fortunate to take classes with Sutt Jhally at Umass Amherst. That man changed my life for the better in every way possible.
We had these classes and people are still stupid. Your point?
There’s a whole culture in America celebrating carelessness, doing poorly in school, and idolizing people who got successful doing nothing except breaking the rules
Back in the 80s and 90s this was already a thing. Being a “rebel” and being “too cool for school.” If you did too well at school you were a nerd and that had some social stigma.
Maybe today it is worse with social media and online gaming.
In the 90s I purposefully did slightly worse in school as a way to fit in. No one seemed to like the people who did really well.
People are stupid because they didn’t (and weren’t forced to) learn in these classes.
Oh they were forced, that’s the issue. That ensures knowledge exits your brain as soon as the exam is over.
That’s not learning, that’s just memorization.
Oh that’s what you meant, sorry.
But then again, how do you force someone to “learn” and not “memorize”? The way stuff is taught could definitely use improvements, but it’s still very hard to make sure something has actually been learned.
It’s very difficult, possibly one of the biggest difficulties facing people. I’m definitely not qualified to give an answer, but we should pay students more and give them more freedom to figure out what works for every child.
we should pay students more and give them more freedom to figure out what works for every child.
I’m assuming you meant teachers (?)
Anyway yeah, imo one of the biggest issues right now is that you can’t expect one person to teach well to 20+ students simultaneously. My best learning experiences in school have been with small classes, where the teacher could actually focus on people who understood less and ensure everyone got at least the very minimum required from an argument before moving to the following one.
Oops, yeah, meant teachers
It’s interesting, and I think we can examine college for an answer actually. I don’t remember half the things I was taught in my technical classes. I don’t know anything aside from basic calculus anymore. But what I do understand are the underlying concepts, even if I don’t know the calculations anymore.
That’s what we need to target, somehow. I don’t know how though, honestly. You need some sort of repetition, and what at have now doesn’t work. Maybe if we tie in more real life examples?
If these classes aren’t required then we would have an Idiocracy (even more so than what we currently have)
They cheated to get grades.
People have always been stupid, but not like this. Not what we have going on today
Because internet didn’t existed back then to congregate and enable people to say whatever they want.
Before you could be that stupid, but probably would be the only one in your neighborhood so any stupid thoughts would be kept to yourself until you eventually move on, but now if you think earth is shaped like a half eaten donnut, you bet your ass you will find a community of other weirdos with that same belief and they will feed themselves more stupidness and become louder and louder.
Honestly I’m one example myself, when I was a teenager back in the 90s/2000s I really liked those Japanese emo style music(Visual kei), but since no one else around me had ever heard about it and no one was interested on it I had no one to talk about it, then I just moved on, but if it was today I have no idea what kind of creepy teen I would have become, honestly for me it was a blessing haha
The internet gives stupid people a platform. Before social media someone had to have a certain level of competence to work their way up to a position where they could influence large numbers of people. Some would slip through, but it did a pretty good job of filtering them out, and once they were found to be stupid, it was usually pretty easy to cut off their outlet to the masses. Maybe in the past a really motivated crazy person might put out a newsletter, or get on cable access, or start a pirate radio broadcast… but most of that is one way. And there was the occasional cult leader who would get people together, but the kool-aid normally solved that problem in the end.
Today, any idiot with an internet connection can blast things out to millions or even billions of people. Then we have social media companies looking for how to keep people engaged. They can profile people who are easy targets for this crazy stuff and show it to them, and it’s good for the company, because these types of people get hooked and become very engaged in the site when talking about their bull shit.
So a platform with nearly 0 barrier to entry, coupled with free marketing from the social media algorithm, and a platform where they can feed off each other and organize… it’s no wonder it’s grown out of control.
Do you think that the people who believe in this bullshit wouldn’t believe it if they were provided evidence or something?
They don’t work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.
That’s why it’s so hard to argue with these idiots. You can’t logic a dumbass out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.
Well said.
They don’t work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.
This is the big one. They start with a conclusion then go on a scavenger hunt for anything that agrees with it. And as we all know, you can find anything on the Internet.
