To think school is just crap

[moanymoaner]

I mean why in 2019 are we still teaching children the same generic subjects , making them choose what they want for a future at 14 when they care about nothing and making them sit exams at 15/16 that they will have to rely on for jobs for the rest of their lives!!

As time goes on the more appealing home Ed is becoming , if nothing else than my children being victims of other people's horrors!

I'm genuinely interested in people's thoughts around it . Also I'm not by any means dissing teachers , it's government policy not teachers .

I sort of agree tbh.
If you have a child that isn't academic and parents not particularly bright, unable to see the importance of education past 14 . Isn't that child better off learning a trade than being forced down an academic route.
That's what used to happen and nobody used to complain of not being able to cope with the demands because they were on the right course.

Home Ed is another kind of inflexible community when it comes to opinions and values though
This ^

But the skills you learn through the boring old subjects are important! English isn't just spelling and grammar; it's constructing arguments, essay writing, debating, public speaking. Speaking of which - I learnt more about sentence construction and grammar in French than I did in English. History isn't just boring old facts - it's politics and culture and philosophy. Biology isn't just rote learning the Krebs cycle, physics isn't just diagrams of electrical circuit. Exams teach you how to study, how to cope under pressure, how to write as fast as your brain can think.

People get out of school what they put in. If you're engaged and enthused you're going to come out with a well-rounded education and a vast number of transferable skills. If you're not bothered and happy enough to just show up and see your pals you'll be bored and maybe scrape through some exams.

As I see it one of the biggest problems with education right now is that parents don't see the bigger picture, and that passes on to the kids.

oany this is really bad : Subjects moved so fast I didn't pick things up. I was called thick and accused of not listening . This still happens now to many pupils
I hope this has changed. We have a much better understanding of learning needs. If you see no change, maybe the school is at fault, or maybe your approach to school because of bad experiences.

@Divgirl2 I absolutely see the bigger picture , I help my children gain the best opportunities to learn about these subjects outside of school as possible however my point (again) is that the subjects are not in depth enough , they just move from one to the next in order to meet exam targets.

Divgirl2 I think I love you. All the yes.

oany not 8. Depth enough? This seems the opposite of what you have said before. GCSEs cover a basic curriculum in a simple-ish level of detail. A levels are for detail, then degree.

@cardibach yes you may be right. I don't tell my children this and I always ensure I'm paying full attention to what they are doing so I can support them , something I didn't have however I just have overall issues with the one size fits all system that we still have .

How on earth will they learn science, budgeting, accounting if they don’t have a good level of numeracy or literacy?

But sec school Maths and English isn't "numeracy or literacy" - it's far beyond that, even for those who havn't mastered the basics - that's the problem - trying to teach pythagoras or algebra to kids who don't even know their times tables or prime numbers, trying to teach Shakespeare to kids who can barely read and write. It just turns off the kids from their school, and once they're disengaged, they lose the interest.

@Kazzyhoward yes!

Stop projecting your bad experiences onto your son. Teach him all those practical skills yourself. Try and be interested in what he's doing at school. Don't blame the system for things you can improve quite easily with a bit of effort.

Otherwise you're limiting a large number of kids' futures to plumbing and hairdressing at a very early age.

I wonder why statements like this give me the rage...

Oh yes, because plumbing and hairdressing aren't careers anyone should actually 'aspire' to. (Tell Nicky Clarke or John Frieda that)

I think what you’re suggesting is to revert back to Grammar/Secondary Modern? I don’t think that’s a bad idea in principle. Has some flaws of course.
They all do. But add back the Technical colleges where you had mixed academic/vocational lessons and you're not herding everyone into exactly the same system.

@cardibach again maybe I'm not coming across as I intend , apologies , it's the one size fits all, covering the same subjects but without making them relatable . Not meeting individual needs of the pupils (I know this would be impossible!) young people leaving school without GCSE's , none at all.

@Fazackerley I think you will find I don't put it onto my son. He's not in this forum. I nurture and support his learning , I just see his high school experience extremely close to how mine was!

