We need to stop teaching kids pointless history

There's literally nothing wrong with a non-hereditary Class system

>they don't know public schools are state funded daycare first and education second

the elites wants a more stupid population so they can rob them blind.
doing it by actively encouraging a culture of ignorance is a great idea.
there are enough brains around

Man, I spend a significant chunk of my free time on a History & Humanities board, I'm not gonna argue that only immediately practical knowledge is worth teaching, but ... we probably SHOULD spend more time teaching life skills in schools, and less time on specialized shit.

Your examples stack the deck pretty heavily. Shakespeare's the foundation of English literature and algebra is useful all the time in everyday life. OF COURSE kids should study that shit. But it's pretty ridiculous for 18-year-olds to graduate having taken

- at least a year of calculus (which most of them will forget in 5 years unless they go into a technical field in college)
- at least a year of advanced biology, chemistry or physics -- it's one thing to learn about evolution & how DNA works, but do teenagers really need to learn the function of glutamate as a neurotransmitter? will any of them remember it if they do?
- several years of a foreign language, which in 2 years they won't be able to speak a lick of
- several English lit courses, wherein they learned all sorts of fascinating stuff about such advanced techniques as *foreshadowing* and *allusion*

... but be completely clueless about how to pay taxes, balance a checkbook, open a bank account, buy insurance, sign a lease or get a mortgage, change a tire or the oil in their car, cook a healthy meal for themselves on a budget ... hell, I'm pretty sure there were smart kids in my AP Govt class in high school who could've explained the functions of each of our executive agencies but who weren't completely sure how to fucking VOTE.

I'm sure that you, personally, probably graduated knowing how to do all of that and more, but an awful lot of kids don't. And that's dumb.

Most people have neither capability nor the need to be smart. I'm sure everyone with a high school diploma has been taught who Shakespeare was but how is this knowledge beneficial for them? We have to do away with the notion that everyone has to be as educated as possible.

>... but be completely clueless about how to pay taxes, balance a checkbook, open a bank account, buy insurance, sign a lease or get a mortgage, change a tire or the oil in their car, cook a healthy meal for themselves on a budget ... hell, I'm pretty sure there were smart kids in my AP Govt class in high school who could've explained the functions of each of our executive agencies but who weren't completely sure how to fucking VOTE.

Except everyone alive in the western world managed to learn to do all that on their own without the state needing to handhold them through the process.

If you indeed do need the state to waste money on teaching you how to feed yourself then you deserve your impending homelessness and death. The genepool is better for it.

School should be focused more on making functional, well-rounded adults rather than pointless trivia.

Let them find Shakespeare on their own as adults when they'll actually fucking appreciate it, rather than resent it for being forced on them as children and teenagers.

Yes of course, we want there to be a surplus of adults who don't understand basic finance, nutrition, taxes, or basic civic function representing our prime voter base.

Instead of mandatory teaching foreign languages in schools why doesn't the UN mandate that every school on the planet should make Esperanto or something mandatory and every other language optional.

Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn, so anyone who already speaks an Indo-European language shouldn't have much trouble doing well in the class and actually being able to use the language later.

>They didn't teach me how to pay taxes, how to vote or what my rights are, even though learning that is my resposability as an active member of a society.

>Therefore, we should get rid of all classes in school.

Cringe, what a fucking idiot. Although I agree that most educational systems in the world are deficient in many aspects and some changes have to be made, this doesn't mean we should stop teaching math, history, science, etc to our kids.

This is why universal suffrage was a mistake.

I should also add that the vast majority of people can handle their finances, feed themselves and vote. They managed to learn these skills without it being spoon-fed to them, so as the adage goes if it isn't broke then don't fix it. Schools are already massively underfunded and understaffed, making them also teach the absolute most useless people there how to wipe their ass would only exacerbate this and harm people that will actually take advantage of their education.

Most people do have the ability to be smart.
Doesn't mean they need to know every single thing, but having a culture where being smart is encouraged would not be a bad thing.
Things like critical thinking and other life skills should be encouraged but so should the desire to learn for pleasure and to do it in an academic way.

>schools teach "critical thinking" for decades
>everybody just swallows bullshit from their favorite media outlet anyway

English lit is just another test, a massive, well concealed test.

If you're moved by Shakespeare and come to appreciate his work you passed.
If you finish and think "Well what was the point of that", you failed.

shit teachers?

So do you agree kids shouldn't be taught their fucking laws, human rights, finance management?

But teaching kids about 1900 poets is somehow more valuable?

Yeh

If you can't affirm your own life through the appreciation and creation of art then everything else school may try to teach you is a waste.