And where a more reasonable person might see how hard it is to find a reputable source that supports your claim and deduce that maybe the information isn’t out there because the theory is wrong… instead these people run to the conclusion of “if the information isn’t readily available out there to support my idea, it’s because it’s being suppressed in a big conspiracy!”.
These are usually the same people for whom the government is somehow both completely inept, bumbling, and stupid while also being capable of carrying out the most widespread, comprehensive, flawless conspiracy ever imagined.
Sounds like arguing with a religious person.
It’s hard to say, because we’re talking about a hypothetical where they actually learned this stuff as kids. If they properly understood the material, maybe they’d end up being logical and sensible.
As they are now though, yeah, it’s a lost cause.
It can also depend individually and on their upbringing.
No, you have to meet people where they are. You have to question their position until it becomes untenable and they give up. It never feels like a victory, but you have to hope that eventually it will make a difference…
Honestly that is exactly the wrong way to do that. It will never work to question a position of someone so entrenched. If you are really interested in this look up cult deprogramming.
You have to question their position until it becomes untenable and they give up.
That’s called “sea lioning” now, though.
You can do that, and I wish you luck
If you argue with an idiot they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
If you argue with an idiot they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Reminds me of the one about the pigeon playing chess.
For the uninitiated:
“Never play chess with a pigeon.
The pigeon just knocks all the pieces over.
Then shits all over the board.
Then struts around like it won.”
Honestly? I’ve found that people on both sides of these arguments can be people who aren’t working with evidence, but are basing it off of “vibes”, or even hearsay.
It really depends on what you are talking about. Arguments from the other (non fully vibes) side change depending on if they are arguing a tankie, antivaxxer, flat earther, or other conspiracy theorist… et cetera.
I remember reading this article and getting very upset and my ex not understanding why. “Let them believe what they want to believe, it doesn’t affect you,” she said. “These people vote,” I said.
Skip to now and I’m pretty confident that I had the correct response.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth
They’ve graduated and now have professional misinformation degree.
Here is their graduation project: https://www.yahoo.com/video/resurfaced-reddit-clip-shows-flat-003114234.html (found random article on the web)Here is their graduation project: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/v8q0o7/flatearther_accidentally_proves_the_earth_is/
Article about a video that doesn’t include the video or a link to the mentioned Reddit post. What a terrible article; here’s the Reddit post.
Thanks!
Would have been more accurate with “your a sheep.”
Clearly the preferred lexicon is “ur”
I can’t really explain why but using the wrong “your” looks far worse to me than just typing “ur”. The “ur” people know what they’re about and I kinda respect it tbh. They’re not trying to impress anyone
Agree to disagree. But people who use “en” instead of “and” really triggers me.
It actually ended a relationship of mine after nearly a year.
I have never seen “en” instead of “and”. Oof. That’s… That’s definitely something. I try not to overtly judge the way anyone communicates but that one is indeed rough.
“En” is Dutch for “and”. Just saying.
Ende for the win! Also, pretty sure Afrikaans also uses en and I think also Frisian.
I mean, “those” people believe in a hidden cabal who controls everything and feeds lies to the population, teaching those things in school doesn’t really change much when they’re just going to disregard them as “fake propaganda”.
There’s definitely a cabal feeding lies to them, but they’re not very hidden, and they’re the very people they think are telling the truth.
No, good education will prevent them from falling for conspiracy theories and lies in the first place.
I think some hours of “critical thinking” could do wonders. Stuff like teaching to check sources, how to recognize fake news and stuff.
But most schools don’t even teach IT so I’ve lost hope at this point.
Yep. This is a thing. Students will learn a lesson best when the student understands the value of the lesson to them in their lives.
This is one of the six basic principles of learning, it’s called the Principle of Readiness. You can read all about it in the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook alongside other smash hits as the principle of exercise (practice makes perfect) or the principle of primacy (first impressions matter). It’s that basic.
