Don't stay in school.

[crazyauntie]

This song has gone viral I think is a excellent message to schools all over the uk. One school has already listened
What are your opinions about it? Do you think our schools are providing adequate education or could it improve? I honestly think our schools systems should and could change if we are getting enough backing.

the best thing you can learn is how to learn

sorry i am a bit drunk up late by the way

I think he makes a lot of valid points. The response piece just isn't true, kids are not already taught most of those things and just because they may be able to be taught in full doesn't mean it isn't worth doing.
Why is MFL not started until secondary school in the UK!? And why do we learn French and not more useful widely spoken languages?
We can still teach the core subjects we could just have more life skills taught in a PSE. Have PSE a few times a week instead of once.
I don't think PE teaches anything about keeping healthy! It's just learning a few sports no one wants to play.

Well, I have just watched the song and the video link. I think he is very eloquent and makes some excellent points.

To say that you can't let kids choose (too difficult) therefore what he says is a waste of space is really missing his point.
All kids can and should be taught a range of basic life skills. At the moment many of these are not included in our education system.

To take the point above about maths being important to the economy. If every child left school with a good understanding of how to balance a household budget, pay your bills, understand how credit card interest rates work etc, THAT would be maths in action in a way which would be very helpful to the economy.

I don't think he is saying that everything should be optional, I think he is saying that the core mandatory part of school should include a range of life skills and the extra part should be the special interest subjects, whereas at the moment it is the other way round.

In the US every child is taught how their government works. the basics, what is congress? What is the role of the president? How are decisions made about local/federal issues? etc. Very basic how does your country work. That isn't on our curriculum as a standard that every child learns. I think it should be.

Learning is a life-long process. Our species is constantly learning. Of course you don't cram all the life skills in by the time you finish school at 16.

What would you drop to make room for these life skills lessons in the school day? Drama, geography, 2nd MFL, textiles? I vote that instead our culture drops football leagues, fashion rules and methods (who needs makeup or hair dye, we can all wear the same clothes and shoes), youtuber names and electronic games. Plenty of room in teenage heads to learn life skills if they didn't waste so much time learning & remembering all that rubbish.

They CHOOSE to spend their time learning all that stuff instead.

Life skills is an interesting one, particularly the contraception debate. I've taught sex-ed, done the whole condoms on bananas thing and it's fine, students ask sensible questions we move on.
But now looking at my own teenage kids, I'd rather they asked me those questions, as I've seen them grow, change, develop, laugh, cry. I want to discuss the fact that their bodies are changing, boyfriends, girlfriends etc. I want to make sure these vital conversations are tailored to them exactly, not full of generalisations. If my daughter got pregnant it would impact our family, not the school, therefore it is my duty as a parent to teach her about contraception, to help her make sensible decisions that are right for her.
School is to broaden students knowledge across a range of subjects, some bits may never be looked at again, but others will strike a chord, an enthusiasm, and hopefully create a thirst for learning and self improvement. From school, students begin to think about their futures, what interests them, what are they good at, where do they see themselves in the world?

ragged, for most kids, lessons in how to balance your bank account and what a mortgage is, are far more important than many of the subjects we teach. So, yes, I would drop a small amount of all the lessons you stated, in order to teach life skills.

Of course you won't have them all learnt by the time you leave school. But the basics should be there. We do it over some things, look at all the fuss over teaching kids to cook because we have an obesity crisis. That is a prime example.
And yes, of course they stuff their heads with football etc, but one of the points made of the video is that many parents don't have the ability, or the inclination to teach kids stuff. Why should many kids fall through the gap because their parents don't teach them life skills?

eg - would you rather your teen was taught first aid by an unqualified parent or by a qualified person in school? And if you had an accident, would you rather be surrounded by a crowd who have no training, or a crowd where everyone had had basic first aid training at school?

"To take the point above about maths being important to the economy. If every child left school with a good understanding of how to balance a household budget, pay your bills, understand how credit card interest rates work etc, THAT would be maths in action in a way which would be very helpful to the economy."

Every household is budgeted differently, surely these tasks are parental responsibility? The school teaches the maths skills to be able to make these calculations, the application of these skills in real life should surely happen in "real life".

Real life scenarios are studied, every school I've worked in does this, but these aren't always remembered, because they are not relevant at the time. Many life skills are learnt on a need to know basis, because then they are relevant and useful. Most teens would have little interest in what a made up household budget looks like, outside of their own budget which applies to them and effects what they can/ can't afford.