>Except everyone alive in the western world managed to learn to do all that on their own
lol nope, just go on /pol/ or /adv/ for stellar examples of people who don't know how to do basic shit because not everyone's lucky enough to be babied and taught things school should have

What laws need to be taught in school? Most are intuitive (don't steal, don't fight, don't do drugs). Should teachers be reciting out of a 20 volume series of codes & statutes?

>art
>appreciation
>school

>Retards use /pol/
Who knew?

>(don't steal, don't fight, don't do drugs)
>only valuable laws one should know
>american education

>uncultured barbarian
>wtf am I reading.jpg
Appropriate

and /adv/ and /r9k/ and Veeky Forums, there are people everywhere who DONT know these things, like motor laws, finance laws integral to your success, laws concerning your rights as an employee, patient, customer of services, your obligation or lack thereof in emergency situations, laws on liability concenring your property, assets, ie MANY things people don't know till way after the fact, because hurrrrrrrrr durrrrrrr retards like thinks the only laws people need to know are the ten commandments

art cuck pls stay in ur containment board

The reason all of that shit isn't taught in school is because classes in school have very specific reasons for existing.

For example, since this is Veeky Forums:

History is taught to create better citizens. It is taught so that students recognize that the world was not always the way it currently is, explains a fairly simple narrative of history, shows some examples of lessons to learn from history and MAYBE cultivate a genuine interest in the study of history.
No, it's not just taught because some autistic fuck decided that a child is morally superior because he knows the year Napoleon was crowned Emperor.

Plus, I was taught how to file taxes, apply for loans, cook meals, how/why the law works, how to vote etc. in civics classes in high school. Maybe this nigga didn't learn any of that because he dropped out.

I hope to god you're not a software designer. "This system is failing to meet its users' needs!" "Fuck it, it's their fault. I'm not changing a thing."

The things I listed are need-to-know skills for everybody, not just for smart and worldly people. When there's a bunch of dumbfucks running around ruining their credit scores, failing to buy insurance and otherwise fucking up their lives, it's bad for the whole country, not just for them.

>If you indeed do need the state to waste money on teaching you how to feed yourself then you deserve your impending homelessness and death. The genepool is better for it.
If you're trying to convince me that you're still in high school yourself, you're doing a pretty good job of it.

Bait

>in civics classes in high school.
that's not standard to American public education, let alone the private institutions where they really drill in the academics

Yeah, and guess what? School has already taught you how to read and use a computer. Armed with that knowledge it is literally as simple as using google to find out any questions you have on the law.

Not to mention the state already invests in citizens advice. If you want to know your rights then they're right there ready to help you. There is absolutely no point in both providing this, and providing the exact same service in class form.

Would you like to expand on your point? Things like constitutional rights are already taught in schools so what aspect of 'the law' is missing from public schools?

Most of 'the law' is entirely useless information to anyone except lawyers & judges. That's why its kept in massive volumes that most lawyers don't even bother to memorize. Should schooltime be spent learning about statutes of how much weight a truck can legally carry? or safety protocols for parks?

>Implying there's not already a caste system in public schools

Oh. I believed it was fairly standard throughout the West. I had mandatory civics classes in High School, and my last year of history was History and Citizenship.
This was in Alberta mind you.
I also completed some High School in Quebec, where history isn't taught in the last year of high school at all, and instead a current events/citizenship course is taught.

Not even the guy you're all jumping on but home ec definitely used to be a thing where you thought basic life shit like budgeting.

[spoiler]they even used to have baking classes for the girls[/spoiler]

>we should teach dense legal literature for specific situations that often vary from state to state because they could possibly come in handy someday

Might as well teach city kids how to farm soybeans for all the good that will do 95% of students.

How would a caste system work in a representative democracy?

What's your point? There comes a point in most fields where you really need formal instruction to advance to the next level, but with google and some free time you can amass a high-school understanding of almost any subject.

The question is, what should schools be prioritizing?

>. "This system is failing to meet its users' needs!"
Here's the thing. As far as I can see the system is meeting the user's needs. There's just a minority of users that are so irredeemably stupid that some say the state needs to teach them how to cook for themselves.

Likewise real software designers as much as they try to make their products intuitive, don't make it so hand-holdingly patronizing that it's accessible to the absolute least able portion of their userbase at the expense of everyone else's use.

>If you're trying to convince me that you're still in high school yourself, you're doing a pretty good job of it.
Actually I failed high-school and by my own parameters I'm one of the lesser people.

