Is the school curriculum still full of useless bollocks?

[Feelingcrappy2]

Hoping that things have changed since I was at school. I hated school. Perhaps because it was an all girls school so was incredibly bitchy and full of hormonal girls. I have friends who went to mixed schools and they were never as boy obsessed as me because they were just so used to them always being in their day-to-day lives. I truly believe that alone let me down. I started college and was a bit like...oh...BOYS!

Any way, back to the curriculum - my eldest will be starting soon and I'm wondering what to expect. Not so much what to expect in primary school but senior school.

I can imagine that many people will have other opinions on what I am about to point out here - but this is just how I feel.

Algebra, King Henry VIII's wives names, going to box hill in the freezing arse cold freezing our tits off to measure some grass (literally)... I mean, I have an ENDLESS LIST OF SHIT that I had to endure throughout my time at school. I would go as far as saying that the vast majority of what I 'learnt' was bollocks and I have never, ever used/needed to remember it.

Basic maths - absolutely. (In fact, wish they would have focused on basic math more than all those impossible mathematical equations etc, as basic math is what we use day to day, right?)

Basic science - absolutely.

English Lit & Lang - absolutely.

The rest of the subjects - yes to a certain extent, but in my honest opinion should be minimised. I could have really benefitted from things such as:

• Career choices (and I don't mean the one-time hour career choices class we sat through in year 11 when we were about to leave, absolutely clueless as of what to do next - I mean, in depth informative career options - delving into the potential job opportunities out there, along with information on different industries. Starting from say, Year 9/10.
• Classes on wellbeing (not just mental health, but the importance of self care, how to deal with big feelings, certain and specific situations, educating kids on social media - in fact, social media should be heavily taught about considering the amount of time kids spend on it).
• Credit ratings (my DP screwed himself over for 6 years due to an unpaid parking fine aged 18) and things like budgeting and the value of money. I remember blowing each and every payslip when I started working - do you know why? I NEVER knew I could buy a house. Not from a wealthy family and assumed it was only for the mega rich - we were never taught in school about these sorts of possibilities.
• Similarly to the above - debts and importance of credit & credit cards

Again, I could go on and on and on. Like I said, I really don't feel as though I got much out of my time at school. I started to learn once I got my first full time job aged 17. I was thrown into an adult only environment. It was client facing and I had no choice but to grow up, learn on the job and become a woman. I loved it and thank goodness - because even college taught me zilch.

I just hope things have changed - or will do in the future at least. I hope kids are still not sat learning about how to draw a circle with a compass and leaving clueless, lost, spending every penny they get, depressed over social media and not knowing what is actually out there for them to achieve.

As much as parents should be helping to teach their kids my above list, schools should too, in my opinion.

If the curriculum only covers basic maths and science, how will we identify and develop the mathematicians, software development engineers, supply chain analysts, finance managers, doctors, engineers of the future?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it’s much worse now.

Split digraphs and the Great Fire of London at age 5.
Fronted adverbials and Henry VIII at age 8.
The subjunctive tense and algebra age 10.
Pythagoras and Oxbow lakes age 12

Since 2014 Gove and the Tories rehashed an already boring curriculum into something far more Victorian. I quit teaching and took my DC out too.

@StrongTeaDropOfMilkNoSugar
but arguably, it’s unfair if a child who hates the advanced maths, science etc has to sit through hours and hours (years in fact) of that rather than giving them other options and things to learn about that will actually benefit them. It’s a tricky one but I agree there is a lot of focus on particular subjects whilst not even touching on others. This will not benefit all children.

The earlier people learn that they can't always just do what they want the better, imo. Things you might find pointless can be the most interesting things to others, and vice versa. Learning to respect other people's interests is really important.

Mathematics and history are far more useful than the things you identify on your list IMO.

Classes on 'well being' is basically your PSHE. What that covers/should cover is always a matter of dispute.

How do you want schools to teach children that 'it's possible to buy a house'? How do you expect that to look like? Perhaps it can go in a problem maths question? Similarly, school will never be able to teach 'the value of money' because the value of money is a thing to be understood in reference to prices out in the real world.

We do 'basic maths' in primary and then slowly we move on. How long do you expect to do the same basic maths? I guess compound interest comes in at about 12. There's some of your credit stuff.

If you were 'spending every penny' and it wasn't because you were earning so little you could barely keep a roof over your head and yourself fed, that's not on the school.

IMHO we could spend less time teaching religion and more time teaching money management, pensions, personal boundaries, not being a people pleaser, etc

No thanks, I don’t want a stripped back essential pleb education for the masses

i want kids, especially the poor ones, to have their hours filled with history, art, music and languages

No child or teenager wants to sit and listen to a lesson on finances or paying tax.

