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.

I think it is very sad that the OP doesn't value education, or respect our ancestors who have fought for universal access to education.

Not all education is to give practical survival skills. Knowledge and cognitive development is necessary too in order to make the most of life.

I'm not a defender of state education as my children are privately educated. But independent schools also teach the subjects that the OP despises.

A child going through senior school will have exposure to budgeting and cooking, and will also consider elements of parenting, such as family values.

There is nothing stopping the OP dong a little bit of home teaching of the topics that she particularly values.

Oh for goodness sake. This is dull.

You sound like my FIL OP. Particularly at the point he tried to persuade DH not to accept his place at a Russell Group Uni where he got a very good degree and now has a very good and challenging job which he loves. All of this because FIL wanted him to get a 'real job' working with him cleaning shopping centres and pub toilets - something I might add DH had been doing with his Dad since he was still at primary school, starting work at 3am and with no pay to speak of. He still gets in the neck about his 'useless education' now 15 years later (despite his previously mentioned good and well paid job).

If anyone uses the phrase 'University of Life' I might just scream.

OP - whatever. Do what you like but please don't try and convince anyone that state education is a waste of time. It is life-changing for many, including DH and myself.

Rant over.

Just want to add that there is of course nothing wrong with cleaning shopping centres and pub toilets. It's just not what DH wanted and FIL's belief was that somehow this made him less of a man.

LOL at Limelight's DH forever emasculated by his knowledge of oxbow lakes and probably even billabongs.

I too went from rough comp to Russell Group, now work in higher ed, etc.

A good school is a good school (even some rough comps!), a shitty school is a shitty school. Terminal thicko status is not confined to the state sector and raging bellend-ism is not confined to the private.

I loved my old school and think I'm lucky to have had perhaps a more rounded viewpoint to work from than some of my privately educated friends. But they probably think they're lucky too.

I can't make carbonara though.

Carbonara's dead easy. You can find out how to from a cookbook, using those literacy skills schools give you, should you be concerned.

Home made carbonara is good but contains undercooked eggs just in case any pregnant woman fancy some.

crunch and longshore drift and iambic pentameter.

Learning about Henry viii wife's did spark a life long interest in medieval history for me!

Infact I would love to learn more about that period. Infact if anyone has an interesting bits of knowledge let me know.

A passion can be just as good for passions sake. Not every passion has to end in getting paid for it.

What if the recipe for carbonara serves 4 and you want it to serve 6?

If only school taught you useful stuff like ratio and proportion so you could solve this.

Stupid, useless state education.

Blame my vegetarianism!

Longshore drift and probably the water cycle too, what a big steaming Jessie

Do you think that kids learn something different in private schools, then? They don't. The syllabus is pretty much identical.

I went to a private boarding school and my son, who is going through state schooling, is learning exactly the same stuff. The only difference with private is that class sizes tend to be considerably smaller.

I can't figure out why you think any school should be responsible for teaching your child life skills. Is it that you can't be bothered or something?

Though I admit I have yet to find a use for the sin, cos or tan

I have to say right now that I never learned about Henry VIII or his wives when I was at school. Anything that I might know about the subject, I learnt from the university of life cable TV

Trigonometry - very useful if you have a north facing garden and want to know where to plant your sun loving flowers.

Who knew trig is useful for flower planting?!

There is my new fact for the day learnt!

I do not want budgeting, parenting etc taught in schools, frankly I do not trust them not to brain wash the children that debt is good, saving bad, they'll find that out for themselves when the first walk into a high street bank's branch, we don't need the schools interferring in the children's diets, health, sexuality, finances and parenting skills.
That's my job, I wish they would stick to and do well their jobs, Henry 8th etc

The OP is obviously out of order but lots of you are putting fuel into her argument (in a roundabout way) by coming up with lots of tiny details which you don't need to learn in school at all but which they are spending entire lessons on. This is the big problem in schools today, this is what we need to fix, this lack of profundity.

Things like knowing about friction in science- you find it out yourself. As I can remember I got the message much more quickly through falling over on the ice and changing my shoes so it wouldn't happen again than after two hours of Year 7 science lessons of measuring the time a car took to run down a slide made out of textbooks. And then a third lesson so we could copy up our wonderfully useful findings and mess around in another hour. This is supposed to be an Ofsted 'Outstanding' school.

And I hate this reliance on spellcheck. aggg

So, OP, what do you think kids are supposed to learn at home? Or are you suggesting that school should cover everything?

Re: Oxbow Lake

I was very delighted not so long ago when encountering a meandering stream recently, complete with an oxbow lake. I was able to bore the pants off my teenagers with my enthusiastic observations of undercuts and deposition. All that from learning about it 30 years ago. I was even tempted to buy an OS map to see if I could spot the features there and reel off my impressive recitations of 6-figure references.

It definitely beats playing the Wii and wondering about which knife was best for chopping onions (the thin one, because Force = Pressure/Area).

I dont think its useless but it doesn't half confuse me when people can say they have "5 gcse's" when they may have scored an F on them.

P=F/A . Sorry, Dr Renouf!

In a lot of ways you make an interesting point, but your thread title is inaccurate and serves only to get a lot of people's backs up!

YANBU to wonder whether most of the things that will be of practical use later on are taught in schools, and if not, why not

YANBU to argue that kids are "being tested and stressed out of their developing minds for way too long and from a ridiculously early age" - many on Mumsnet would agree with that.

But to extrapolate from those very valid points that "the English state education is useless" is a bit of a wild card!

I agree that they have formal tests too young, learning should be fun, especially at that age.

Maybe you should have removed the word "state" from your op

Daily Mail or troll op?