To wish schools taught kids....

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Lighthearted... but I wish they did an entire term on 'looking for things with eyes AND hands'... I worry for my children - they can't find their own feet!
Any suggested lessons?

There is something I'd like them to teach less of though. Somehow all my children are mini lawyers who excel in negotiations and understanding their "rights". It is apparently an infringement of their rights to be expected to do, well, anything at all apparently.

They've definitely not learned this from me or dh, so I can only blame the school.

Fucking Hell, cheer up yeah?

But there's nothing funny about it.

Why can't my kids do this normal life skill?
I know, I'll blame a completely irrelevant person.

It's hardly stand up comedy is it?

Also made even less funny by the fact that there are way too many parents who actually behave like this. These days they even want the teachers teaching their kids how to wipe their own bloody arse. It's ridiculous.

You mean this one?!?

You say "lighthearted" - but this falls 100% into the category "It's the job of parents". It really is.

There’s a phrase often uttered to children:

”We look with our eyes, not our hands”, when we don’t want them to touch things.

No wonder they get confused.

Oh dear OP. Prepare yourself for a lot of whinging.

It is a normal life skill for adults, but absolutely normal for children. It's just annoying at the time and blatantly no one's actual fault.

I doubt that many parents are really complaining if teachers take threads like this and see them as valid complaints about the school.

The law requires for children to be at school for an awfully long time - they might as well teach them be an all rounded person, and less of all the facts they’ll never recall.

1. much more guidance on how to work with each other
2. much more focus on cohesiveness in class and school, accepting each other’s differences, and actually creating an environment where bullying cannot arise
3. To play wholesome games. I don’t feel like they are watched adequately during playtime and a lot of unacceptable behaviour is taking place, a lot of children feel hurt/ left out/ insulted, rude language and attitude from gaming/movies for older children becomes the norm when left to their own devices.
4. practical knowledge, things done by hand, more art so children who are not academic don’t lose confidence
5. shorter lessons with more fun in them, to reduce disruptions / disrespect and to help children succeed in learning, rather than ask for too much and end up with resistance and unwanted behaviour.
6. more outdoors time, every day
7. teach teachers that being positive, caring and supportive is really import for young children - they need grown-up people who smile at them and encourage them and don’t just scold (couldn’t help myself with this one - obvs, it’s just our experience with this year’s teacher).

Happy children are good children and good learners.

"Look (at)" and "look for" are two conpletely different things though. I've never known anybody confuse them, unless English wasn't their first language.

My suggestions for things schools should teach: Latin and Greek. And German, which is apparently getting rarer in British schools.

I wish someone could teach my 12 year old how to look for things and also DH. I appear to be the only person in this house who can find things that are usually right in front of them 😂

Parents job , so is using a toilet and manners.
A teacher ends up controlling the badly behaved children and changing nappies.Not on.

That’s very good, sounds like a thoughtful school. I think stretching is really important and only something I fairly recently realised just how important. It helps keeps you supple as you age but difficult to catch up on all the lost years as you age and get creaky and stiff. If every child did it in class first thing it would become second nature to keep stretching through life. A lot of Asian schools do it, it doesn’t cost anything but has huge future benefits.

You've never worked in a school, OP?

95% of SLT have no idea where to find a file that you've uploaded twice, emailed to them three times with a full explanation and put two paper copies in their hands with the relevant sections flagged with luminous post-it notes.

And nobody can ever find the 20 reams of paper next to the photocopiers to top them up.

Should have put lighthearted in the title, OP.

I wish they taught teenagers that "it's in the fridge" should be enough info for them to find the thing, instead of collapsing into a heap of "oh mum, but which shelf?"

I think it would be good if schools taught kids how to recognise an attempt at humour and how not to take offence at the slightest thing.

You seem to be mixing up parenting and education.

Ahh see I teach my family (husband and children!) to look with their
mins first. Where did I last have it/use it/where it? Where might I have put it down? Is it something someone else might have borrowed. Saves a lot of energy randomly looking for things!

I've always said that at the start of Year 7 every child should be given a bus timetable, some money and a destination within 3 miles and then sent out in pairs to find their way there. And back.

So many secondary school pupils haven't the faintest clue how to travel independently or work out how timetables work. Travelling on public transport is a mystery as they get ferried around everywhere. I swear some parents would drive up the school steps if they could.

As I work in a school I know full well we're already teaching pretty basic stuff (washing hands, please and thank you, good morning, personal hygiene, goodbye, eye contact, sitting down for meals, some adults are reliable, using sanitary pads, preparing for interviews or appointments, mending clothes). It is honestly depressing how few children have experience of trustworthy and caring, consistent adults. A LOT of these answers are pie in the sky stuff compared to the reality of school.

I have actually considered putting the kitchen scissors on a chain... like a pen in the post office (showing my age)..

It was very clearly intended to be a joke. You don't find it funny and that's ok but that doesn't change the intention.

Maybe colleges can run some remedial classes for adults?
I trained dd pretty well by saying ‘look again, then if you still can’t find it I’ll come and help but if I find it quickly somewhere obvious or under something I will be very cross’.

there was a post in my mums group about a lady whose 20 year old daughter didn’t know how to post a letter. Didn’t understand the concept of stamps / how to write the address etc. funny! Except she was being deadly serious when she said “school seemed to have missed that life skill”

apparently she learnt it at school 🤷‍♀️

I remember being taught how to write different styles of letters (formal/casual etc) at school in the 80s and 90s.
It was part of English lessons.
That doesn't seem odd to learn that at school.

To be fair, the last time I posted anything was a bowel cancer screening test and before that, it would have been pre-Covid.

I had somebody help out with stuffing some envelopes for hand collection last year and ended up taking all of them back out and refolding them so the name and address was visible through the window (instead of carefully hidden inside the envelope) after they'd gone home for the day - don't suppose that person had ever needed to post anything, either.