I'm not sure I believe that saving some money on a light fixture is a necessary life skill. There are any number of disciplines which we could save ourselves money on if we had a novice skillset in them. It's one thing to say people should know how to cook for themselves or manage their finances - those are very basic life skills and you'll run into a lot of trouble if you can't manage them. I've never felt, however, that my inability to fix a broken microwave is a failure of the school system. Especially when the only downside is that I might sometimes have to pay a few more bucks. Spending hours and hours of school time learning fringe skills that will come in handy maybe once every few years is not a good idea.
I never said anything about fixing a microwave... Since I bought my house 2 years ago I have replaced almost every light fixture and several switched/outlets. My house was built in the late 80s so the fixtures looked dated. For me it was a fairly simple job (yet time consuming), but for someone without basic electrical knowledge it would have cost hundreds of dollars to have someone else do(on top of the cost for the fixtures). Simple knowledge of how electricity works, safety info and basics on how homes are wired (what the color coding means, what the parts like the junction boxes are for) and then anyone would be able to do some of these minor home repairs/updates. It's something that could be taught in maybe a week at the high school level... I have used the skills I learned helping my dad with home repairs far more often than I used my knowledge on Greek Mythology or Chem 3, or fluid physics... I think society needs to admit that right now High Schools are simply setup to get kids ready for college they are not getting kids ready for life. I feel like that's a major failure of the education system since the majority of kids don't go to college, nor should they.
Ok fine... 58% get some kind of college... how many end up using that college? I would venture to guess that for 50% or more of US students would be much better served being taught basic life skills instead of being taught obscure medieval history, art, higher level physics, etc... etc...
"Much better served"? By being taught something that will save them a few bucks on an electrician occasionally? Topics like history, art, science, etc. have significant benefits beyond the material itself. Even if you never use physics in a future job, you've learned and exercised a lot of math and quantitative reasoning in a physics class. If you're spending your time learning what each color wire means, are you getting that same benefit? I don't think so. Nor are you getting it learning not to visually inspect the barrel of a loaded gun.
I'm not sure I believe that saving some money on a light fixture is a necessary life skill. There are any number of disciplines which we could save ourselves money on if we had a novice skillset in them. It's one thing to say people should know how to cook for themselves or manage their finances - those are very basic life skills and you'll run into a lot of trouble if you can't manage them. I've never felt, however, that my inability to fix a broken microwave is a failure of the school system. Especially when the only downside is that I might sometimes have to pay a few more bucks. Spending hours and hours of school time learning fringe skills that will come in handy maybe once every few years is not a good idea.
I never said anything about fixing a microwave... Since I bought my house 2 years ago I have replaced almost every light fixture and several switched/outlets. My house was built in the late 80s so the fixtures looked dated. For me it was a fairly simple job (yet time consuming), but for someone without basic electrical knowledge it would have cost hundreds of dollars to have someone else do(on top of the cost for the fixtures). Simple knowledge of how electricity works, safety info and basics on how homes are wired (what the color coding means, what the parts like the junction boxes are for) and then anyone would be able to do some of these minor home repairs/updates. It's something that could be taught in maybe a week at the high school level... I have used the skills I learned helping my dad with home repairs far more often than I used my knowledge on Greek Mythology or Chem 3, or fluid physics... I think society needs to admit that right now High Schools are simply setup to get kids ready for college they are not getting kids ready for life. I feel like that's a major failure of the education system since the majority of kids don't go to college, nor should they.
School was never meant to get people ready for "life".
Living life is supposed to get them ready for life.
All those household repair things? You should be learning them from your parents at home.
Ok fine... 58% get some kind of college... how many end up using that college? I would venture to guess that for 50% or more of US students would be much better served being taught basic life skills instead of being taught obscure medieval history, art, higher level physics, etc... etc...
Dude, seriously?
Look, I'm all for people being taught basic life skills and all, and I still regard weight training as one of my most useful high school classes, but are you actually trying to compare that to the usefulness of a college degree in anything, much less a degree in higher level physics? Do you recognize how truly absurd that sounds?
Ok fine... 58% get some kind of college... how many end up using that college? I would venture to guess that for 50% or more of US students would be much better served being taught basic life skills instead of being taught obscure medieval history, art, higher level physics, etc... etc...
Dude, seriously?
Look, I'm all for people being taught basic life skills and all, and I still regard weight training as one of my most useful high school classes, but are you actually trying to compare that to the usefulness of a college degree in anything, much less a degree in higher level physics? Do you recognize how truly absurd that sounds?
I was not talking about the usefulness compared to a college degree. I was talking about the usefulness of classes that get kids ready for college for kids that have zero intention of ever going to college.
