16 ms·

My opinion on school, coming from someone living in Europe: - Homework should be abolished - School should start at a reasonable time. In my opinion, 8AM is t

• agent008t 6y ago
  Homework is very important. It gets you to practice intrinsic motivation - getting things done in your own time when nobody is forcing you to do them and when you have other, more appealing alternatives.
  • mrob 6y ago
    Most kids only do homework because they'll be punished if they don't. That's not intrinsic motivation.
    • iso947 6y ago
      Most people only do jobs because they don’t want to starve.
      • aiscapehumanity 6y ago
        I didn't know that was a good thing. That's a legacy bug in the socius.
        • iso947 6y ago
          Sure, but homework is preparing them for reality
          • anoncake 6y ago
            Homeworks makes them accept it, which means it perpetuates it.
          • waterhouse 6y ago
            Even if preparing people to just put up with something miserable were a valid goal, it's exceedingly unlikely that just subjecting them to it for years on end is the most effective or the most efficient way to prepare them for it. An entire essay on the subject: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/getting-hit-head-lessons/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/getting-hit-head-lessons/
      • saagarjha 6y ago
        There's a lot of people who love their job; many more I would think than students who enjoy doing homework.
  • throwawayinfo 6y ago
    Homework has the extrinsic motivation of getting detention when it's not finished.
  • konjin 6y ago
    At what school did you not get forced to do homework? Because I would have liked to sign up there and not do any of it.
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      My local school didn't force me to do homework. It was always clear that I understood the material, and I could generally answer questions on it if tested. I think they had bigger things to worry about than whether I was doing the homework.
      • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        I did really poorly in school, also barely did any homework (lacked motivation) and at some point most teachers just gave up on asking whether I even did it. Somewhat miraculously, I still got my A levels. University is now going a lot better.
  • ben-schaaf 6y ago
    If anything homework let me practice my excuses and lying. Teachers and parents alike provide plenty of extrinsic motivation for doing even the most pointless of homework. If I hadn't found a passion in programming I likely wouldn't have developed any intrinsic motivation whatsoever, and that's a real problem.
    • WJW 6y ago
      Arguably, "excuses and lying" is also a useful life skill. Not necessarily for society, but certainly for the individual. Even if you never lie again after school, it's useful to be able to detect the behavior in others.
  • jooize 6y ago
    Suggestion: homework once in a while.
  • dkersten 6y ago
    I personally learned nothing from homework, besides the anxiety that came with trying to make up an excuse for why it wasn’t done. I spent more time trying to avoid doing homework than actually doing it. A big problem with school for me was that very little of it was framed in a way that made it seem useful. In subjects where I either understood the value (math for example, as I learned to program in my teens, so saw value in it to do things I wanted. While many of my peers followed the “it’s only useful if you want to be a math teacher” philosophy) or had some kind of extra interest in, I did well in, but even in subjects I chose to do, liked and was good at (eg German), I struggled trying to find the motivation to do any homework. Being forced to didn’t help, I would rather stare into space for an hour than actually spend the time on homework. A big part of it, I think, was I needed downtime. I had already spend many hours in school and now was being told I needed to spend my time doing more school stuff? No thanks! Even now, a couple of decades later, I need downtime to process the things that happened during the day. I’m a huge believer in Hammock Driven Development because of how important I feel thinking, reflection and downtime is. EDIT: hell, I did really bad on one subject I used to be great at because of the homework: the homework load was too high so I dropped to the lower level class instead, which was the start of my downward spiral: it was too easy so I didn’t do much in it, the teacher didn’t push me and a few years later I struggled and never recovered. If the homework load were less, I would have stayed in the higher level class and, while I’m not certain, I’m pretty sure I could have at least maintained my ability instead of it deteriorating. I still believe I would have done better in my final exam at age 13 than I did at age 17 because of this.
    • rimliu 6y ago
      For you claiming that math was useful there will be 20 claiming that math is one of the most useless class. And in the next sentence they will claim that school should teach practical things, like doing your taxes. It all boils down to not wanting to put any effort in the end.
      • Nextgrid 6y ago
        Is there actually a problem with not putting any effort if not required? Why isn't it a good thing to achieve a task with less effort? Would you also say that programmers writing code on computers instead of pen & paper just "don't want to put any effort in"?
