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.

Because OP will be passing on her attitude to education to her kids, so they won't be particularly engaged and therefore highly unlikely to be competing with those other kids. And in 20 years OP will be moaning her adult kids are stuck in dead end jobs unable to buy a house cos they don't understand pensions and savings and interest rates cos they weren't taught at school. And the cycle will continue.

Or OP, you can break the mould and value ALL the education your kids receive. For free. Have some ambition for them.

I'm currently teaching 7 year olds about simple, continuous and perfect tenses. Take from that what you will. They actually quite like it.

The school curriculum these days is still full of useless bollocks, but it is different bollocks, and taught in a different way to the bollocks your teachers tried in vain to impart to you, OP.

hth

Never mind that if they paid attention in maths they would have the skills to understand finance and credit anyway.

I really hope you don't pass on your own negative attitude to school to your children. You are setting them up to fail before they even start.

Most of the time our teens buzz from school.

Yes they are taught circles which are fascinating actually.

They have lessons in well being but honestly credit scores, paying a parking ticket, pensions, looking at many different routes to employment, this can be covered in a weekend by your parents.

Why should schools bang on about social media? Guidelines are kids shouldn't be on it until 13 at least if you choose to give your kids access to phones and laptops with parental controls or supervision that's on you. English language does teach to question your sources.

Our kid's schools seem fine, great extra activities, taught values, involvement in their local communities, trips, competitions not just sporting, musical instruction, reading groups, confidence in drama, encouragement to enjoy physical exercise, fairness in discipline, support for children and families dealing with illness and yes the horror that was Henry VIII but hey he did wind the pope up so every cloud and all that.

Nope. Nothing at all has changed since you went to school 20+ years ago. Not one single thing.

As an expert who went to school once, I think we are thankful for your valued opinion.

Your child is lucky to have such a supportive parent. I’m sure you’ll manage to wring their enthusiasm for school out of them in no time.

🙄

And nelson did, more or less, chase the french around the channel, what's not to enjoy about that?

^ This.

This.

You don't know what is going to be useful for you at that age but all children should have the opportunity to learn a wide range of subjects.

I do not know what learning 30 odd poems word for word achieves. I do not know what squeezing massive exams into too short time periods achieve. Surely if you want to test knowledge you focus it, explore it and allow time to do so without it being a speed writing competition?

And our eldest's face after their lesson on gonorrhea was a picture! Well done teacher that can't be easy.

"It's becoming antibiotic resistant as well now baby"

Part of the reason we need boring chemists with accurate mathematics for some nice new antibiotics. But hey what's the point of boring school eh?

The school curriculum in England absolutely STINKS. Very dull and narrow with little focus on creativity or inspiring an enjoyment of learning. Schools only care about SATS scores. In my son's previous primary school they "cancelled" art classes for a whole term to focus on times tables etc for SATS testing (check out: morethanascore.org.uk). He had hardly any sports lessons and no music or drama. Thankfully, I got him out of there just before he became a school refuser. Why do you think the independent school sector are so keen to show off their art, drama & sports departments? They're well aware that there's very little focus on these subjects in state schools. We need a major overhaul of the education system in this country and should be adopting the progressive approaches of countries like Finland, Denmark and Holland. Schools should not be exam factories. No wonder so many children and young people in this country are miserable.

I couldn’t disagree with you more OP.
The curriculum you suggest is a dumbed down old style secondary modern (but worse) curriculum that will hugely hugely disadvantage working class children.
Have you heard of cultural capital?
Children need to be exposed to art, literature, history, theatre, science, philosophy, politics…all children need that. They can work out what they enjoy, where they want to focus as adults, and also have confidence to engage with someone whatever their background (hopefully).
Please don’t say this kind of stuff to your children.

It’s not that there is little focus on art, drama in state schools.
it’s something else. Little money.

How recently was this? In the past 2 or 3 years it has changed a lot. I end up cancelling maths and English lessons to fit in the foundation subjects! Ofsted's deep dives have changed the landscape immensely. I agree in the past a lot of Y6 children were basically just taught maths and English for most of the day because of SATS.

I agree with teaching money management in schools. Some parents won’t be able to do it themselves.

I know that pensions are extremely boring, but I once read that saving £20 per month in your 20s is better than saving £1,000 per month in your 40s! I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s stayed with me.

A lesson on compound interest could also be a real eye-opener, especially if it demonstrated the “real-life” impacts on both a saver and a borrower. Beware of payday loans and racking up debts on a store card, kids!

Also, I don’t know how much statistics are studied in secondary schools these days, but it would be nice if young adults were taught how to pick apart the dodgy statistics used by some parts of the press. It might stop them feeling demoralised when they read that Britain is broken - because nearly half its schools are performing worse than average.

Yes sorry it's this.

I went to hide in SEND teaching. My kids seem to cope well with the BS but they don't have additional needs. I really feel for the kids that do or are a bit below average.

Oxbow lake year 4 (age 8) :(

The curriculum doesn't stunk overall. I have issues with some bits, but it's not the end of it.

Schools would prefer not to give a crap about SATS. The government only cares about SATS (and GCSE's and A levels). The parents care about SATS. So when your measly funding, your promotion or job etc depends on those results, what do you do? Hell, get low enough scores and the DfE can demand an Ofsted inspection done and all the art ,drama and music in the world won't save you if you can't show progress has been made.

there is very little art, drama, music or anything creative.

That pisses me off. That's the stuff that kept me going to school every day!

Though I would say algebra is really useful and as early as possible!

That starts in y6. Including manipulation of data, manipulation of results, how it can be presented to be accurate , but visually to promote a certain result etc. It's a really fun unit. The kids didn't enjoy having the Prime hype dismantled though.

The huge flaw with these threads is the assumption that

a) if an adult doesn't know something it's because they weren't taught it at school
b) if you teach a child something at school, they will listen, understand and retain it forevermore.

Surely we all know people who had the exact same education we had, yet who claim total ignorance of things they were taught. I'm not talking about people with special needs who were failed by their school, I'm talking about people of normal intelligence who had everything on a plate - but just weren't that interested, or quickly forgot.

Just taking compound interest and statistics as an example mentioned above - these things have always been taught and I'm sure still are, and the real-life applications are obvious (and usually mentioned by teachers) - yet we do forget this stuff and some people will claim never to have been taught it in the first place.

At some point we have to step up and take responsibility for ourselves, not blame school for not having magically and permanently imparted all knowledge we will ever need for life.

Useless shit and bollocks ? Why do I fucking bother?