Schools not teaching the right stuff for the 21st century

I do think practical skills should be taught more frequently. Things like plumbing, electronics and cooking from scratch.

Critical thinking is essential. Teaching about logical fallacies and how to think through an argument wasn't taught when I was at school, and I'm amazed at the emotional immaturity of the people who are my age.

I've always thought First Aid training should be part of the school curriculum.

Along with touch typing I would like to see a return to teaching word, excel and power point etc.

Christ yes Touch typing! I really wish I had been taught when I was at school but I wasn't allowed to. Back in the 70s when I was at high school, typing was 'women's work' and boys were not allowed to take it - or any other 'domestic science' at school. I know. I tried. Girls weren't allowed to do metal work or woodwork either. Men (other than journalists and authors) did not type. Nowadays we all do.

Back then we were being educated to fit in with the contemporary work structures. It's a landscape that has completely changed in my lifetime. All that heavy industry is gone. The retail sector exploded out of the High Street and is now probably dying on its feet in great big sterile Amazon warehouses. No one knew what a computer was or how to make money out of them

My first lessons in computing (I suspect some of the first High School computing teaching in the UK) were done on a teletype terminal connected to the council's mainframe. We typed in our very basic programs (in BASIC) one at a time into this great clonking machine in the corner of the room. Line by line. So many of the jobs people do these days have been invented in the last twenty years

These days my kids bring home school provided chromebooks with more processing power than that mainframe could ever conceivably have had.

My point is that we have no idea what we should be teaching our kids any more.

Chinese and touch typing would I think be a good start. And Art.

My DD is going to art school next year. People have been making art since the Stone Age - between 300,000 and 700,000 years ago. There's a solid market for it. Painting's a good skill to have.

I think the most important thing is for parents to be engaged with their children, and what is taught.
This covers reading to them, taking an intetrest in their school work etc.
Especially, watching TV with them and discussing topics that are raised. Everything one does can increase their general knowledge about the world.
A walk together (Still allowed?), you can talk about the weather, clouds, the flowers, wildlife. (yes, even in my London suburb, houses have plants in their gardens, and we often see foxes or squirrels).
Giving pocket money and show them how to budget, etc (obviously age appropriate).
Their are children's books / picture books in every single subject that can add to their general knowledge; history books aimed at children (horrible histories, and other picture books); science books aimed at children, etc
Not everything can be taught at school,but the more one does as a parent, the more they will learn.

Yes, touch typing. There should be a national effort to make sure every child learns this key skill.

Matilda, totally agree that touch typing is really useful. Could I ask how your dd is learning this? Did you use an online programme?

Touch typing is an really useful skill. I’ve been bribing (unsuccessfully) my dc to learn this.

Eventually dd (year 11), has decided to get started. One week on, and she’s learned the whole keyboard, and is up to 35 words per minute. Now I’ve got to pay up

General knowledge aka learning lists of facts is pointless if they don't know how to apply them. Knowing that Ulaanbaatar (don't think I've spelled that quite right) is the capital of Mongolia is useless if you don't know where Mongolia is. I can reel of lists of countries, and know roughly where they are on a map, but it's not something you need to know really. Knowing how to find out information is important.

slothbyday

If you mean video conferencing and a means to improve teachers knowledge, it is used by exam boards for feed back for exams and NEA.

If you mean video conferencing for lessons, it opens up a whole swathe of safeguarding issues.

Schools can now choose their own curriculum
not entirely true.

slothbyday - there's nothing terribly difficult about video conferencing...unless you are trying to teach 30 teenagers who don't want to be doing it and whose behaviour you have no effective means of controlling at a distance. Also, technology in schools is great but also massively problematic from a point if view of misuse, cyberbullying etc.

Teaching Chinese is a daft idea imo. The vast, vast majority of kids who learn a language at school will only ever use it on holiday, if that. Many kids already find learning a European language in school bloody hard. Learning a language like Chinese with a different script and barely any similarities to English in a few lessons a week, when hardly any of them will ever travel to China is pretty pointless. And I say that as a language teacher who would love to learn Mandarin for fun.

As for the rest, kids are taught about healthy eating, exercise and coding. They are taught creative thinking in everything they do. I don't think 'entrepreneurship' is really a subject in its own right. I agree they should be taught about money management though. General knowledge is amassed over a lifetime through a huge range of sources and subjects, you don't teach it!

I've realised that some of the core work skills that industry complain students aren't capable of doing are just not known by many teachers. The move to online learning, there absolute panic by so many teachers that they need to learn softwares they haven't previously used was across all sorts of social media....
Yet in the workplace, video conferencing was taking place many years ago, using office 365 and teams has been in work places and established for many yet schools didn't even know they had it.
I'm really hoping the outcome of this will be a willingness to embrace technology and its benefits rather than try and ignore it.

Schools can now choose their own curriculum but they would be stupid not to ensure that it allows for progression and success in results - the basic knowledge and skills and builds up to allow kids have a good grounding for the exam year content.

Entrepreneurs is in the DT curriculum.

Creative thinking is covered in technology and art.

Parents can and should be responsible for teaching these things to their kids. How about letting schools concentrate on teaching the things that parents are not equipped to teach; calculus, German grammar, Shakespeare.

If your child has a rubbish general knowledge then that's down to you as a parent. Schools can't possibly be responsible for teaching all "general knowledge". Just like the teaching of all life skills can't be the responsibility of schools either.

good diet, exercise, money management etc) that are only ever going to be taught in the home and valuable skills for the 21st century (entrepreneurship, creative thinking, coding, Chinese etc) that aren't the focus of our education system

My DCs have learnt about all of these except Mandarin at their non-selective state schools. They can learn Russian, French, German or Spanish.

I think much of this is just parenting.

General knowledge is a good one. My dd10 knows the capital cities and flags of the world. We love travelling, so this interests her. One day the teacher was asking about capital cities in a quiz around class. The kids looked blankly on as the majority hadn’t a clue, even the teachers face was a picture when dd got them right. Dd loves a tv quiz.

The school I work in has a general knowledge club and the compete against other schools.

Surely parents have some responsibility for this too? A lot of life skills (including budgeting) is covered in PHSE but many students do not take this seriously as it's not an examinable subject. Schools don't have a choice in what they teach - the government sets out the national framework. Schools can't win.

Listed, not enlisted!