  • thatjamesdude 6y ago
    Strongly disagree. It's not intrinsic motivation, it's fear of failing. That's a terrible lesson to instill in children. I do agree that's a useful life skill, but that is really scraping the barrel for reasons why homework works. The problem there is we can find examples where there is no homework and a functional, thriving society behind it [0] 0: https://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005 https://www.bbc.com/news/education-37716005
  • blablabla123 6y ago
    IMHO the common practice of homework is maybe not completely wrong but executed incredibly badly. I remember one time where I was with a friend doing homework together. It was about writing a text. We were so incredibly bad at it, the texts were full of repetitions and missing the important information. How should a 12 year old know how to brush up his writing skills outside of school anyway? I ended up skipping most of my homework the rest of my school time. (This worked surprisingly well for most subjects and teachers.) Going to university was such a breeze in contrast. Clear instructions, self-contained lectures, references are provided so it's possible to drill into a topic either alone or together with others... To me school is mostly about teachers checking on students instead of them actually explaining things. Once I was on a summer school in the Netherlands during university and I remember one of the professors saying that during the first 2 semesters they need the students to unlearn destructive behaviours from school. E.g. admitting when they don't know something and to ask. I'm from Germany but to me it seems like a problem occurring in many countries.
    • thisiszilff 6y ago
      A part of the difference between college and elementary/high school is that most people don't want to be in elementary/high school while in college there is a lot more self-motivation. Learning is a lot easier when you actually want to learn and improve and you feel you have a personal stake in what is going on.
  • indymike 6y ago
    Problem is that homework is always forced.
    • rimliu 6y ago
      Honestly, how many kids do you think would choose to study anything if given a choice?
      • abj 6y ago
        While not perfect, Montessori seems like a good start to demonstrating that kids can choose to study. The Montessori Method of Education, developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori, is a child-centered educational approach based on scientific observations of children. The method views the child as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning environment. It attempts to develop children physically, socially, emotionally and cognitively.[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education
        • brlewis 6y ago
          I think of Montessori as a smart middle ground between under-structured "child-centered" and over-structured traditional education. I've seen it explained as a triangle of child, teacher, environment, where the teacher spends some time preparing the environment, some time instructing the child how to interact with the environment, and some time making adjustments to the environment.
        • bergstromm466 6y ago
          Love Montessori. Have you heard of Sudbury Valley schools?
      • saagarjha 6y ago
        I learned 95+% of things I know about programming outside of class. Now, I doubt that anyone would really lean a "well balanced" set of subjects, but students can be made to have their own intrinsic motivations to study things.
• konjin 6y ago
  >- Kids should be made aware of the psychological help they can receive if they have personal issues. We had a psychologist at school, but I don't think anyone consulted them. I used them, they were great for scoring high quality drugs. All I needed to do was memorize a list of symptoms, regurgitate them and get referred to a specialist and do the same again. Which is why as an adult I find the whole area of psychiatry to be bunk. And that's supposedly the harder of the psychological sciences. If you can't deal with false positives you have no place in medicine. If I came in to a doctors office and demanded they reattach my missing leg, while clearly having two legs I'd be met (rightly) with skepticism, somehow when it comes to the mind it doesn't work that way. Surely someone would have figured out a way to measure the missing serotonin by now?
  • TheNorthman 6y ago
    This is a very naive understanding of modern clinical psychology. Modern psychology is the way it is exactly because someone couldn't figure `out a way to measure the missing serotonin', or rather, it is a meaningless measurement. The total failure of positivism in clinical psychology is what resulted in the current state of affairs, pushing for more of it won't bring about any imagined golden age of psychology, only further `the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time' [0]. Positivism is a flawed doctrine and at this point should be considered nothing but dangerous dogma -- at least in the case of psychiatry. [0]: I believe it was Mark Fisher that said something to this end but I digress.
    • konjin 6y ago
      If you do not have any objective measures then what you have is a cult. By any objective standard - suicide rates, lost days of work, self harm, substance abuse, murder, etc. - we are worse off or no better today than in 1960 when we were supposedly emotionally stunted and oppressed. Every extra dollar spent on psychology/psychiatry since then has been a waste. That's not even touching on the crisis of reproducibility that has made a mockery of the entire field and put it somewhere between catholic confessionals and recreational drug use in terms evidence based outcomes.
