Math: "when are we ever gonna use any of this in real life!?"
Later: "why didn't they teach us how taxes work!?"
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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To be fair, these are very different skill sets. To this date, I've yet to have an urgent need to get the area under a curve.
FreeTaxUSA takes care of calculating my taxes. It only tells me well after I have purchased something in telling me what kind of records I should keep if I want to claim that thing for a deduction.
I could have used the latter more than calculus.
They really do ought to teach economics as part of compulsory education
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Honestly, there should be a yearly class like english, math and science for "general education". Like how to do taxes, basic first aid, how to apply for jobs/make a resume, what to expect when you rent an apartment, how and when you should seek therapy (and what it's like), how to manage stress in a healthy manner, and very basic cooking.
I'm betting it's not implemented because it's incredibly hard to standardize and test this kind of stuff. But a general ed class would be nice for these types of things that don't easily fit into another class.
Calculus is useful, but it's significantly less useful in an average person's daily life than knowing why their resume is getting instantly tossed in the trash at every single place they apply to.
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Taxes don't require even High School level Math, much less something like trigonometry or high-level algebra.
On the other hand, personal finance should absolutely be mandatory in schools.
In my school personal finance was something everyone was required to take their freshman year.
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Instead they taught us how to use graphing calculators to draw shapes and lines
A skill I only later used when developing a game jam engine using c++ for the windows terminal
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Actually one of the best courses I've taken against this kinda thing was a "Logic" course in the philosophy track in college that had a huge section devoted to how media tries to manipulate a person. Not typical high school stuff but maybe it should be, and fully up to date for social media. There's a practical course for the 21st century.
When I was in 3rd grade, I had a teacher who did a week-long lesson about recognizing propoganda. She talked about how talking or displaying something a certain way can alter how you think about it.
Looking back, this short propoganda course for 3rd graders wasn't in any official lesson plan, wasn't in a textbook, and may not have been on the up-and-up with the school.
It may have been, it's relatively common for something like this to be included in coverage of Vietnam and the cold war. Current events related blocks are also often put in social studies curriculum and propaganda is a often a suggested tie-in.
While your teacher sounds like they went above and beyond, they probably weren't working against the system. And that's coming from a burned out ex-teacher. We have issues in our schools but for the most part curriculum designers are trying to help. For every terrible Florida-like headline depicting a leap backwards there are many steps forward taken under the radar
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I've had a long ongoing rant/debate (not really a debate because we all pretty much agree with each other), that logic, and critical thinking should be the focus of earlier education. Sure, focus on the skills everyone needs, like writing and such, but when you get to highschool, we should be focusing more on core logic and critical thinking skills.
Teach a person a thing, and they'll know it... maybe. Teach someone to think, and they'll be able to figure out anything.
Let me first say i agree but also let me be little bit hopefully constructively critical.
There is something called (backwards) rationalism.
... a defense mechanism in which apparent logical reasons are given to justify behavior that is motivated by unconscious instinctual impulses. ..
Rationalism also uses logic but not in sense as e.g. math of physic does. So logic is not enough in this broad sense.
So I think that basic science is the way to go in the early education stages alongside with teaching of accepting self critique and mistakes. Showing that everyone can be wrong and can become better at the thing by fixing their mistakes.
So in other words philosophy could make sense in high schools to some degree.
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We had these classes and people are still stupid. Your point?
There’s a whole culture in America celebrating carelessness, doing poorly in school, and idolizing people who got successful doing nothing except breaking the rules
Back in the 80s and 90s this was already a thing. Being a “rebel” and being “too cool for school.” If you did too well at school you were a nerd and that had some social stigma.
Maybe today it is worse with social media and online gaming.
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People are stupid because they didn't (and weren't forced to) learn in these classes.
Oh they were forced, that’s the issue. That ensures knowledge exits your brain as soon as the exam is over.
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If these classes aren't required then we would have an Idiocracy (even more so than what we currently have)
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Do you think that the people who believe in this bullshit wouldn't believe it if they were provided evidence or something?
They don't work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.
That's why it's so hard to argue with these idiots. You can't logic a dumbass out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.
Well said.
They don't work on evidence. They work on vibes. They believe what they believe because they want to, not because it makes sense.
This is the big one. They start with a conclusion then go on a scavenger hunt for anything that agrees with it. And as we all know, you can find anything on the Internet.
And where a more reasonable person might see how hard it is to find a reputable source that supports your claim and deduce that maybe the information isn't out there because the theory is wrong... instead these people run to the conclusion of "if the information isn't readily available out there to support my idea, it's because it's being suppressed in a big conspiracy!".
These are usually the same people for whom the government is somehow both completely inept, bumbling, and stupid while also being capable of carrying out the most widespread, comprehensive, flawless conspiracy ever imagined.
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I remember reading this article and getting very upset and my ex not understanding why. "Let them believe what they want to believe, it doesn't affect you," she said. "These people vote," I said.
Skip to now and I'm pretty confident that I had the correct response.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth
They've graduated and now have professional misinformation degree.
~~Here is their graduation project: https://www.yahoo.com/video/resurfaced-reddit-clip-shows-flat-003114234.html (found random article on the web)~~
Here is their graduation project: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/v8q0o7/flatearther_accidentally_proves_the_earth_is/
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Would have been more accurate with “your a sheep.”
I mean, “those” people believe in a hidden cabal who controls everything and feeds lies to the population, teaching those things in school doesn’t really change much when they’re just going to disregard them as “fake propaganda”.
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Yep. This is a thing. Students will learn a lesson best when the student understands the value of the lesson to them in their lives.
This is one of the six basic principles of learning, it's called the Principle of Readiness. You can read all about it in the Aviation Instructor's Handbook alongside other smash hits as the principle of exercise (practice makes perfect) or the principle of primacy (first impressions matter). It's that basic.
Establishing that value, giving the students the context and reason the lesson is valuable to the students is the teacher's responsibility. And I noticed that most teachers forget this somewhere around the 7th grade. Way too many of my teachers answered "Why do we need to learn this?" with "Because it's required to get your diploma."
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Took me a bit too long to figure out the following: school isn't supposed to only teach you specific things; it's supposed to teach you how to learn.
And it doesn't stop at high school. A Bachelor's in a specific field is only partly about the facts and concepts, and the rest is about how to research and evaluate sources in that field. Does someone with a Bachelor's in Computer Science know how to implement Shellsort right off the bat from memory? Not unless they did it in a whiteboard interview, and fuck those things. No, they know how to look it up and implement it in a specific language, and can probably figure out its big-O complexity.
Knowing what a good source looks like is a skill, and must be learned.
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So, they were right? They do not use it, thus they don't need it?
#BUT JESUS SAYS....
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