I think that the entire public school curriculum needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up...but that's neither here nor there.
Yeah, sure, teach kids how to safely handle firearms - I don't see why not. Just make sure they have weapons that don't actually function - if a kid wants to take a real gun to school, make it a bit harder for them to do so, yeah?
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Can't be worse than what they're already teaching kids. I slept through all of my high school classes that I was able to and graduated with a 3.8; I'd say that 90% of the curriculum is just a rehash of middle school, ergo a complete waste of tax dollars.
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Blinking's right. There are schools that have severely cut or don't even offer art programs. There are just too many programs that take priority over something like shooting.
Can't be worse than what they're already teaching kids. I slept through all of my high school classes that I was able to and graduated with a 3.8; I'd say that 90% of the curriculum is just a rehash of middle school, ergo a complete waste of tax dollars.
Errrm... That was definitely not my High School experience.
In the ideal society, firearms training at school wouldn't be necessary, because children would learn the basics early at home.
As that will never happen, large scale training programs might be a solution, but I cannot fathom a basic safety class lasting more than 90 minutes, let alone an entire quarter or semester. Marksmanship and technique would make for longer classes, as would the philosophy behind actually using firearms, but that would get expensive, fast.
Tying it into a general "useful things to know" class offered to seniors might work, though. This would also allow for other life skills to be taught. The better teachers actually incorporate life skills into lessons; best does not mean all, though.
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Well, part of the issue with schools losing funding is because of the HUGE bureaucracy. In the US, I'm pretty sure we spend more on our education than we do on our military. (in the fiscal year of 2014, we will have spent almost 200 BILLION more on Education than on Defense.)
So, where does all that money go? If we are spending THAT MUCH, why does ANY school lack supplies and equipment? because the money is not wisely spent. Instead of, say, improving the quality of teachers by paying them more, the football team gets new equipment. Instead of hiring a qualified art teacher, the superintendent gets a bonus, and the music teacher has to do double duty.
So, the problem isn't lack of funding, the problem is lack of proper budgeting.
Can't be worse than what they're already teaching kids. I slept through all of my high school classes that I was able to and graduated with a 3.8; I'd say that 90% of the curriculum is just a rehash of middle school, ergo a complete waste of tax dollars.
Errrm... That was definitely not my High School experience.
That's pretty much how my High School experience was... and then the same thing for my first semester of college. In my school career I took some form of intro to Spanish 3 times (elementary, Middle and high school), every math class spent the first half of the year redoing all of last year (this includes Calc 2 in college re-hashing high-school's AP calc), I swear we went over the five paragraph essay in every English class I ever took... That's just off the top of my head. I literally played Bomber man through AP calc in High School and did just fine skipping Calc 1 in college and going straight into Calc 2. I know I am not a Math genius, but when you learn the same thing every day for a week it sticks no matter how little attention you pay to it and also makes class extremely boring which encourages poor behavior.
Gun safety is something that could be taught in a single class so it's not something that really fits into a school curriculum unless it is rolled into a class on other things... hence why I brought up other life skills. I mean... if people are not even for allowing schools to teach basic life skills then I see no point in discussing having schools teach something that is actually controversial.
Errrm... That was definitely not my High School experience.
That's the difficulty of this kind of discussion, without a standardized curriculum we all have very different experiences depending on the year, the state and even the county or individual school.
I am old. We had to pass drivers ed class to graduate high school. Maybe it was a local, district thing. We also had to pass some type of accounting class to graduate.
Where drivers ed was dropped because of insurance/liability issues, I can not see schools putting firearm training in high schools for the same reason. I do believe everyone should have firearm training regardless if you own a firearm or not. But it should be learned outside of the school atmosphere. There are enough distractions in school, dont have to add guns going off down the hall.
I am old. We had to pass drivers ed class to graduate high school. Maybe it was a local, district thing. We also had to pass some type of accounting class to graduate.
Where drivers ed was dropped because of insurance/liability issues, I can not see schools putting firearm training in high schools for the same reason. I do believe everyone should have firearm training regardless if you own a firearm or not. But it should be learned outside of the school atmosphere. There are enough distractions in school, dont have to add guns going off down the hall.
To be fair you could easily teach firearm safety with realistic-ish looking Nerf guns or guns that are not functioning. I assume the point of those kinds of classes would be simply to discuss things like the safety, how to hold a gun, only pointing at something you're willing to shoot, always assume the gun is loaded... none of those concepts require actually shooting. Another question I have though is would High School really be the appropriate place for this? How many 14-year-olds are finding their parent's guns and accidentally shooting someone? I feel as though that is a higher risk occurrence at younger ages.