• deleted 6y ago
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• read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Schools start this early so parents can get their kids to school and still go to work in time. You could start school at 9AM for kids old enough to do that themselves, but it's not gonna work for families with younger kids. As for psychological help, maybe those who consulted them just didn't talk about it? Absolutely agree on your last point though.
  • timthorn 6y ago
    8:50/9am start is quite typical on the UK, from primary on. It seems to work.
    • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      When do people usually start work in the UK?
      • joeberon 6y ago
        9am
  • throwawayinfo 6y ago
    Sounds like work needs to be more flexible. There's enough people without kids to cover those earlier hours.
  • looperhacks 6y ago
    Except the few places without public transportation, most parents don't have to take their kids to school. Starting later would probably help with overprotective parents.
    • em500 6y ago
      Depending on where you live, it's probably not safe (and maybe even forbidden) to let young children (<10 years) go to and on public transportation alone.
    • 6y ago
• majkinetor 6y ago
  > Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia. THIS ! Cooking, Nutrition, Medicine, Drugs & Vitamins, Finance, Basic electronics etc. Practical stuff needed every day.
  • timthorn 6y ago
    Most of this used to be on the curriculum - Home Economics and Craft, Design and Technology have gone out of fashion, but covered the practical things. My school had a vehicle workshop as well as kitchen classrooms. Oh, and a typing pool, too :)
    • tweetle_beetle 6y ago
      This got me thinking - I wonder how much of that comes down to mundane reasons like budgets, rather than pedagogy. Change costs money and most schools are slow moving. For example, I suspect that the content of secondary school mathematics have changed little in generations, but the content of practical lessons in cooking, vehicle maintenance, finances, programming, etc. changes much faster.
      • nemo44x 6y ago
        A lot comes down to budget I think. Schools are judged mainly on standardized testing scores and funds will be allocated to ensure optimization of that metric. Schools mainly get funded through local property taxes. If you compare curriculum in towns that are generally middle and upper middle class with towns that have a larger lower middle class population you’ll probably see different curriculum. More AP classes, electives, life planning, etc. The town I live in has pretty high taxes but it’s mainly to fund the local school system which ranks high. Just about everyone with kids uses the public school system because of this and it’s a big selling point to new residents home-shopping. But we pay for it.
      • war1025 6y ago
        I want to throw out another angle that I think is relevant: The curriculum broadly is determined by the school board. The school board tends to be made up of more "well off" people. They will prioritize the types of classes that they took to get them where they are. If you are on the school board, you are most likely not a house wife, not a mechanic, not a seamstress, etc. So you get a prioritization on classes that lead you down the "four year degree, rise to management" type of life.
• the-dude 6y ago
  Shouldn't one learn the practical life skills from ones(?) parents? Isn't the problem they are not available anymore?
  • chpatrick 6y ago
    That's assuming the parents have those skills.
  • grumple 6y ago
    Yeah, parents are busy working all day. But also the parents may have never learned the skills or know how to teach them.
  • kace91 6y ago
    The idea of mandatory education is to guarantee that you're provided basic skills to have a chance to survive a thrive in society regardless of your environment.
    • the-dude 6y ago
      Not to refute or acknowledge your point, but it makes me think of Those who can - do, those who can't - teach.
      • toxik 6y ago
        Such a disrespectful attitude towards some of the most important people in society. Disgraceful. Professors teach, are they in that position because of some ineptitude? Of course not, the opposite.
        • iso1210 6y ago
          On the whole university professors are terrible teachers. The concept of a professor wasting time giving a lecture to 100 people is surely at an end - far better to find the 1 in 100 professors who are good at teaching to record a lecture and give it to 10,000 people - where those people can pause, play it back as many times as they need, etc
• MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  The state monopoly on schooling needs to be abolished. Parents must be able to give the amount of money a current state school costs to a private school of their own choice. This will enable competition and choice. As it currently stands, only wealthy people can send their children to a private school, but this is completely artificial.
• gridlockd 6y ago
  > School should start at a reasonable time. In my opinion, 8AM is too early. Kids that live far away have to wake up at 6AM, which is not a normal time judging by when kids wake up during summer break (9-10AM). They wake up that late because they're staying up late. They should be waking up when the sun tells them to, and go to sleep when their body tells them to, which doesn't happen because they're surrounded by light that messes up their circadian rhythm. This has a huge impact on things like anxiety. Consequently, there can't be one time that is optimal. Why do we work the hours that we do, year round? It doesn't make sense biologically, it's an artifact of industrialization.
