AIBU to say they should NOT teach it in schools

[Calvinlookingforhobbs]

‘It’ being any problem that appears in our society... budgeting for adults, healthy eating, parenting skills, contraception, gardening, etc surely education and parenting are different?

School is about educating children to prepare them for life as an adult.

No it's not. That's what parenting is for. School is about academics. Preparing for the next academic stage of life.

So I agree OP. In principle at least. However I am also aware that for many school is the only way the playing field can be levelled, and I'm not sure what we can do about that. 1 hour of PHSE a week probably isn't enough for some, but not needed for others. Maybe making some of the curriculum more relevant - at least in the lower secondary years. So basic first aid taught as part of KS3 biology, budgeting as part of KS3 Maths etc. Two or three lessons might well be enough to equip someone with the basics they can apply when they need.

Or round up all the kids of feckless parents for compulsory Saturday am PSHE

The problem is that a lot of adults don’t know anyth8ng about any of the subjects you mention.
They dint how to budget (look at the number of people who are very heavily in debt)
They dint know how to eat heathly (look at the amount of people who are overweight)
Contraception has ways been part of the curriculum but look at the lack of knowledge of anything to do with reproductive organs (so contraception but also men having no idea that women have 3 ‘holes’ rather than 2 like them) etc...
Parenting lessons might also help a lot tbh. Look at the amount of adults who have basically been badly treated as children and struggle because of it.

Scientific literacy feeds into many areas of life.

Critical thinking - the government is telling you that x and y is true in an you are easing about the NHS. Because you have very basic stats you can see how they have been manipulated and criticise the article.

Basic scientific literacy is really important - look how many people believe things that are refutably false: vaccine scaremongering for example.

Basic life skills often require numeracy: finances, looking at mortgage rates, understanding compound interest, building a shed, working out how much paint you need for the funny shaped hallway. Doasages on the side of the calpol bottle.

And actually i do use trigonometry - for that most domestic of things, quilting ;)

To me the most basic core of educating a child is giving them the principles on which to build their learning. Literacy, numeracy and the critical thinking that sciences encourage. Everything else builds on it. The arts do too - all that essay writing and paint chemistry and analysis of sources, it’s ok at heart the same as those techniques.

To remove huge chunks of the science and maths curriculum would mean children losing some of that foundation and being left woefully short on those critical building blocks.

Typo: n an you are easing about the NHS should read in an article you are reading.

(Maybe we bring back typing too...)

Here's a novel suggestion. Why don't the teachers dedicate an inset day, you know that extra day off they use near Christmas, to a day of life skills teaching ie house hold budgets, healthy eating etc.

Shatner, there's a huge difference between GCSE and A Level maths. Even kids who got A* at GCSE can struggle to adapt to A Level work. There is no way you can introduce complex concepts for the first time at 16 and expect pupils to grasp them and learn enough to study a subject at degree level.
In order to make good A Level selections in yr 12, the child needs to know what they are choosing - if large parts of the course are totally unfamiliar, they won't be making informed choices and you will have high failure rates.

and for parents to be responsible for teaching life skills.

But how? How would you ensure it happened, how would it be monitored?

It wouldn't and it cant, so disadvantaged children would be at an even bigger disadvantage.

I think for most young people they would benefit more from learning how to do things like budgeting than they would knowing trigonometry

There is a balance to be found of course but saying it’s all down to parents leaves the most vulnerable children still in that position and that soon becomes a vicious cycle

In an ideal world, all parents would be ready willing and able to teach their children these things. But we don't live in an ideal world. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect school to touch on these subjects without losing out on any academic learning. From what I understand, the schools are already doing it these days? (might be wrong, maybe not all schools)

If the parents were themselves taught these things as children, we wouldn't need to re educate them now as adults. So whether we support the parents to provide this learning or we get the schools to teach it to children, somewhere along the way, people need to be taught this stuff.

Btw I agree that school should be a place to learn English lit and trigonometry.

But you just ant expect parents to teach a child to do things they dint know themselves.
The issue is the same than when you ask parents to read with their dcs in primary. Or to help them learn phonics/spelling. And those parents don’t know how to read or write.
It just doesn’t happen. And that’s why schools can’t 100% rely on the parents to do all that work.
Otherwise, parents ought to be able to teach their dcs to read and count and do simple maths too.
The reality is that a lot of them couldn’t do that.
And it’s hard enough for the children whose parents don’t have a handle of that. They do start with a big disadvantage in the current system . It wouod be unfair to tell them that school now doesn’t do any of that teaching because parents shouod be able to do that as it’s so basic.

