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.

Um Pythagoras' Theorum is about triangles

thirdspacelearning.com/gcse-maths/geometry-and-measure/pythagoras-theorem/

Pi (π) is the mathematical constant for circles

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

I memorized it to 3.141592654.

Both useful for architects, engineers, anyone trying to find area and builders.

I'm a Physics specialist, but teach all 3 sciences. Hardly anything we teach cannot be converted into a life lesson, and, in fact, I am using an awful lot of science every day without thinking about it. But I also point it out to the kids.

So when you ask "what have you learned at school today" you might get "pressure", but while that may have been the title of my lesson, I will have talked about the dangers of closed gas containers, the use of tyre pumps and why heels in sand may be a bad idea - things you regularly see people get wrong in the countless fail compilations the kids watch on tik tok.

We might do a few lessons on electricity, in which children will learn the basics of circuits, which my father used to wire a doll house when I was young and which I use to this day to sort basic things like finding a circuit fault in the house (is it the bulb, a loose wire or fuse), to attach a British plug to an appliance I brought over from my home country or to change a broken (or just ugly) light switch.

I teach kids about the relationship between surface area or air movement and the rate of evaporation, which, I point out to them, I use to my advantage when drying clothes outside. The number of kids who don't know that clothes dry perfectly fine even in temperatures like the ones we have now is astonishing.

But all of those things cannot be taught properly without a basic understanding of particles, or, in the case of electricity, why materials conduct electricity.

We also spend a lot of time talking about different types of power stations and the differences between renewable and non-renewable energies, and, in that, why the world is changing to electric cars, reducing plastic pollution or why electricity has become so expensive. We even cost electicity, and yes, we teach how an energy bill works.

Kids learn a lot of life lessons in school, but too many of them don't take an awful lot of it in and forget they've ever been taught this stuff.

Besides all these hidden little life lessons, which are rarely appreciated, don't forget that what your kids are getting from school is a formal qualification. And when you look back at your own formal qualifications, you will see that each and every one of them required more than just a bit of common sense.

I’m a secondary teacher and all these things are in the curriculum. They are taught how to budget, apply for mortgages, difference between credit and debit cards etc. have you actually approached the school to find out when in their curriculum it’s taught so of it your children may not have reached yet?

In terms of boiling and egg that’s your responsibility. Schools are not baby sitters you chose to have children some of these life skills you actually have to be bothered to teach yourself. If you don’t have time because of work etc that’s not the school’s fault.

Fed up that school aren't doing my parenting for me.

Fixed the title for you OP. This has always been a parents responsibility to teach their kids life skills, if you can't then the issue lies much closer to home.

There is no way in a school day us teachers have enough time to teach all of the curriculum we hope to teach let alone add extras that you should be teaching your child at home. Basic budgeting is often covered in social education along with other 'life skills' but not everything can be covered in extensive detail. You should be able to teach your children how to insure and tax a car, how to boil an egg, how to budget. YADBU.

Taking your examples:

Road tax/car insurance - talk to them when you're renewing your own - which you have to do anyway.
Creating a budget and sticking to it - share your family budget with them.
A lot can be covered over mealtimes - just starting from "this evening I need to..." or "I've just been looking at how to adjust our budget to cope with the fuel bills going up..."
Boiling an egg - getting them to boil the eggs while you do something else in the kitchen. Alternatively, if they've learned to read and use google, that should be enough!

They have put some financial education into the curriculum, which I'm glad about - many parents will teach their kids about the things that affect them, but they may not have a car, or pay tax, or understand the need for a pension themselves, so it would be good if schools covered it too. Unfortunately, I don't think it's being done very well yet. It was terrible at DD's school - they were just told "ask your parents about...", which meant it wasn't going to cover the gaps in what parents could teach them about, but it was lockdown at the time, so perhaps more understandable.

The premise of the OP is so odd that I actually read the thread expecting bison to be involved somehow....

Do you include nose blowing and backside wiping amoing the things that schools should teach?
I really don't know why some people have children at all!

Nowhere safe at all? No quiet car park (maybe late afternoon/early evening?), no playground, no footpaths? Nowhere you can walk to, go with friends, get a lift/bus/train? Nowhere on holiday or near family that you visit? Noone you know has a driveway you can borrow?

And I'm pretty sure that if you were motivated you'd find free swimming lessons or at the very least free swim sessions. I googled "free swimming" and have found several councils that offer a free swimming scheme and a couple of leisure centres that offer similar. And that's not actually me looking very hard.

I'm not judging anyone who cannot do these things but to say they're "impossible" is showing a lack of imagination really.

No I think it's time you parent them

@CremeEggsForBreakfast my kids swim like fish, thanks. I paid for swimming lessons. Our local car park was and still is full of yobs who race their bangers around it, so not that safe.

Your point about free swimming sessions is ridiculous. 1) they don't exist - there's a cost of living crisis on, and pools have incredibly high energy costs. 2) in order to learn to swim, you need proper lessons from someone who knows what they're doing.

Riding a bike really isn't a life skill any more, at least not in the UK. In the Netherlands (where I'm from) it absolutely is - but they have proper cycling infrastructure.

Surely those things are your job

Well Teachers only have them for 6 hours a day, with 30mins for assembly, 1hr for lunch and 2x¼ hr breaks. That leaves 4 hours each day. When are they meant to teach them life things?

In my view, life lessons are to be taught at home by our parents and our wider families.

School is already responsible for enough, and its not like we as parents do not have the opportunity to pass on teachable moments.

"Hey Johnny, it's time to renew my insurance, I'd like to show you how it's done, so you know for when you're older"
"Hey Johnny, let's talk about budgeting, my salary is X, here are our outgoings, it's a good idea to have savings, so this is what we do"...and each year, you can discuss more options of financial planning and ways to be stable in a financial sense.
Cooking is also a simple life skill, something many children will learn by being in a home where food is regularly cooked, its not that hard to involve children.

I'm a great believer in taking responsibility of educating our children as much as possible to ensure their brightest future possible, including education at home that builds self resilience, confidence and good emotional wellbeing. I don't understand some people expecting that their children learn everything they ever need to know at school.

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.

Why - are you going to keep those skills secret from them?

Oh stop with the special pleading - millions of parents work the same hours you do.

Yes Home Economics rather than "Food Technology"
My son must have made 50 Strawberry Cheesecakes in year 11.

You’re a parent. It’s your job to teach them those basic life skills.

Schools are there to educate children: maths, science, literature, the arts, languages.

Parents have a huge role to play too; teaching common sense paying bills and insuring a car is your job.

More real apprenticeships! I feel so sorry for the kids who even at 14/15 would be so much happier learning a skill/trade and just feel trapped in school.

Oh dear.

We kept making sausage rolls for the different kinds of pastry

Granny is that you? Sorry but I very much wanted state education to include formal education that leads to internationally recognised academic qualifications. If we reduce it to life skills all the private schools will continue to teach academic skills and all the professional jobs will continue to be dominated by people who can pay leaving the lower orders to know there place and keep sewing buttons and boiling eggs... It's unbelievably retrograde.

You do realise what you have listed is called PARENTING...?

And of all the stuff you consider pointless in science, it only takes one child to be inspired to take it further, and without those inspired ones, the world would be a very different place to live in.

Maybe be a responsible parent and actually teach your children these things! Don’t be the parents that expects someone else to do it for you. Talk to your kids as you do things, involve them when you cook and wash. It really isn’t hard.