  • montebicyclelo 6y ago
    https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/12/high-school-start-times-study/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/12/12/high-school-start... > “Research to date has shown that the circadian rhythms of adolescents are simply fundamentally different from those of adults and children,” said lead author Gideon Dunster, a UW doctoral student in biology. > “All of the studies of adolescent sleep patterns in the United States are showing that the time at which teens generally fall asleep is biologically determined — but the time at which they wake up is socially determined,” said Dunster. “This has severe consequences for health and well-being, because disrupted circadian rhythms can adversely affect digestion, heart rate, body temperature, immune system function, attention span and mental health.” Seen similar information from other sources, but this came up first after a quick search. Of course screen light probably makes the problem worse, but there do seem to be significant biological factors.
    • gridlockd 6y ago
      There's a natural "bedtime shift" of 1-3h in adolescence, that doesn't mean it's natural for them to still be asleep when the sun is up. The one thing that disrupts the circadian rhythm dramatically is light. This is well-established and also mentioned in the article you linked.
      • saagarjha 6y ago
• maccard 6y ago
  Also living in europe: > Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia. This is parenting vs schooling, ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services. And more importantly, history isn't "random trivia". While the merits of a degree in history may be debatable, if the majority of the UK had a passable knowledge in why the EU exists, and what the UK did to become an empire, the attitude towards integration with the EU would likely be very different. > PE in my school didn't teach any theory, which is just stupid looking back. PE is the bare minimum amount of exercise and movement a child could have without being considered "entirely sedantry". For many kids it's the _only_ exercise they get.
  • levosmetalo 6y ago
    > And more importantly, history isn't "random trivia". While the merits of a degree in history may be debatable, if the majority of the UK had a passable knowledge in why the EU exists, and what the UK did to become an empire, the attitude towards integration with the EU would likely be very different. As much as I agree with other points, I can only strongly disagree here. It strongly implies a condescending attitude that stupid and uneducated decided about British future. If only they could be brainwashed^H taught they would choose the “right” option.
    • jonp888 6y ago
      Well, I strongly disagree with you strong disagreeing. It's not condescending in the slightest, and debate around Brexit revealed that although theres's nothing wrong with being against european integration, a lot of people have almost no idea of what the EU does and does not do.
    • maccard 6y ago
      I never claimed brainwashed, uneducated or stupid. Far from it. But many major important parts of british history are glossed over. Much of the empire is taught as though britain was a trading partner rather than brutal occupier, the Irish plantations are glossed over as an unavoidable famine, ww1/2 are celebrated as the strength of the empire, and the postwar agreements and decisions which led to the current EU are mentioned in a sentence. These are massively important periods which directly explain huge parts of britain's "influence" over the rest of the world, and the information is available quite publicly, just never taught to children. If people at large understood what happened and why we have the institutions we currently have, they are shown to be far more likely to be in favour of them.
• codegrappler 6y ago
  My wife used to teach these ‘useful’ classes. They used to call it home economics. Now they call it family and consumer science. Essentially the same things. How to cook, budget, raise a child, etc. Sadly many school districts are cutting these programs to make room for classes that help the students do better on standardized tests. It’s sad because there were a ton of kids who used to find their life’s passion in my wife’s classes.
  • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    This isn't a 'new' trend. It has pretty much been happening since they couldn't simply teach women how to cook and boys how not to cut their fingers off in shop classes. I am 42. I had less than 9 weeks of cooking. Part of that 'cooking' was cooking once a week, a cookie contest that almost got me in trouble because I didn't cook while home sick, and how to set a table for a formal setting (i've never used this). The once-a-week cooking was in a group setting. I had "financial education" in social studies class - taught by a car salesman friend of the teacher. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at used cars. I was in 8th grade: 13 years old at the time. I had health class, which mostly taught us the parts of the body and sex ed over and over again. PE class at one point consisted of ping-pong for 6 weeks: I didn't learn anything that I could actually use in life - how to be do cardio, stretching, weight training, nope. Nothing like that. Not once was I ever introduced to any sort of child development classes. You see, I took AP classes and had a full college prep schedule, so they didn't think these classes were important. Some others were so much better prepared than I was.
