Fed up with my kids going to school and not learning life lessons.

[Ncoopa]

Does anyone else think we need a serious rethink of our education system?

Pythagoras, algebra, complex verbs, chemical make up of plutonium, these are just a few things my kids have learnt about this week.

They will come out of the education system not knowing how to insure a car or road tax. How to boil an egg. How to create a budget and stick to it.

Is it time we say it’s time to stop? And reevaluate? And stop wasting 5 hours a week on science when hardly any then go on to use it?

I really think it probably is.

I think it’s really really important that it’s made mandatory for schools to teach that using multiple exclamation marks doesn’t make your argument more compelling

Boiling an egg isn't exactly rocket science. Neither is googling how to insure a car. 😂

I do agree that there is a lot of focus on academia and almost zero on stuff like trades, which is odd as trade jobs are generally more financially lucrative unless you're in senior management.

Yes we all know that. Schools do teach basic cooking and sewing.

Children go to school for an academic education. Life skills are what you learn outside of school.

they try to then we get people on here claiming they're trying to make them 'woke'

So a good example off the top of my head would be when I want to work out what price to set an item at such that we still make a specific profit on it. I know what the end number should be, I know all the fixed costs, I can then use algebra to calculate how much we should sell it for to get that target profit.

Even outside of work I use it - I was cooking macaroni cheese recently (apologies, this is weirdly specific) but I had more pasta than the recipe said. Using algebra, I worked out what I had multiplied the recipe quantity by and then used that for the rest of the ingredients to scale it correctly.

I think people actually do have more knowledge of this stuff than they give themselves credit for, they just don't realise they're using it.

Sport also uses algebra and various maths techniques,

Snooker players need to know angles, where to hit a ball to make it go on a certain path. Basketball players need to work out angle of throw, how much force is needed to reach the hoop. Footballers how much force, what angle for the perfectly weighted pass to another player.

Thank you! He absolutely loves macaroni cheese so I'm going to recreate your conundrum and get him to work it out and then reveal that he has just used algebra.

Perfect.
I'm so glad I asked!

Thank you for taking the time to explain

Hahahahahahahahaha

Go on then. You do it. You take the time out of your day to teach kids inane shite that they could learn from Google and leave schools to teach what they should be. Otherwise I don’t want to hear you complaining when your future doctor can’t do basic addition (like OP, who thinks 3+8+10=24) because we scrapped maths to let children with shit parents look at a goat.

Science is imperative to my job so I wouldn't ditch science but I do agree op that less emphasis on pythagoras, more emphasis on life skills= good.
One of the apprentice contestants, Avi has a business that focuses on these life skills, such was his concern about lack of education about these basics.

It can be a vicious circle, if parents don’t understand budgeting etc and get into financial problems, it’s likely their DC might too. So surely better for schools to teach the basics to try and help those children cope and make better life choices

For children who struggle with maths or wanting to study it, better to study how maths works in real life

OP I don't understand why, when you are going to boil an egg, you don't say "come here Tommy" and teach them as you do it.

Same with anything else you do at home. You are going to do it anyway so why not show your child at the same time?

These are all life skills that you have which you can pass on!

The best way to learn these things is by being involved. Sitting in a classroom and being shown how to arrange car insurance in theory is going to be dull and dry and meaningless. A parent getting a child involved in arranging their actual car insurance may still be dull but will have some meaning. It's ridiculously simple to do online. When I got my first can at 17 I had to start at the top of the list in the yellow pages and keep phoning until I found a price that was reasonable.

How to boil an egg fgs. Yep let's supply all schools with 30 saucepans, fully fitted and plumbed kitchens and do a lesson in boiling eggs. Save the parents the trouble. Half term's scheme of work - Wk 1 soft boiled Wk 2 hard boiled Wk 3 scrambled Wk 4 poached Wk 5 fried Wk 6 omelettes.

@Murdoch1949 many schools do offer some form of cooking teaching

I completely agree that children need to be taught 'life lessons'. I disagree about who should do that. There are a few things that could be taught in a 'general knowlege ' type of class, I include basic accounting in there (i.e. How to keep count of your income and expenditure). Basic cookery and recipe reading. Basic sewing, i.e.sewing on a button. Basic nutrition, i.e. what vitamins are, why you need them, what foods they are in. However I also think it is better if parents have the responsibility for doing that... It doesn't have to be lessons, teaching by example is really important.
When I was at school (boarding school a very very long time ago) we had general knowledge classes in the sixth form. We learned how a combustion engine worked, very basic sex education (mainly about the importance of contraception), a little bit of politics, some nutrition, that was about it I think. I learned most of what I know by observing my parents, reading the newspapers etc. and the rest I had to learn along the way. However there are some children whose parents don't have even the basic knowledge themselves. It still astounds me when I realise that there are adults who have no idea what the basic food groups are and what is in them. That don't know where milk comes from. That don't realise that if they only have x amount of money they can't have the same lifestyle as her down the road who has xxx amount of money. Who don't know how to cook - and I don't mean anything complicated, I mean don't know how to cook a fried egg or a bowl of plain pasta to put ready made sauce onto. And who don't know even how to thread a needle.
So - I believe absolutely that parents should bear the responsibility for teaching life lessons but, as some (few) parents are just not capable of that then basic life skills should be taught in schools.

And I freely admit I don't know much about the modern state education system before anyone points that out - what I do know about is the number of very poorly educated adults who either didn't receive the education they needed or weren't encouraged to understand why they need it.

That's your job, pet.

I don't see why my kids should be taught a stripped back curriculum because you are to busy to parent. I am in fact pretty sick of the constant suggestion that state school children need only be taught the basics ready for the world of work. This is not Brave New World.

So no, YABU. Find some time to parent.

Why's it my partners responsibility to teach your children how to insure a car, but not your responsibility?

Plenty of this generation won't need to drive or own a car, so not sure the car stuff is an important life lesson

Someone must be looking after the children if both parents are working. These things should be covered by someone out of school. I talk to my GC (8) about life subject matters. A quick Google shows me that car insurance is covered on the BBC website. There are forums for young people. Sky news does a young person's programme. It's never been easier to learn about these things, so I don't think that they should be covered in school. Further education and the possibility of funding should, so children know their options.

Life skills are part of parenting!
I have taught my children to budget, cook, insure a car etc.

These are responsibilities you take on when you have a child, you don't just feed and cloth them and expect school to do the rest.

That's part of the English language curriculum that OP wants to strip back....