To think that the English state education is useless

[balotelli]

Having seen 2 dc go through the English state education system I have no intention of putting dc3 through it.

It taught me very little that I have used since. The vast majority of the useful info and lessons I need for my life to function and be enjoyed have been sourced from mu own initative since leaving state education.

My 2 dc have never been taught to budget, cook, parent etc at school. Everything they know on these subjects have been learnt at home from their parents.

The hours spent in the classroom were of very litttle use since leaving education. Both have jobs and have learnt well on the job and in fe but have never had to know,

how many wives Henry the 8th had, what the average rainfall in the Amazon rain forrest is, any algebra, trigonometry, physics, chemistry or biology.

While I know it is important to have a base knowledge of many subjects and an idea of what may be a passion that can spark a later carreer, I think that kids today spend way too long learning utter useless crap in school , being tested and stressed out of their developing minds for way too long and from a ridiculously early age.

There I feel better now.

Sorry but I have to say this to the OP if you sent your DC to school while making your attitude towards it clear is it any wonder they didn't get out of it what they could have done.

I will confess to being a product of the Scottish education system also but they teach algebra, history, biology, chemistry and physics here too.

My 2 dc have never been taught to budget, cook, parent etc at school. Everything they know on these subjects have been learnt at home from their parents.

IMO all of that falls under the remit of responsible parenting. Both DDs know how to run a home efficiently and effectively, and as far as I'm concerned, that is MY job to teach them. DD1 is 18, has her own flat and manages beautifully. It is clean, tidy, she cooks from scratch and eats well, and can budget. That's basic life skills you're talking about, and ones your children should be learning at home.

DDs schools are fantastic btw, we still have grammar schools here, and they would be my first choice every time.

It's probably already been pointed out but I'm assuming the OP has never used their maths (learned in school) to calculate a floor area for new carpet, measured for new curtains, figured out a discount etc.?
Or their science to work out that treaded soles are better on ice, brakes work by friction, engines need lubrication, children need excercise and nutrition, chemicals give off fumes and metals corrode if you don't protect them?
Or their geography skills to read a map, and work out mileage from a scale?
Etc. etc.?

YABU but I agree that spending a week on Oxbow lakes was a week I'm never going to get back

I don't understand why the word 'state' is in your OP. What you are complaining about is education full stop, surely?

Or do you think that a private school is sonwhere where advanced educational beings see the ultimate pointlessness of long division, oxbow lakes and Henry VIII and eschew this in favour of learning how to file a tax return and make carbonara? The opposite is probably true, if anything.

YABU and weird.

"Oxbow lakes" - very important things they are.
... Aren't they?

They are if you live on the Isle of Dogs

i think i may award you my very very first and here's another

All been said in the various replies!

Particularly if you are an Oxbow lake, I'd say.

I guess you don't see many of them on Mumsnet, rather like sane OPs in AIBU.

Ooooh - now I didn't know the Isle of Dogs was an Oxbow lake!!

Disclaimer: - I've never been to the Isle of Dogs

But I can read a map and know the symbols ... and stuff.

Apparently a billabong is an Oxbow lake.

And a bayou ...

And so is a bayou

OP, if you didn't know anything about geography, history, science, literature, art etc you would be little better than a tourist in your own country, century and planet.

Not to mention crap at pub quizzes.

If my daughters' schools were wasting their time teaching them how to cook/budget*/parent instead of Proper Subjects I would be massively pissed off, actually.

Hadn't realised private ed majored on Womanly Skills

*in the sense of (shudder) Running a Household. Maths, now, maths I've got time for.

I did not know that about bayous and billabongs!

Cba/don't have time to read beyond the OP but what alternative do you have in mind? Private ed is even more focussed on academic success, so you'll have to home ed, and if you are prepared to do that why not just keep them in school, letting the school hone their academic skills, and give your children the practical skills for life that it is your job to give them anyway?

Erm - despite my DS's primary school having an appalling record for helping DC with SN, and an abysmal record for dealng with bullying appropriately, my Y5 9yo DS1 has been tasked with a project, to be done in two days, to research and write a short project on a historical figure that no-one n hs class will have heard of.

It took 3 adults, one with a degree, another in their second year of a degree course, to come up with ANYONE that this 9yo hadn't learnt a bit about at school.

Before we settled on Henry Ford, we had run through people as disparate as Lowry, the Wright brothers, Nero, William the Conqueror, Watson and Crick, Attila the Hun, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Watt, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. They had covered ALL of those AND MORE in class.

I thnk that pupils in some state schools, particularly those that have involved parents, have a VERY well-rounded education. 8yo DS2 cooked pizza last week, Y6 have regular sessions where they either bake cakes to sell at cake sales for charity, or produce smoothies for sale in the summer. All years do cookery at least once a term. They start learning about famous artists in Reception when they reproduce 'A starry night', and they cover a minimum of 2-3 different artists a year.

They give them maths lessons where they get 'given' a certain budget to run a theme park, and they have to think about, and cover, all the costs involved. This project runs over a month, and takes one maths lesson a month, in Y5, and those that have thought of every cost, and make the most profit, win the 'prize'. They do another one in Y6 with running a house for a month, just after their SATS have finished. Oh - and in Y4 they have to design a cake recipe where the ingredients cost less than a certain amount - which is ONLY acheivable if they pool their resources - but they don't get TOLD that!

I don't see what is so wrong with a state education - it got ME a degree, it is well on it's way to getting my younger brother a degree, and my 9yo is dong exceedingly well too, so far.

Hopefully OP now feels better-if she wants the school to take on things like budgeting then she will be disappointed. However that is her job as a parent-I wouldn't be expecting the school to do it.
I think that the best thing that you can give your DC is a good education and the ability to give your DC the qualifications that give a wide choice of careers. There isn't much point in thinking that you will learn on the job if your education won't get you one in the first place.

Excuse the lack of 'i's. My key is sticky.

Dear Op

       Please home educate your children.

                   Sincerely 
                            
                         Every teacher in the school

I'll trade you some 'i's for 'e's Hunty, particularly capital e's :(

I'd agree with Hunty too, DDs general knowledge is far greater than mine, and my A'level maths is fast failing to keep pace with DD2's.

I learnt quite a lot at school. Ds seems determined to learn as little as possible although his spelling his very good, unlike the OP's (I apologise OP if English is not your first language but if it is then you should become familiar with spellcheck).

I find the random facts I learned at school to be very useful indeed for quizzes. Only this week was my school-acquired knowledge that an orchestra is tuned to the oboe put to good use in a quiz.

I never learnt to parent at school and there are probably times that ds wishes I did have a better grasp on the subject but somehow we muddle through.