    • gruez 6y ago
      >taught by a car salesman friend of the teacher. We got extra credit if our parents went to look at used cars. That seems super shady. Did anyone end up filing a complaint with the school board?
      • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
        I'm not even sure if I told my parents, honestly - but I cringe when I look back on it (I was only 13, moved earlier in the year, and was already an outcast). I don't know how it was ever allowed.
• bloak 6y ago
  Your opinion on whether 8 a.m. is too early somewhat depends on your local time zone and clock change customs: see thousands of comments elsewhere! However, 08:00 local astronomical time does seem too early and most European time zones are ahead of local astronomical time, sometimes ridiculously so, making 08:00 even earlier. So I don't disagree.
  • SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Had to look up astronomical time - assuming my understanding is right and you use "noon" to define the hours, I don't think it would really help in high latitude hours - no amount of temporal wiggling is going to stop kids from going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark as well.
    • bloak 6y ago
      Yes. You get about 7 hours of daylight on the shortest day at a latitude of 55°. So nearly all of the population of England could avoid going to/from school in the dark. But Scotland is another matter.
• raxxorrax 6y ago
  I think the formal classes like history are no problem and have a place in the curriculum. Kids learn at different speeds so a good education system takes that into regard. Systems should be transient that slow starters can catch up at a later time and reach higher forms of education. We need more teachers and smaller groups. Eating healthy can be a course, but you quickly loose all the pupils that already learned that from their parents. Mental health is hard to teach and there is little certain knowledge here, it only works individually. Aside from really hard cases, I think children have quite resilient minds. I believe the reluctance to do physical exercise has other sources, not really lacking education. But PE is vastly to be preferred to medicating "unusual" behavior.
  • treeman79 6y ago
    Getting assaulted by another student does lots of damage to mental health. Typical response By admin is to ignore the the Issue or minimize it.
    • raxxorrax 6y ago
      In my school there was little physical bullying. I cannot remember any to be honest. Psychological "terror"? Plenty. I am actually not that old, but 15 years ago it was mostly parents that mediated conflicts. Children are ashamed to admit they are bullied in many cases, so you need good teachers to notice and speak to parents. I cannot honestly condemn teachers that disengage though. Classrooms get bigger, bullying happens digitally and out of reach, teachers and parents are critical of each other and pupils are the first to notice if they have free reign and know pretty well how to profit from such conflicts.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• bschne 6y ago
  > Kids should be made aware of the psychological help they can receive if they have personal issues. We had a psychologist at school, but I don't think anyone consulted them. Do you think this was an issue of not being aware of the offering, as opposed to it being difficult to get help for one's personal issues because of stigma or feeling like you can handle it if you just try a little harder?
  • dependenttypes 6y ago
    In addition to that even if you do have access to psychological help it won't be any good if the school psychologist is worse than useless (which seems to be common in this kind of field).
  • code_duck 6y ago
    My experience was that the school psychologists were not competent or reasonable individuals. For example, the one in 5th grade who decided that my friend and I were each being abused because we did absurd things with her dollhouse like put figurines on the roof and in closets, just to be silly.
• dependenttypes 6y ago
  I agree with you. In addition I would argue that the students should have more choice over what modules they learn (why should someone who wants to be a computer scientist and hates learning languages be forced to learn german/latin and poems for example - these students should have the option to select advanced mathematics, programming, and cs theory instead if they so wish, or even random trivia) and that homeschooling should be easily available as an option if the student so wishes, same for online learning. I would also say that something needs to be done regarding bullying and teachers that are power-tripping.
  • mrob 6y ago
    If more computer scientists studied language then we'd see better-written CS papers. It would benefit the authors too: research is more valuable when you can communicate it clearly, so people are more likely to cite a well-written paper. I think Dijkstra's fame is as much a consequence of his excellent writing as his research.
    • C1sc0cat 6y ago
      But if you had students that had specialised at 14 done GCSE's and A levels in the subject they do at uni you could have three year degrees instead of four. How much does a year at an American University Cost ?
    • dependenttypes 6y ago
      Essay and report-writing is already part of the curriculum for these preparing to get into a CS school. I do not think demanding from students to explain what the poet was thinking or to learn spanish will help them with writing CS papers, if anything I would argue that the reverse is true. In addition I would argue that most CS papers are well written.
