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.

Learning 30 odd poems word for word does achieve something. It teaches the brain how to memorise things, and those brain pathways become physically permanent. Once you have learned how to memorise things, you can memorise things that do interest you, or that you need to remember.

When you have the ability to memorise large quantities of information, then you will be able to recall that information at will, and at speed. That skill will enable you to answer exam questions more easily, and be capable of finishing the paper in the time allowed.

Indeed.

I've taught this to secondary students during form time / pshe lessons. It is DIRE. They hate it, they aren't interested, they don't listen. I guarantee they will, in ten or twenty years time, be crying "why didn't they teach us this is school??" because they won't remember that, yes it was covered in school but they didn't give a shit and they switched their brains off five minutes in.

All that plus, as a bonus, you know 30 poems off by heart! How amazing is that? I don't think I ever learnt one by heart at school, so I'm delighted if this is what my children can look forward to 😂

@benefitstaxcredithelp I have no idea what the grammar references even mean (early 80s child so never covered them) but - genuine question - what's wrong with Pythagoras and oxbow lakes age 12?

Pythagoras is practically very useful, and oxbow lakes are pretty basic physical geography.

You are wrong.
You finding something of little interest ot worth does not mean it is uninteresting or worthless.

I utterly adored learning about the tutors. Went on to study history at Uni and now have a very nice career.

My parents parented..and taught me finance stuff. I may fave ignored their advice whilst larging it up in my twenties.

The actual problem with what this government has done to schools is turning g them into exam factories. Students talk about their subjects in terms of AO1 paper, AO2 paper. 10 markers. 4 markers. They are taught not to understand, explore, question, enjoy a subject...but how to write answers for the most marks.

How sad is that.

And if the teachers don't teach to the exam their heads will be on the block.

I'm not sure how accurate it is to be honest or how realistic the parent's view of these activities are.

Art is on the curriculum and it doesn't just involve colouring in, and schools must have evidence of it. Painting, colouring,drawing, using pastels, watercolours, clay, plasticine , recycling structures/sculptures etc.

D&T the same .. the kids have to present a finished project at the end. They start with research, then plan, then materials ,then making. From mass, to picture frames,to games(board games, magnetic games, electric circuits/buzzer games, to smoothies , to whatever else at various stages and for various topics.

The tricky one is music , as if no access to instruments or a trained teacher/ excellent scheme it can be quite repetitive, singing only, tick box kinda thing and it can be forgotten. However, that's not the case in all schools and even when it is, exposure can still be achieved during assemblies, producing concerts/shows, playing calming/relaxing music in the classroom during certain times, or a bit of karaoke during free time.

Drama, I admit , doesn't massively feature at primary, however, a lot of lessons ,subjects and topics offer the opportunity for role play , and it is used quite a bit. From English, to RE, to History. Plus , like I said before, school shows, nativities, end of year performances etc.

Even if it drops down in y6 , or worst case scenario, from y5 that is 1/2 years out of 7.

All I have read recently is how awful the school curriculum is (from friends who have children in school, from a close friend who himself is Head of Science at a secondary school).

The amount of children being pulled out from school to be homeschooled is at an all time high. Pupils refusing to go to school and basically having to be pulled out due to refusing, is also at an all time high. It quite frankly sounds like a disaster (not just the curriculum - but school settings in general). This has been widely covered over recent months on TV and news papers too.

That, along with personal experience is why I believe changes need to be made. I did say that I support all other subjects alongside maths, english, science etc, but I feel that TOO MUCH focus is put onto certain things that the majority of children are not going to retain/ever really need to use or remember going into adulthood. Whereas, there's plenty more that could taught that children could benefit from a lot more. The fact that PSHE in some schools is only during form time is crazy?! There clearly is not enough time to cram everything I mentioned (and more) into already packed out days, but surely timetables can be altered somehow.

I did also acknowledge the fact that parents have to held accountable for teaching certain things to their children and not expecting schools to solely be the main educator. I agree entirely. But, like I said, there are certain things that are being taught/focused too heavily on that is a waste of precious time.

May I recommend 'From a railway carriage' by Robert Louis Stephenson. 🙂

For the kids, not arsehole parents.

Ah, now, I can always remember the first two lines of that 😊

You didn't mention what type of job you are in now?

@PaperDoIIs I teach all 4 as ppa so we have a lot but I'm very aware that some schools don't do as much and drama is t a primary subject.

