School curriculums

Really for a curriculum questions need to be asked to find out what we want children to get from a school education.

Are we wanting children to be prepared for certain workplaces, so identify some skills and funnel children into certain education paths or do we want children to have a broad education with capabilities to go off and find a job that suits them and pick up what skills they need?

Do we just want to fill children with as much knowledge as possible in all subjects, or educate in how to find knowledge and interpret sources and information?

How much life education should there be? The stuff that should come from parents. Some, lots or none?

Thanks to the rise of the internet and technologies like smart phones do we now end up with a question of do we need to teach much knowledge in schools? It's very unlikely you're going to be asked any knowledge based questions outside of a work setting that isn't a test or a quiz, as the person asking can just search for the information themselves. So do kids need to be taught when the Battle of Hastings was? Or do they need to be taught things like that in a more broad sense of how events shaped the country or events shaped the world.

Bottom line is what do you think a 16 year old fresh out of school should know from their time in school?
 


Qwerty said:
No, over half the Y6 walk home by themselves, a few Y5s also. Nothing a school can do about it. It's totally up to the parents. A headteacher would be vilified by the British public if a child went missing and they couldn't be found because the head wouldn't let them bring a phone to school.
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Fair dos. I had just assumed parents/carers/child care (whosever house they are going to when they walk home) wanted to go and pick up their kids from school.
Before anybody replies with the "I'm too busy with work" line. So am I, but I just say I am on the school run and that I will add on the time afterwards, which I always do.
 
Kent_Mackem said:
Fair dos. I had just assumed parents/carers/child care (whosever house they are going to when they walk home) wanted to go and pick up their kids from school.
Before anybody replies with the "I'm too busy with work" line. So am I, but I just say I am on the school run and that I will add on the time afterwards, which I always do.
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Try saying that if you work in a factory.
 
Qwerty said:
Try saying that if you work in a factory.
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But the kids will be going back to somewhere, right? Grandparents, a friend who offers childcare etc? We have plenty of them at the school gates too.

Anyway, no big deal. I was just surprised. I think 3 of our Y6s walk home but they all live within a couple of hundred yards.
 
As much as I wasn't keen on my secondary school at all, their fixation on "games" i.e. sports during the week certainly helped keep a lot of us in good shape.
Then again we had school on Saturday too so the 5 periods of games (2 and a 3) during the week made the 5 lessons on a Saturday
 
sambantam82 said:
Nice summation of 95% of kids tbh. The only thing that motivated me was avoiding a verbal (usually) pasting of my father.


Exactly this. Usually my opening gambit with a new class. I tell them my lessons will be boring at times and that they will probably think of a thousand things they would rather be doing but that it's necessary (insert boring exam speech).
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You're also priming them to see it as boring.
 
RossTheNinja said:
You're also priming them to see it as boring.
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They will find parts of it boring. It's inevitable. If I pretend everything is going to be more exciting than what they could be doing by their own volition then they'll think I'm more of a knob than they already do. Genuinely, you're better off 'levelling' with them.
 
sambantam82 said:
They will find parts of it boring. It's inevitable. If I pretend everything is going to be more exciting than what they could be doing by their own volition then they'll think I'm more of a knob than they already do. Genuinely, you're better off 'levelling' with them.
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Of course they're going to find bits of it boring, but you're encouraging that thought needlessly. Just like the typo in your post.
 
Threads about the school curriculum and what needs to be done to it often draw opinions from people who don’t particularly know what’s on the curriculum and how time is divided.

If history and geography are reduced on the curriculum for example they may as well no longer exist as subjects.
 
I'd pick 2 languages to be compulsory. Say Spanish and French.

It annoys me that people won't even make an effort when travelling and expect the locals to be fluent in English.
I work with French and Spanish people and although I'm not fluent by any means, I can follow basic instructions or understand a couple of sentences if I take my time.

I'm sure it would give foreigners a better opinion of us when we're abroad.
 
Doberman said:
I'd revamp English and maths to coincide with the modern world. Maths would be budgeting and personal finances instead of properties of shapes and English would be less Shakespere and literature and more online stuff (creating emails etc).
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I'd take issue with making these subjects overly utilitarian, though. I'm no great shakes at Maths, but I'm self-employed and do my own accounts and tax returns. It's mostly just basic arithmetic, some way below the level I needed to pass GCSE in 1992. Doing that GCSE I was exposed to various higher maths concepts. Personally, they left me cold and I dropped maths at 16, as soon as I could ... but my best mate was fascinated by them, took it much further and made a successful career out of it. First member of his family to go to Uni, nothing in his background that would have steered him there if it wasn't for getting a kick out of quadratic equations (or something).

Same with English. I'm too old to have been taught how to write an email, but we did have lessons about writing formal letters, job applications etc. But what excited me was the literature bit, exploring ideas, seeing how different people could start with the same text - possibly from 400 years ago - and be able to create and justify different interpretations. In my case, it's fair to say that due to my parents I'd have encountered that anyway, but a lot of my classmates would never have that opportunity (to follow, or ignore like I did with maths) unless it was available at school.

And if we're talking about 'the modern world', look up Gradgrind. A Dickensian character created to represent part of the conversation you and I are having right now. Nineteenth century to 2021, modern enough for us?
 
pride of the north said:
I'd take issue with making these subjects overly utilitarian, though. I'm no great shakes at Maths, but I'm self-employed and do my own accounts and tax returns. It's mostly just basic arithmetic, some way below the level I needed to pass GCSE in 1992. Doing that GCSE I was exposed to various higher maths concepts. Personally, they left me cold and I dropped maths at 16, as soon as I could ... but my best mate was fascinated by them, took it much further and made a successful career out of it. First member of his family to go to Uni, nothing in his background that would have steered him there if it wasn't for getting a kick out of quadratic equations (or something).

Same with English. I'm too old to have been taught how to write an email, but we did have lessons about writing formal letters, job applications etc. But what excited me was the literature bit, exploring ideas, seeing how different people could start with the same text - possibly from 400 years ago - and be able to create and justify different interpretations. In my case, it's fair to say that due to my parents I'd have encountered that anyway, but a lot of my classmates would never have that opportunity (to follow, or ignore like I did with maths) unless it was available at school.

And if we're talking about 'the modern world', look up Gradgrind. A Dickensian character created to represent part of the conversation you and I are having right now. Nineteenth century to 2021, modern enough for us?
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Mr Gradgrind. Hard Times. Read that so long ago. I really need to read it again. There’s a character called Blackpool in the book I seem to remember. Coketown? Meant to be Manchester or another northern industrial town?
 
Sea to Shining Sea said:
Yet the two subjects that arguably apply those skills most, History and RE, have been mentioned for reduction in this thread.
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They must have changed considerably then because RE was just Christian proselytising & history was just "copy down what I've put on the board". Asking questions when the "facts" seemed off was a cane-able offence.
 

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