Are you a single parent? What's his dad's attitude towards education?

monay it’s not one simple fits all. It’s one size calculated to fit the biggest number possible.
Nanny I’m sure you can see that most hairdressers are not Nicky Clarke. And that Trianon, say, Stephen Hawking, as a plumber would have been a huge loss to science if he hadn’t known early that’s what he wanted.

@Fazackerley not sure where that is even a point but no I'm not a single parent. His dad feels similar .

It's a point because dads can be be pretty influential!

I HE my DD because she was badly bullied and the school did very little about it.

She does maths and English to the curriculum, although this is not a legal requirement, and some biology. She goes for a run most days, has learnt to sew (for fun) and will be attending a 14-16 unit in a college to get her maths, English and biology GCSEs. This with her karate and Air Cadets will all lead to her desired career of being a PTI in the RAF.

MY DS is year 7, has no clue what he wants to do and was in despair at the year 6 SATS, but we got him through them. The schools feel so much pressure, they then pass that on the the pupils and parents. I still feel that school is the right place for DS though.

Absolutely agree! I actually did homeschool for a bit because I was fed up with the system/ bullying/ lack of creativity offered in the curriculum. Stopped because of outside pressures.

I was just thinking this yesterday though.. why do they need to learn so much useless crap? It would be so much better to encourage each child's passion and develop it. Also, my eldest daughters teachers: her PE teacher told her that you can only get a 'stitch' from sitting (tell that to my body every time I tried running) and her history teacher told the class that there were no skills to be gained from playing video games (which is false). They're still not taught critical thought and are still made to think of teachers as 'all knowing', and let's face it, they're only human. Another example is at my daughters graduation from primary school, the principal gave a speech saying that all kids just needed to be 'kind'.. what does that even mean? In respect to education, I disagree. All kids need to read/question/research/enquire. Leave 'kindness' lessons to the parents. I just that was such an awfully lacking message to leave school children with. (Just to be clear, I DO like my children to be kind but that's what I encourage at home)

I don't like the school system, but it's been pretty clear to me that it's just state funded babysitting to keep parents in jobs for some time now.

I think it's bloody rude and offensive to call teachers state funded babysitters

Totally agree OP! That’s why there’s home schooling.

It’s because schools are there to teach children how to be obedient little slaves for the system.

It’s designed to programme them away from the individuals that they are to cardboard cutouts for society.

@Fazackerley I'm sorry you're 'offended', what would you like me to do about that? Can you offer another view?

I agree school is really exceptionally boring, even for very bright or academic kids. Both my children are high achievers and both of them dislike secondary school quite a lot of the time for different reasons. The lessons are very similar and formulaic and there is a huge emphasis on memorizing and rote learning at GCSE, so that there's no interest in learning for learning's sake, just to perform it later. One of mine also hates the social side of school, all the make friends, break friends stuff - they say if they could just go there, do the lessons, not interact, and see friends out of school it would be a lot easier. There's a lot of low level bitching, although bullying is really stamped on these days.

Both of them love learning in their spare time, attending hobby clubs and learning stuff from online videos. It isn't that they dislike learning, but school is quite tedious in multiple ways. I felt the same, I only started to really love learning at A level when following interesting topics where we went into real depth, using real books (instead of 'learning materials') and then again at university.

I also think it is a shame that many 13, 14, 15 year olds don't work any more as this was a great way for them to start bridging the gap between child and adult worlds. I started working on Sundays aged 13 and loved getting my pay packet. Those social and people skills stood me in good stead.

It's not just about whether you are academic or not, I'm sure schools do serve the less academically oriented badly but they are very restrictive places for more academic children as well, who may have the talent to develop more physical skills or work experience or people skills if given the opportunity. Schools here are incredibly exam oriented and this stunts children's ideas about the world and what makes them successful, I see this all the time at university, student who are trained in regurgitating information without it really going through their heads, not really having any idea about where they are headed or what this is all for. It's quite sad and on a bad day I feel guilty about putting my children through the current English state system, on a good day I think I put up with it, they'll survive and hopefully go on to live more interesting lives in the future.