Interestingly the high school my DC go to has from last year taken advantage of the change in education participation age to keep the year 11s 2 weeks past the last GCSE exam and spend those 2 weeks focusing on exactly these kinds of things. They will be doing parenting, finance, first aid etc.

Odd boots that is such a good idea. I also like the idea that when doing PE teachers could introduce other topics that are related to sport. The same can be done with other subjects for eg studying history sits well with citizenship so when dealing with the nature of monarchy through the ages additional information could be given about modern day government and how it works.

Where is the time in the curriculum for this?

I teach maths and do all I can to relate it to real life. Unfortunately so much of my time is spent teaching the algebra that the financial life skills suffer.

Those saying 'you learn enough maths by 15', come and see my year 11 set 2, they struggle to understand the concepts of numeracy. They struggle to filter the necessary information to solve a problem. They have never learned how to learn.

In the old days this would have been taught at home. Financial maths was for me. How did people aged 40 learn about tax, I bet it wasn't at school. Whoever said schools can't teach everything are correct.

I suppose it all comes down to whether you see schools as places where the future workforce is trained in the Government-approved curriculum for good citizens, or whether you see them as places of wider education with that as an end in itself.

If the former, you'll support the YouTuber. If the latter, then you'll be seeking as liberal education as you can afford (that may mean HE or the bohemian end of private schools).

if he wants a utilitarian curriculum that ignores intellectual stuff like quadratic equations and isotopes, then isn't he rather suggesting a secondary modern system?

How many mumsnetters would rather send their kids to a secondary modern-type school than a grammar?

steppe financial education is now statutory, children will be taught all that.

Wait a minute, don't we parents have a job to do too? All the practical things in his song that SHOULD be taught in school, DH and I are teaching DS. We talk about health, about politics, about money. He reads newspapers and magazines. He learns as much by living, observing and talking to his parents than in school.
Lets not expect school to do everything for us. I cannot teach DS latin or advanced maths and I am glad the school does it for me.

I have to admit that I find it slightly annoying that the young man in the video complains vigorously that he doesn't know his human rights or what laws there are because he wasn't taught them at school in a video he has published on the World Wide Web into which he could have just typed "what are my human rights?" or "what does the law say about x in the UK" and received an instant and up-to-date answer.

I'm mean, how helpless is he exactly?

Not too helpless to know how to edit a video quite well and dye his hair multiple colours? He's obviously studied a lot on them skills.

I'd drop Art & Drama from NC in a heartbeat, but can see why others would find that horrifying. It's easy to criticise, bit harder to find the perfect balance of what education should be.

I agree about parents being responsible to teach many of these things.
School cannot teach everything. They also can never win. Sex ed is offered - people complain it's too much, too young. Politics is offered - they're being indoctrinated......

Just from tv shows it looks like a lot more life skills are taught in USA schools. I've seen them be taught all about politics and the World politics, looking after a baby, drivers education. They manage it. It'd just been expanding certain parts of PSE.

Aaaaaagh, so many people thinking education is like when they are at school! I teach PSHE - SRE is NOT just about heterosexual relationships, we cover as many forms of contraception as possible, we cover budgeting, financial management, call it what you will. We also teach about DV, road safety, rights and responsibilities, politics etc etc. all schemes of work are adapted to reflect modern day trends, so things like legal highs now feature,

It IS vital children are taught these things but many teachers are not trained well enough to be able to deliver such a vast curriculum.

It'd just been expanding certain parts of PSE.

At the expense of.....what?

Noblegiraffe. How do they manage it in the US? They have the same amount of time.
It can be instead of things like assembly and registration which waste time.
When kids take their options there could be more freedom in not having to pick one from each set of subjects. I wish I'd been able to study history and RE instead of history and textiles! More choice would be good.

I don't know how the curriculum is arranged in the US, nor if what you see on TV shows applies to everyone, but if you want to teach kids how to drive or look after a baby in the UK, then you will have to get rid of something else. You can't have it all. So is it to be art, drama, music, technology? They're usually seen as expendable.

I agree with noble's point that this young man, or anybody else for that matter, can learn anything he wants off the internet. It rather reinforces that school should be where you learn the uncomfortable stuff; that you ought to know but don't necessarily want to learn.