Establishing that value, giving the students the context and reason the lesson is valuable to the students is the teacher’s responsibility. And I noticed that most teachers forget this somewhere around the 7th grade. Way too many of my teachers answered “Why do we need to learn this?” with “Because it’s required to get your diploma.”
Practice makes perfect is a lie. At best it’s 99.(9)%. The rest is a stubbed toe.
It is effectively a lie; “Practice” only makes perfect–or improvement at all–when there is some sort of feedback mechanism to judge performance. It is possible to practice something incorrectly, build the habit of doing it incorrectly, and then you will perform it incorrectly. This is why I see the math teacher habit of sending students home with lengthy assignments of problems to work to be taken up and graded like a quiz is bad practice; give students time to practice and build skill before you start punishing poor performance.
THANK YOU.
It’s so refreshing to hear this from people. practice is great, but if you’re doing it wrong and nobody tells you that, then you’re going to get great at doing it wrong. Constructive criticism is GOOD, being told you’re doing something wrong is GOOD - so long as these things are paired with suggestions for improvements, or being shown how it can be done better/more correctly.
Practice is worthless without some way to measure whether you’re actually getting better at doing what it is you’re trying to learn.
Took me a bit too long to figure out the following: school isn’t supposed to only teach you specific things; it’s supposed to teach you how to learn.
And it doesn’t stop at high school. A Bachelor’s in a specific field is only partly about the facts and concepts, and the rest is about how to research and evaluate sources in that field. Does someone with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science know how to implement Shellsort right off the bat from memory? Not unless they did it in a whiteboard interview, and fuck those things. No, they know how to look it up and implement it in a specific language, and can probably figure out its big-O complexity.
Knowing what a good source looks like is a skill, and must be learned.
Agree, but there are still some fields that are taught in detail at university (instead of “here’s the basics, figure out the rest by yourself”) - like medicine for example.
Medicine is kind of a special case in that there’s pre-med for the undergraduate and then a post-graduate program that mixes classroom work and an apprenticeship program. You obviously have to learn a lot in both of those settings, but doctors look stuff up all the damn time in their clinics and they take plenty of continuing education courses throughout their careers.
Even then, a big part of medical school is learning how to learn. Doctors are (ideally) expected to be lifelong students: always learning as their field advances.
So, they were right? They do not use it, thus they don’t need it?
Oh they definitely need it
I was sarcastic.
#BUT JESUS SAYS…
You don’t need biology, chemistry, etc. You just need to listen to the people who do, instead of people who have no qualifications whatsoever.
Taking High School biology is never going to give you the knowledge necessary to understand a research paper.
Or you can read history books about the myriad of diseases we literally cured with vaccines.
The less you know the easier you are to fool. No, HS biology won’t be enough to understand a complex research paper. But it will be enough to know the guy talking about using light or bleach to kill covid is a fucking idiot.
Come to think of it… Actually I took HS bio classes and never again after but I gained enough understanding from reading trustworthy sources to be able to read quite a few covid paper’s abstracts and understand (they weren’t that difficult honestly) and stay better informed than most folks.
I think the real key is learning how to learn. How to Pick up things here and there. How to evaluate sources.
The people who are anti-vax (at least online) are to a person ignorant about so much-- science, virology, immunology, statistics, logic, etc. You can’t even discuss the topic without them until they go to school and learn a boatload of stuff.
But then Dunning Kruger comes into it. How many people cling to the “there are only two genders because I learned that in basic biology” without understanding that more advanced biology shows that it is more complicated than that.
Not saying there shouldn’t be math and science in school, I think there should be for sure, just pointing out the other side of teaching just a basic level of something.
Totally agree.
A lot of people are unable to update their knowledge. And are unwilling to seek it.
The people saying “muh two genders hrr” are merely trying to rationalize how they feel. It might just be that they lack empathy.
Either because they haven’t encountered others different from themselves or they were never taught empathy.
School should encourage people to be curious, sceptical, and seeking knowledge. I wonder how we turn curious kids into blase idiots in just a few years…
*sheeple
based
I had a teacher that said: “at school you’re not here to learn about history and science, you’re here to learn how to learn”
