There are things I learned in school and didn't understand their importance for a while. That's fine. But it hurts to see kids learning some things they will never use, or missing more important things.
English/reading is way overemphasized, and overly focused on emotional fictional literature. Sorry, I don't give a damn how Juliette feels; maybe I can pretend to care for a year, but 9 years? It didn't matter later in life that I got Bs in English, despite it actually being a useful subject. Maybe this is where the US curriculum differs from other countries the most.
Economics should be part of the standard curriculum. Plenty of average people participate in an economy every day without understanding it, other than having street smarts.
Math class is seemingly based around the final destination of Calculus AB or BC, but calculus is overly specific if you think about it. Sure, teach the basics, but don't drill the kids for months on solving integrals with trig sub for one. There are so many other math subjects that get ignored.
Math proofs are basically nonexistent in high school. Everything is just thrown at you then becomes a game of memorizing algorithms and crunching numbers. I get why so many kids don't like it.
History is OK but usually lacks connection to current events.
> and overly focused on emotional fictional literature
Isn't that what people read for fun? If you have to teach reading and grammar, I'm sure that there are worse choices.
And you do need some serious background in Calculus for most college-level STEM fields, including probability/statistics/data science.
I do agree that the social sciences (including Econ, but not only!) are seriously missing in school
education, and it's quite silly to teach so much history/literature/natural science/math even as we ignore them altogether.
Teaching math proofs is really, really hard. Even most college math majors don't really learn them all that well. Maybe if proof assistants develop to the point where it can be a fully "gamified" subject, it could work in K-12.
> Isn't that what people read for fun? If you have to teach reading and grammar, I'm sure that there are worse choices.
My classmates and I always read books for fun, and none of them were the kinds of books in English class. They were more adventurous things like Narnia, Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, and Ender's Game. Also seemed like the girls could tolerate the English class books a lot better, which felt unfair. Looking back, the only time I enjoyed the books was the one year I had a male English teacher picking them.
> And you do need some serious background in Calculus for most college-level STEM fields, including probability/statistics/data science.
Sure I remember using calculus in those college fields, but it didn't require what I'd call a serious background in it. Students could just beef up their calculus skills on-demand if needed. I especially never used all that training in solving complicated integrals by hand, which was seemingly half of Calculus BC.
English/reading is way overemphasized, and overly focused on emotional fictional literature. Sorry, I don't give a damn how Juliette feels; maybe I can pretend to care for a year, but 9 years? It didn't matter later in life that I got Bs in English, despite it actually being a useful subject. Maybe this is where the US curriculum differs from other countries the most.
Economics should be part of the standard curriculum. Plenty of average people participate in an economy every day without understanding it, other than having street smarts.
Math class is seemingly based around the final destination of Calculus AB or BC, but calculus is overly specific if you think about it. Sure, teach the basics, but don't drill the kids for months on solving integrals with trig sub for one. There are so many other math subjects that get ignored.
Math proofs are basically nonexistent in high school. Everything is just thrown at you then becomes a game of memorizing algorithms and crunching numbers. I get why so many kids don't like it.
History is OK but usually lacks connection to current events.