• yoaviram 6y ago
  We're starting an alternative school in Italy. Would love to hear your (and everyone else's) thoughts: https://shadesofgreen.school/ https://shadesofgreen.school/.
• tgv 6y ago
  Abolishing homework will only lead to less knowledge transfer. Most teachers are not good, so self-study is essential. Teaching how to study is part of the curriculum on the schools I've seen. Random trivia should not be taught, but cleaning and fixing? Next you'll want to teach morals.
  • nemo44x 6y ago
    > Next you'll want to teach morals. We always have in many ways, but I catch your drift. I take issue with schools that teach kids what to think instead of how to think. I don’t know if it is pandemic but I’ve seen some people complain about some very controversial curriculum creeping into schools. A person I saw on Twitter recently posted some curriculum their 1st grader was being taught which tells a story through the lens of critical race theory. In essence telling the children that the white kids are racist and need to work to be anti-racist. It was shocking to me because it is applying controversial “Theory” that is very much opposed to liberal science ideals of falsifiability and injecting identity politics into minds that can’t even begin to understand the postmodern philosophy these ideas grew from.
    • everdrive 6y ago
      The uncomfortably truth here is that kids will always be taught values. The question is who gets to decide what the "right" values are?
  • OneGuy123 6y ago
    If most teachers are bad then using homework to fix this is a shit solution: why are children being forced to endure 1st the bad teacher AND the homework.
    • apacheCamel 6y ago
      And more often than not, the teacher is the one creating the homework, so it ends up being just more of the same.
  • mamon 6y ago
• m0zg 6y ago
  Out of curiosity: do you have kids of your own?
• CommieDetector 6y ago
  COMMUNIST DETECTED!
• WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Homework: What if we made 10-15 minute lecture videos for each class. Student would have to watch/take notes for 50 minutes at night. Then, in school, they do exercises together to practice, not just sit and listen. My favorite math class was 10 minutes of method demo and 40 minutes of practice questions: effective and relaxed. Practical skills: History is useful, yes, especially for governance and historical equity. If Americans didn't know history well, more Southerners could get away with the false states rights narrative for the Civil War. But, on the whole, I agree we overly focus on literature and ancient history relative to modern skills, IMO.
  • bagacrap 6y ago
    I can guarantee you that, had this been the format, whoever I was assigned as a partner would not have completed the lecture video from the previous night.
  • fuzxi 6y ago
    I have had courses in this style before, known as "flipped learning". It works reasonably well in my experience, although it's much easier to fall behind if you have other obligations outside of school, and having to note down questions and hold on to them until the next class is awkward.
• rightbyte 6y ago
  Wake up time is a zero sum game. Otherwise your points are good.
• jimbob45 6y ago
  Homework shouldn’t be abolished. It should be orchestrated. Someone should know vaguely how much homework teachers are putting out and ensure they don’t overlap too much or all assign huge projects at once. It’s much easier than it seems. That said, abolishing HW is great too. It’s become a crutch for bad teachers.
• alexbanks 6y ago
  > Homework should be abolished As a child, and now as an adult, I've always thought homework was an insane proposition. If you had a job where you showed up in person for 7 (realistically more than 7) hours a day, but then assigned arbitrary multi-hour long projects afterhours, you'd quit, 1000%. > In my opinion, 8AM is too early. First bell for us was 7:18. Meaning the bus showed up at 6:30. Meaning wake up was 5:45. Looking back, my four years of high school were probably the worst years of my life. I'm glad, at least for a brief minute, current high school students are getting some kind of reprieve.
• jedberg 6y ago
  > Housework (fixing things, cleaning etc), finance, time management, how to actually learn/study effectively, mental health awareness, working out with correct technique and not ruining your body, how to eat healthily Everything on your list except housework was part of my required curriculum in High School in 1990s California (and the housework stuff was offered as an elective called Home Economics). Now I wonder if it's still there.
• C1sc0cat 6y ago
  Which the UK does - not that's with out its problems i.e. having two tier gcse's aka reintroducing the old CSE exams - for those (working class) kids that where supposed to leave school at 16. Oh and massive grade inflation
• coldtea 6y ago
  >- Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia. School is for education and culture, that is those "random trivia". Fixing things, cooking, and cleaning can be taught in a couple of classes (e.g. shop) or taught by their parents...