It's so boring most adults won't voluntarily learn about it themselves. God help teachers if they are forced to teach it to kids who will barely pass their GCSEs anyway.

How sad to be so incurious about the world.

It’s worse. My daughter is in Year 1 and they are expected to cover the full national curriculum so its English, Maths, Science, Geography, History, ICT, Design Technology, Art, Music and PE. It’s sitting down all day at desks. 2 hours of PE a week. Theirs is so much crammed into the curriculum that there is very little art, drama, music or anything creative.

Much of what you value I used to ensure was taught thoroughly in my PSHE curriculum (albeit in one lesson a fortnight).

New head insisted that PSHE went back into registration periods (despite that being not best practice as identified by the PSHE Association, and responses from pupil voice against it.)

I resigned the TLR the following year, despite having a ten year success in managing it e.g. identifying and building a team of non-specialist teachers in school who were prepared to teach PSHE properly, solid pupil-voice activities which fed into the curriculum, gathering resources and visitors from a wide range of appropriate sources etc. etc. Soul destroying.

Your children are going to be competing against privately educated pupils and highly educated foreigners for jobs. Why would you wish to dumb down their education?

Or do you think that a full education should really only be for the poshos and the povs don’t need to be taught much beyond tying their shoelaces?

disagree sorry. The useless bollocks as you describe gives a width and depth to knowledge that you don't get anywhere else. I don't think education should be just vocational. That said the analytical ability, ability to digest complex information and concepts is part of academic education and also really useful

To be honest my son's school spends too much time on the bits you want- he hates all the wellness stuff - the practical stuff is repeated ad nauseum and not at teh right level/focussed.
I worry that he doesn't learn enough history/religion/literature - everything seems dumbed down.
I would say as well that a lot of the stuff you talk about can/should be taught by parents /outside of school

Agreed.

This. Op you have very low expectations for your child. And clearly experienced inadequate parenting. Schools are a plaster for poor parenting.

Drawing a circle with a compass teaches fine motor skills and accuracy. Nothing wrong with that.

Everything you describe as pointless sounds important to me.

I have DC in years 1 and 3 now and they love the history they are taught alongside the maths and English and science.

All that time spent on careers may turn out to be useless if you don’t have the knowledge and skills to enter that career. If you are only doing basic maths, science and geography you can write off loads of careers.

Actual history topics and knowledge can vary widely but the skills will be useful for relevant careers and how do you know exactly which parts of history might interest you if you aren’t exposed to a wide variety of topics?

The only thing YANBU about is that you want to take loads of stuff out of the curriculum to fit in the stuff you want to add. Usually people want to add it to an already over stuffed curriculum.

Wellbeing and finance/budgeting are things parents are actually better at teaching IMO (or should be) as they can be woven into everyday life. Same with practical skills like cooking.

Careers teaching has improved plus a lot of info is now available on the internet although agree could be improved further. Not fair to expect subject teachers to have in depth knowledge of careers options though. External peripatetic teachers would work well.

A lot of school is about learning skills rather than facts - things like how to write concisely and effectively, how to organise your time, how to remember information, how to debate a point of view. For these skills it doesn’t hugely matter what content is being learned but it does need a certain level of intellectual difficulty.

Algebra teaches logical reasoning and abstraction. Aside from its many practical applications these are extremely useful brain skills.

I use advanced maths and chemistry on a daily basis. I use geology knowledge every weekend.

Perhaps more tailoring of education to insdividual needs in is order?

If you don't mind, could you PM me some suggestions for pupil voice activities that have an actual impact? We're finding at the moment that we're not getting anything productive or actionable back, and it's just a tick box exercise, despite that not being the aim. No worries if you don't want to or want to keep your intellectual property. I know it's a big ask.

My DD is year 2 and absolutely loves school. Phonics and maths bore her but reading is a joy and being able to tell the time and measures stuff is great. She adores history, geography, science, PE etc. She has so much fun being with her friends all day and is just generally happy and stimulated. I could never replicate at home what she gets from school. And if went private she wouldn't have the diversity of friends.

What I don't like is all the assessment but I guess they use it to track progress and that's useful for them.

being taught a broad number of subjects opens up minds. When talking to adults it's generally clear who are the ones who have received a poor education. They end up being people with little ambition and a general fear of the unknown, which is really sad.

I do think schools should teach about budgeting and investing. It's something I've taught my own DC, but it should be part of the curriculum

@Feelingcrappy2 you mentioned career choices.

What career choices do you think all these kids with basic everything will have? Never mind knowing you can buy a house, good luck doing it with just basic maths and literacy.