And I'm glad, because were it not for that I wouldn't realize how much I and everyone else takes the education system for granted. This is the problem, people don't appreciate their education especially not when they're actually in school. People are very lazy, and it's this laziness that leads to the attitude that school should teach people basic life skills that the majority of people know rather than taking some initiative and looking it up for themselves when the government already makes this information as accessible as possible.

Except in this instance we're not discussing higher level education. We're discussing extremely basic skills and knowledge that you can look up and learn in literally five minutes.

Formal education is not necessary for this sort of thing for the very reasons you touch upon, we're not aiming to advance or even potentially advance to another stage of education. We're aiming to teach people extremely basic things that are already very accessible.

>Might as well teach city kids how to farm soybeans
Actually a good idea, thanks anonkin

He's plainly not talking about reading the "dense legal literature" itself, but giving an overview of how the laws will actually affect your life, esp. shining light on particularly common misconceptions. For just a few examples, how many people do you think DO NOT REALIZE that

>"Probable cause" is not enough for the police to enter your residence, unless they have reason to believe a VIOLENT CRIME is being committed -- they need permission or a search warrant otherwise. Even if there's pot smoke leaking out the door.
>The police don't actually need to read you your Miranda Rights when they arrest you, unless they're about to question you, and you won't be released just because they failed to do so.
>Unless you have a contract specifying otherwise, you're an at-will employee and can be fired for any non-discriminatory reason -- your employer doesn't need "cause."

Dependent on jurisdiction, of course, but it's true for most of the US.

I bet the number of people carrying around at least one of those (fairly major) misconceptions is greater than the number of people who knew all 3.

State level laws can LITERALLY change on a day to day basis. How the fuck are you supposed to base a curriculum around that shit?

>paying taxes

Tell them they are the quintessence of stupid and never speak to them again.

The truly inferior are inferior from birth.

That shitty rapper actually raised a good point.

Schools should probably at least offer parenting classes.

>blonde hair
>black eyebrows
Why is this allowed?

Shakespeare is a sublimation of myth which is massively informative for norms and behavioral ethics.

Algebra fundamentally exercises and formulates logical thinking.

History supplies invaluable social context which is necessary for any functional citizen.

21st century artists are little more than consumerist whores.

>21st century artists are little more than consumerist whores.
Hold up.

also, since im a law major with nothing to do, we'll list out more

>if you receive services and they're not to your satisfaction, ie construction work under 10k in value, repair services, cosmetic services, and you're not satisfied with the service, if they insist you pay, you can't NOT pay. You HAVE to file a claim in civil court or small claims court, pending your locale, refusing to pay and having THEM take you will cost you possibly twice as much considering their legal fees and "lost value" by you not paying.

Another one, even though I doubt there are many potheads on this part of Veeky Forums,

>if you have weed in your car, and a cop pulls you over initially for another infraction, and searches your car because "he smelled weed", is a very weak base, even if the weed was found inside. As long as it's not proven to be in your system, a semi-decent attorney could rip the cops case apart in court, because the cop used a form of justification that's too subjective and unreliable, and unless you have a police lieutenant personally testifying against you, a rookie cop won't possibly know or care enough to justify his initial search, despite findings.

>We need to stop teaching kids pointless history.

Well it depends on the history. In any case, any history teacher who uses multiple choice questions on their tests should be hanged. Essays all the fucking way. The specific dates are not important unless you're a history major, people just need to know the era the event took place in and the context.

>when am I ever going to use algebra in my life outside of school?

A lot, at least the basic stuff, so this is a dumb thing to say yeah.

>why are students still reading Shakespeare? We should have them read books and poetry made by 21st century artists.

Why not have both?

>school should prepare for the real world outside of its curriculum

Absolutely. In fact that should be a very high priority. There should be a higher priority on civics too.

He was a faggot.

>When am i going to use algebra?!
If you become an enginer or any other jobb requiring some mathematical skill it will be usefull.

>Hurr I was never thought taxes!!
It should be thought and it is. I remember learning about taxes and loans in school.

>hurr why do i have to lift weights to get strong just teach me how to have a six pack

>but be completely clueless about how to pay taxes, balance a checkbook, open a bank account, buy insurance, sign a lease or get a mortgage, change a tire or the oil in their car, cook a healthy meal for themselves on a budget ... hell, I'm pretty sure there were smart kids in my AP Govt class in high school who could've explained the functions of each of our executive agencies but who weren't completely sure how to fucking VOTE.

Just read the instructions. School can't teach you how to solve every little problem you'll face, but it can teach you how to be patient, use your brain, and read the fucking manual.

