Schools not teaching the right stuff for the 21st century

[sammymum1]

I've often wondered whether school would teach DS (age 10) and DD (age 7) the right skills for the world they'll enter as adults. Being under lockdown recently and seeing their school work has got my thinking...

School is great for the social side and core subjects, I just feel a there are some basic skills (like good diet, exercise, money management etc) that are only ever going to be taught in the home and valuable skills for the 21st century (entrepreneurship, creative thinking, coding, Chinese etc) that aren't the focus of our education system

Anyone else feel that way or just me? Perhaps I'm overthinking it?!

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has come across any good resources online on the best ways to introduce some of these extra-curriculars without being overbearing?!

You need to add 'general knowledge' to that list.

My dc are young adults and I'm frequently amazed by their complete lack of general knowledge about fundamental stuff that everyone should know.

Diet and exercise are pretty well covered. So is coding, it’s a key element of the computing curriculum and they start very young with this using bee bots and programs like scratch. I agree with money management though. You can start throwing Chinese into the mix but that would be very time consuming so what do you suggest they take out? The curriculum is jam packed already and everyone has their own ideas about what should be in it - every time something is going wrong in society someone shouts ‘this should be solved by making children learn x y z at school’. I suggest parenting classes, perhaps then future parents can take more responsibility for teaching children stuff that should really come from the home anyway.

Agree with @pinkblueberry coding is heavily covered even in primary school, so is diet and exercise. Entrepreneurship starts to br covered by work experience and business weeks etc that schools have.
Money management needs to have more focus I agree.

Not sure chinese is essential.

Schools don’t set the curriculum

They are told what to teach

Parents need to stop assuming school covers every educational aspect and do somethings themselves

You know those kids that can’t tie shoes laces or hold a knife and fork? Schools job apparently.

It is probably because of your children’s ages that you may not yet know that they have and will come across all that you have listed, before they hit 18 (yes, even Mandarin in a lot of schools!)

Health and well-being can be covered using this site
www.a-life.co.uk/information-for-teachers/lesson-plans-and-resources/

For money management and ‘life skills’, this is a good site

barclayslifeskills.com/educators/?campaign=Google_RS-2018_LifeSkills_Teachers_Generic_Broad&chnnl=PSG&gclsrc=aw.ds&&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsZyNl8LR6AIVV_lRCh3zTQz-EAAYASAAEgKFpPD_BwE

For coding, you can try www.smallbasic.com or www.code.org (although they will have or will come across this particular site in their schooling, guaranteed!

Look at Memrise or Duolingo for languages (although again, they will use these sites, in Secondary school, absolutely)

All of the things you have enlisted are taught in schools. Not sure why you have the impression a they aren’t.

Listed, not enlisted!

Surely parents have some responsibility for this too? A lot of life skills (including budgeting) is covered in PHSE but many students do not take this seriously as it's not an examinable subject. Schools don't have a choice in what they teach - the government sets out the national framework. Schools can't win.

General knowledge is a good one. My dd10 knows the capital cities and flags of the world. We love travelling, so this interests her. One day the teacher was asking about capital cities in a quiz around class. The kids looked blankly on as the majority hadn’t a clue, even the teachers face was a picture when dd got them right. Dd loves a tv quiz.

The school I work in has a general knowledge club and the compete against other schools.

I think much of this is just parenting.

good diet, exercise, money management etc) that are only ever going to be taught in the home and valuable skills for the 21st century (entrepreneurship, creative thinking, coding, Chinese etc) that aren't the focus of our education system

My DCs have learnt about all of these except Mandarin at their non-selective state schools. They can learn Russian, French, German or Spanish.

If your child has a rubbish general knowledge then that's down to you as a parent. Schools can't possibly be responsible for teaching all "general knowledge". Just like the teaching of all life skills can't be the responsibility of schools either.

Parents can and should be responsible for teaching these things to their kids. How about letting schools concentrate on teaching the things that parents are not equipped to teach; calculus, German grammar, Shakespeare.

Thank you for the suggestions @ChloeDecker!

@Pinkblueberry@Russell19@GreenTulips@mnahmnah@sanityisamyth@bonnieclydesdale
sorry my original message wasn't very clear, I appreciate these subjects are covered to an extent by the curriculum and there is only so much time in the school day!

My question was looking to understand what the best resources out there are for kids to go deeper on these topics?

Any suggestions welcomed!

Creative thinking is covered in technology and art.

Entrepreneurs is in the DT curriculum.

I've realised that some of the core work skills that industry complain students aren't capable of doing are just not known by many teachers. The move to online learning, there absolute panic by so many teachers that they need to learn softwares they haven't previously used was across all sorts of social media....
Yet in the workplace, video conferencing was taking place many years ago, using office 365 and teams has been in work places and established for many yet schools didn't even know they had it.
I'm really hoping the outcome of this will be a willingness to embrace technology and its benefits rather than try and ignore it.

Schools can now choose their own curriculum but they would be stupid not to ensure that it allows for progression and success in results - the basic knowledge and skills and builds up to allow kids have a good grounding for the exam year content.

Teaching Chinese is a daft idea imo. The vast, vast majority of kids who learn a language at school will only ever use it on holiday, if that. Many kids already find learning a European language in school bloody hard. Learning a language like Chinese with a different script and barely any similarities to English in a few lessons a week, when hardly any of them will ever travel to China is pretty pointless. And I say that as a language teacher who would love to learn Mandarin for fun.

As for the rest, kids are taught about healthy eating, exercise and coding. They are taught creative thinking in everything they do. I don't think 'entrepreneurship' is really a subject in its own right. I agree they should be taught about money management though. General knowledge is amassed over a lifetime through a huge range of sources and subjects, you don't teach it!

slothbyday - there's nothing terribly difficult about video conferencing...unless you are trying to teach 30 teenagers who don't want to be doing it and whose behaviour you have no effective means of controlling at a distance. Also, technology in schools is great but also massively problematic from a point if view of misuse, cyberbullying etc.

slothbyday

If you mean video conferencing and a means to improve teachers knowledge, it is used by exam boards for feed back for exams and NEA.

If you mean video conferencing for lessons, it opens up a whole swathe of safeguarding issues.

Schools can now choose their own curriculum
not entirely true.

General knowledge aka learning lists of facts is pointless if they don't know how to apply them. Knowing that Ulaanbaatar (don't think I've spelled that quite right) is the capital of Mongolia is useless if you don't know where Mongolia is. I can reel of lists of countries, and know roughly where they are on a map, but it's not something you need to know really. Knowing how to find out information is important.

Point taken on chinese @lazylinguist, not one for the curriculum necessarily but something I think could be useful for my kids over the next 10-50 years!

If anyone has some tips on great sites for guidance on how to best help kids nurture an interest coding, languages or other useful skills I would love the recommendations! :D

Touch typing is an really useful skill. I’ve been bribing (unsuccessfully) my dc to learn this.

Eventually dd (year 11), has decided to get started. One week on, and she’s learned the whole keyboard, and is up to 35 words per minute. Now I’ve got to pay up

Matilda, totally agree that touch typing is really useful. Could I ask how your dd is learning this? Did you use an online programme?

Yes, touch typing. There should be a national effort to make sure every child learns this key skill.