What annoys me is that art and dt are seen as the same subject and often timetabled as such

@grinandslothit

I sold a business that I built up from the ground. Career wise that business was my greatest achievement. I am now planning my next move - very lucky and can assure you that my success was not influenced by circle drawing. I had to invest lots of money to enroll onto bus dev courses, 1-1 business mentoring, basic accountancy courses such as bookkeeping and understanding profit and losses sheets, cashflow forecasts etc, the list is endless. None of which was even touched on during business studies at college. It wasn’t easy and I often thought ‘if only I knew about xyz when I was at school/college’…

OP it sounds like your children haven't even started school yet, and you already think you know all about it. Away from the headlines, most children are enjoying school and getting a decent education. The fact that you feel getting a job at 17 was the making of you doesn't suggest that there was anything wrong with your schooling - it just shows that you were ready for the world of work, and (by the sound of it) you are someone who thrives most in that environment rather than an academic one. School can't be some sort of generic training for work and personal finances. Only work can really teach you to work. I would sympathise more with your argument if you were suggesting an earlier age for apprenticeships or even an earlier school leaving age for teens who are keen to work asap. But surely primary school, and even up to Y9 say, should be reserved for a well-rounded education including "useless" facts (just wait till your kid comes back from school with eyes shining, excitedly telling you all about some completely random topic done at school... I think you'll feel differently!).

The amount of children being pulled out from school to be homeschooled is at an all time high. Pupils refusing to go to school and basically having to be pulled out due to refusing, is also at an all time high

That's not because they're dissatisfied with the curriculum though. It's because there's a MH epidemic amongst our young people, with pastoral support and services such as CAMHS having been systematically destroyed over the last few years.

lol - if only it was because kids didn't want to learn about oxbow lakes!

I love that the kids studied this and (mostly) enjoyed it!

I was still clueless at 13-14. I had just learned about mean, median and mode, but not why people might choose one or another to support an argument. I didn’t realise how calculating each one would help you understand what the “average” person really earns in the UK, or why a particular place might have a shockingly low life expectancy.

I remember a newspaper headline in our maths textbook about a heatwave, “Phew, what a scorcher - 90 degrees!”. The teacher asked us if that would be in Celsius or Fahrenheit. I guessed wrong 😳. It didn’t occur to me that the newspaper would sensationalise the story - duh!

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.

I’m 42 and I swear I was never taught about compound interest! However, I do remember learning algebra (and chemical equations) and trigonometry, despite rarely using them since.

I accept that as a non-teacher, I tend to make simplistic suggestions which make actual teachers roll their eyes. Sorry about that.

Career choices (Careers Advjser in Scotland) is a mix of class / 1:1 time throughout secondary school and beyond which does cover options, choices and routes. England is a cluttered messy landscape for CA.

Agree some of the curriculum is 🤔 and should cover the basics including life skills in more depth but then what is deemed important to some isn't as important or relevant at all to others.

I feel that my children are massively privileged to be learning about Henry viii, oxbow lakes, french, music, algebra and all of the other things described above as bollocks.
I'd hate for them to go to school and not be stretched- I don't want them to sit through more hours of pointless stuff about resilience and wellbeing, they'd be bored out of their skulls.

I'm their parent so I will teach them about finances and other real world stuff. That's my responsibility.

Whenever I read about the "need" for a basic curriculum at the expense of the "useless" I think, what do they do at Eton? I'm pretty sure their curriculum is crammed with the useless and the parents are glad of it. The UK state curriculum is full of good stuff, though I understand the arts are getting squeezed, but then that's Tories for you.

I was taught compound interest, simple algebra and binary form for maths in Year 6 in the mid-60s, so fashions change.

As for buying a house, that's aspirational stuff and not in a school's remit at all. Could be viewed as shaming renters in today's ludicrously sensitised atmosphere.

Well said!

I do agree that I wish we had learned more about finance at school because I still feel a bit bewildered by it all as a twenty-something.

But on the other hand, if I hadn't had history and art at school I'm not sure I would've turned up. I hated school and those two subjects were really the only thing keeping me going.

Please don't pass on your attitude about school and learning to your child. You'll hold them back from opportunity.

@Feelingcrappy2 This is hands down the most ignorant and parochial set of posts I've seen on MN. Do you just any technology? Do you ever wonder who designed any of it or how it works? You occupy yourself and bang a few rocks together.

Not true for all HE families. I pulled my dc out because school (primary) killed their natural love of learning. It became all about passing tests every Friday and every half term. It became all about priming them for the school’s position in the league tables. Nothing about it was about what was best for them or about allowing them the freedom to develop in their own time or developing their interests or passions. They were bored stiff and it was sad to see how much ‘learning’ became a chore. Shockingly they have learned to read, write and do functional day to day arithmetic without school or much direct ‘teaching’.