This is how you end up with an angry and uneducated lower class. And after that a revolt with blood running in the streets and the upper class hanging from the ends of ropes. Caste systems need to be decorated with bells and whistles and painted in friendly colors. You need to give the peasants the delusion that they have social mobility. They need to feel like equal citizens while they're slaving away in 3 minimum wage jobs with 4 kids because they can't stop fucking. The important thing is that they believe the rhetoric, that they are equal citizens and that the system works.

Modern day USA is a bastion of this. It's a shining example. We even pay for education using property taxes to ensure wealthy schools have excess for everything while poor schools can't field extracurricular activities or even scrape up supplies for the simplest matters of education.

Public schools should be abolished. They are the biggest propaganda machines ever and, at least in the US, it is unconstitutional to federally regulate school systems.

At the very least we should outlaw Federal loans to private citizens and corporations. Nobody should be getting a loan made of tax money to get a education that is actually worth a tenth of the price.

But that's how it is in literally every other country other than clapistan, kek.

Around here, depending on the performance in elementary school, the good students go to "classical" high schools that are geared towards preparing students for university, while the rest go to vocational schools.

>This is how you end up with an angry and uneducated lower class
There is absolutely nothing to fear from the lower class. They are disorganized, disunited, raving morons that have no idea what they want and ultimately wish to be lorded over.

The thing to fear is other members of higher classes. This is shown in every revolution in history, it only takes off with the backing of empowered members of society. Usually from the middle-class.

History is needed. However it needs reforms, for example more oral exams and essays instead of standardized tests.
History is great at giving you scope of how politics, wars and macroeconomics, and to a certain point about art, inventions, political ideologies.
It should not be reduced to which exact year.

But then you have people who still think that WW1 started cuz some guy wuz shot.
100 year's war is presented as a war between England and France, and not as a great feudal, political power struggle that would come to define England and France.
Austrian succession is just about a woman on the throne.

This was tried in Sweden and didn't work at all since, surprise surprise, everyone went with the academic education because they may change their mind one day.

Do the schools have no entry barrier or something?

>mfw I actually agree with every point made in the video

School is a meme.

You are taught subjects on the basis of obtaining a job by having a varied on knowledge of the world and a variety of skills but these skills are simply used to further production and consumption endlessly so people can keep funding growth and deferring the ability to learn skills onto devices which are made to intrinsically possess such skills.

>Want to eat Chinese food?
Go to the takeaway and spend the 20$ you earned for two hours of work! Instead of actually learning how to cook it yourself for a fraction of the cost and without the travel time. You'll also be learning a skill.

>Want to buy a PC?
Just go buy it ready made! Or you could build it yourself for a fraction of the cost in just thirty minutes.

>Want to buy a house?!
Go buy a big home with a bunch of rooms you'll never use which will actually not incur any value when accounting for inflation and interest rates! Or just buy a plot of land and build one yourself with a friend for a fraction of the cost, or buy a small one that is more suited to you.

Education is literally moulded so that your daily job is to earn money to defer the need to develop skills onto other devices under the false perception of actually saving time when you're actually using more of it.

We still have that system in Norway too. You can do a vocational or academic education in upper-secondary school, but the problem is that vocational school has totally lost it's point, because all the jobs that a vocational education is suited for are in Poland or China.

So, the only way to get a job in Norway is to have a Master's degree in something marketable from a good university, or become an electric or mechanical engineer, both of which are higher education, and require you to absorb massive amounts of debt.

Strange. I had PSHE throughout my school life and they taught me most of the things he lists. Like him, I'm also from the UK.

PS. His only good video he did was the one with Rob Scallon. The rest are shit

Not sure which shit school you attended, but in my experience it's sink or swim.

>spooks
>spooks
>something teachers clearly don't know or they wouldn't be teachers

Crikey

Interesting...

Esperanto is a meme. There's a reason French and English are the lingua francas

>I was never taught how to pay taxes in school!
I'm 24 and I still don't know. Idgaf tbqh senpai.

>be medfag talking to computer borderline autismfag friend
>hurrrrrrr school is just for work skills, why do I have to waste time with these research skills classes and philosphy, I already have been learning all this on my own and at church
>everything I say is drowned out by MUH WORK SKILLS MUH CHURCH

I now understand why you all hate us STEMfags.

>Modern day USA is a bastion of this. It's a shining example. We even pay for education using property taxes to ensure wealthy schools have excess for everything while poor schools can't field extracurricular activities or even scrape up supplies for the simplest matters of education.
How is that an example at all? You suggest a lack of social mobility by so blatantly privileging one sect of society over another with federal funds.