IMO contraception or budgeting comes under the same umbrella. (Gardening doesn’t though)

I have some old family teaching books (late 40s maybe). Apparently back then children were taught such interesting things as how to make a cot/make baby clothes along with academic skills.

I think the issue is that yes, we will teach ds and bump how to budget, how to eat healthily/growing your own food/gardening, the importance of exercise, that smoking is bad etc etc but that not all parents will do the same. Both sets of grandparents garden a lot, 3 year old ds is currently growing sunflowers from seeds and has helped a lot in their gardens already including being a pro at podding peas (and eating half of them) as an example but that requires a garden/outdoor space and equipment. However teaching it in the class room can be used to illustrate all sorts of things as well as gardening, photosynthesis, stages of growth, passage of time, seasons, healthy eating, art, maths, english literature off the top of my head.

Having been in schools and seen how 10/11 year olds don't know how to make a sandwich then, yes, I do think they need to teach it in schools.

Asking where the margarine goes and where to put the sandwich filling at that age is pathetic. They should at least be able to work it out from having eaten a sandwich.

titchy At the fundamental element of course education is primarily as you state. However, schools are, bottom line, about children LEARNING things and educators TEACHING things. Things that help children develop into adulthood on a practical level such as personal finance, healthy eating, seem very sensible things to instil into children and young people that will actually more use to them than trig or religion (as examples)

Gardening has been proved to be very beneficial for mental and physical health, as wel, as hitting a lot of science targets, sustainability and environmental issues. More gardening in schools. Allotments even.

I’d replace team sports with useful stuff.

If we agree to teach healthy eating, can parents stop whining about lunch box tyranny and interfering?

I kind of agree with you. It does bother me that my kids have to waste time at school "cooking". I would rather they spend more time outside or at PE. It might not teach them anything academic, but it would be good for them, so on that aspect, at a push I would keep gardening.

You cannot learn to budget if you don't have basic numeracy, learning a foreign language is more than useful. There are so many more subjects they could do at school, instead of wasting time.

Buster72
Here's a novel suggestion. Why don't the teachers dedicate an inset day, you know that extra day off they use near Christmas, to a day of life skills teaching ie house hold budgets, healthy eating etc.

Bizarrely, less training for teachers doesn't do much for improving the education system.

If the schools are expected to teach them anymore we should probably just hand them over from birth and collect them when they’re 18, it’s the only way they’re going to be able to fit it all in.

Parents should be teaching budgeting, sex education, internet safety, hygiene, cooking etc and school should be focussing on academic subjects, plus art, music, PE.

However, given lots of parents can’t or won’t, then we have no option but to try to get as much taught in school as possible.

...but schools need more funding, more outside help & more hours in the week 😖

I think for most young people they would benefit more from learning how to do things like budgeting than they would knowing trigonometry

I agree for most kids. But what do you do about the 10% (or whatever) that DO need to know trigonometry in order to do A level Maths which they need in order to do x, y or z? Go back to a two tier technical/academic selection aged 13? The beauty of a comprehensive system which teaches everyone trig is that the son of the docker gets taught it too and gets a chance to follow an academic path rather than automatically follow dad into the dockyard.

Doing a budget is a practical application of maths. Using an excel spreadsheet to compile the budget is an application of computer science. They complement each other and are necessary for the world we live in.

Understanding interest rates, how mortgages and pensions work, how to choose a bank account, what your student loan repayments mean are all important skills to learn and might reinforce the maths underpinning it.

You could offer a “functional maths” course for most people with a further maths for those who would actually benefit, or want to learn it, the additional skills.

I am not religious, but you cannot understand the way the world works - history and politics, if you don't understand religion. It's important.
Primary schools do integrate life skills into lessons (budgeting as part of maths, for ex). My dc's class has a different topic each half term which incorporates all the academic subjects in ways that encourage the learning of life skills too. But I am uncomfortable with the idea that life skills should take priority over the academic learning.

And this stuff doesn't 'crowd the curriculum', it's generally all covered in a subject called PSHE, for one lesson a week, or even in form time which happens every day anyway.

This. Those bits that aren't already covered elsewhere in the curriculum, you tweak a PSHE session, job done. A lot of the time it is already covered somewhere in essence so it's more of a tweak to how it's delivered. For example cookery (ahem, sorry, food tech) and biology contained a lot of material relevant to healthy eating, PSHE and maths and business studies a lot relevant to budgeting etc.

SometimesMaybe
I am starting as a trainee teacher of Computer Science in September and I have actually thought about how I can try and make the syllabus more relevant to everyday life.

The excel budget spreadsheet was one idea that I had as well.