Tbh the history I learned in school was mostly shit. Just memorization of a few key facts and events and no discussion of opposing viewpoints and disagreements among historians. Also, it was exclusively US history, come to think of it, pretty much three times over.

swede here, we still have it and a lot of people who get the practical education easily get jobs as carpenters or mechanics and are highly paid because practical work is in such high demand

Let me guess, you are a virgin.

Mandatory government run public education in the United States was designed from the top down after the basis of the Prussian system to ensure that the dissent that broke out during the Civil War could never happen again. That is its sole purpose.

Prior to the adoption of this system Americans had a reputation as being the most well read and scientifically minded people on earth, whereas today there is a reputation only of ignorance. This is not an accident and is in fact a result of the public system.

The education system absolutely needs major reform. A larger percentage of students every year are just being pushed through on the factory school conveyor belt, with all standards simply being lowered to allow them to pass. At the same time these students are completely unprepared either by their parents or by the State to look after themselves in any meaningful way. Most of these people will never be economically independent.

I ultimately doubt whether the system can be salvaged. The likeliest future I see going forward for the west and America in particular is a blindingly ignorant population of people dependent completely on the state for survival, tied down to the land by their dependence and the high cost of real estate.

Basically a rebirth of serfdom.

The question isn't "How do we reform the education system?"

The question is, "How do we do away with it entirely?"

>I was never taught how to pay taxes
>muh votes
>muh monthly balancing
>muh washing clothes, changing diapers, cooking food
>muh managing to put on my shoes in the morning

Jesus, are Americans really that retarded nowadays? Do you really need the school to teach you basic shit which literally involves step by step guide following? And that in the age of the internet where you literally can google questions like "how do I wipe my ass correctly?" and get thousands of answers.

>tfw you realize the West is doomed

You don't respond. Success comes in any number of forms and from any number of educational and occupational backgrounds. It's not up to you to decide alone what is best for the rest of the country based solely on your own principles; principles that one could argue, you probably haven't established all on your own.

It all seems to come down to to whether you argue that the parents are at fault or the media is at fault. Then you can argue it's the ones controlling the media. So on and so on. you say nothing unless you feel like getting into an argument with someone you know you're smarter than. then your picking arguments you know you can purposefully win. But what's the point if the people already care not, or do not understand? It's a lose-lose every time.

I feel like most of what I know I got from books and that school was a miserable waste of time for the most part. The only exceptions were the handful of classes where I was lucky enough to have both a genuine interest and an enthusiastic and skilled teacher. That didn't happen often. Lots of other students were better than me at writing essays on their Shakespeare, but once school ended I'm the only one who kept reading. I think that a genuine interest in learning and self-improvement isn't something that's cultivated in a classroom. If anything it seems like that's where it's stifled in most people.

If you want to improve people it's a cultural effort. People are shaped by the whole world around them, not just their schools. Take the shit off of tv and stop making Avengers sequels. I think that if mainstream culture encouraged reading and athleticism that would go a lot further towards bettering people than any education reform could.

But still at the end of the day even without sources I'm afraid that is probably right and we're deliberately being turned into a bunch of helpless spastics in the name of economic growth or some other concept that's equally spooky and anathema to human dignity and well-being.

>There is absolutely nothing to fear from the lower class.

Maybe you should study history at least a little before coming on this kind of board.

The content of basic schooling isn't terribly valuable, however, its an intelligence test. If you can get through it doing the work set before you, you get a piece of paper attesting that you are not a retard and can follow simple instructions.

From here you can either get a job, or pursue far more in-depth study at university.
The idea that school is supposed to be your parents, and that its supposed to teach you everything down to what to eat and how you should wipe yourself on the toilet, is completely missing the point. We live in an age where all the information you could ever want can be at your finger tips in an instant, but this faggot is whining that a basic desire to survive wasn't shoved down his throat hard enough.

Lets be honest here for a moment.
In no way can knowing history mean an increase of income for the common person and if you think that most people study for another reason than a good income later on you are deluded.

I like reading about history like the next Veeky Forumstorian but I know that its pretty pointless and basically for my amusement and curiosity.

How Japanese and Koreans fucking do it ? They have great results in PISA tests, the teachers don't have to do discipline all the time...

This desu

they have families that give a shit about their children
I can only speak for myself, having gotten absolute no fucking guidance from my surprise surprise single mother
All the families from my area had tons of children too, how can you honestly expect to raise 6 children and not have most of them turn out as ill equipped for life as the parents?

>How do you even respond to people who say this kind of shit?

With Marxism.

>taught their fucking laws, human rights, finance management?

Only one of these is ever suggested

>And that in the age of the internet where you literally can google questions like "how do I wipe my ass correctly?" and get thousands of answers.

Two answers really