If young kids are finding their parent's gun, that's the problem. Regardless of what they do with it after they find it. The thing to be fixed there is that the parents shouldn't have guns lying around where kids can find them.
If young kids are finding their parent's gun, that's the problem. Regardless of what they do with it after they find it. The thing to be fixed there is that the parents shouldn't have guns lying around where kids can find them.
And people should not get blasted and go drive their cars or get so drunk that they die of alcohol poisoning but that does not prevent us from having sensible laws around how late bars stay open, and having bartenders cut people off if they seem "too" intoxicated.
The fact is that some people underestimate their children's ability to get into trouble (find things), that being a fact even if all parent's were perfectly concision of that and tried to properly store their guns there is still a very good chance that a non-zero number of kids will find their way into wherever that gun is stored.
The place to spend training dollars is on the parents. On gun owners. If the number storing their guns improperly is brought to negligible levels, it would make no financial sense to spend our money educating every kid in the country on something that only the smallest fraction would ever encounter.
The place to spend training dollars is on the parents. On gun owners. If the number storing their guns improperly is brought to negligible levels, it would make no financial sense to spend our money educating every kid in the country on something that only the smallest fraction would ever encounter.
Because spending that hour watching Star Wars in class is much more important?
In my school career I think we watched a good 20+ movies between Middle School and High School, not all of them were even tangentially related to course work, they were used as a reward or a break. So don't tell me that it would be a huge waste of tax dollars to spend one hour actually teaching something.
Just because the thing that is currently taught somewhere is not useful does not mean that the proper correction is to pick any old thing you like and make that the new curriculum. If you want to improve it, you have to pick the the thing that would be MOST valuable. Not anything that would be more valuable. You have to argue that firearm safety is the best thing we could fill that time with. I say that if a school is wasting time watching Star Wars, they should instead be teaching an actual lesson in math, science, english, whatever. Convince me that firearm safety is more valuable than my alternative.
Just because the thing that is currently taught somewhere is not useful does not mean that the proper correction is to pick any old thing you like and make that the new curriculum. If you want to improve it, you have to pick the the thing that would be MOST valuable. Not anything that would be more valuable. You have to argue that firearm safety is the best thing we could fill that time with. I say that if a school is wasting time watching Star Wars, they should instead be teaching an actual lesson in math, science, english, whatever. Convince me that firearm safety is more valuable than my alternative.
Honestly I don't think fire arm safety itself is the best thing to put in school but I'd have to create a new thread for that.
I will comment though on your proposal that more math/English etc... would be better than gun safety (or some other life skill).
To what end? When I went to college my first class in any subject was literally nothing more than a re-hash of stuff I did in High School (the same high school where I spent 1/4th of my senior year not taking classes, spent almost a 1/4th of another year in cooking classes and more than a 1/4th of a year in computer classes). I took 200 level chemistry for a lab and my college professor looked at me like I was insane because only people that needed the 200 chem took 200 chem most people took the 100 level class for the lab credit... I learned nothing in that college class. It was a complete re-hash of high school chem. Similarly I stopped going to my college Physics class because I could take the quizzes online and I was not learning anything. College English was a similar re-hash of the stuff I was taught in English all through High School.... so what extra lessons do we want to cram into High School that we can re-hash in college (for those who choose to even go to college)?
I never said anything about fixing a microwave... Since I bought my house 2 years ago I have replaced almost every light fixture and several switched/outlets. My house was built in the late 80s so the fixtures looked dated. For me it was a fairly simple job (yet time consuming), but for someone without basic electrical knowledge it would have cost hundreds of dollars to have someone else do(on top of the cost for the fixtures). Simple knowledge of how electricity works, safety info and basics on how homes are wired (what the color coding means, what the parts like the junction boxes are for) and then anyone would be able to do some of these minor home repairs/updates. It's something that could be taught in maybe a week at the high school level... I have used the skills I learned helping my dad with home repairs far more often than I used my knowledge on Greek Mythology or Chem 3, or fluid physics... I think society needs to admit that right now High Schools are simply setup to get kids ready for college they are not getting kids ready for life. I feel like that's a major failure of the education system since the majority of kids don't go to college, nor should they.
Ok fine... 58% get some kind of college... how many end up using that college? I would venture to guess that for 50% or more of US students would be much better served being taught basic life skills instead of being taught obscure medieval history, art, higher level physics, etc... etc...
School was never meant to get people ready for "life".
Living life is supposed to get them ready for life.
All those household repair things? You should be learning them from your parents at home.
Look, I'm all for people being taught basic life skills and all, and I still regard weight training as one of my most useful high school classes, but are you actually trying to compare that to the usefulness of a college degree in anything, much less a degree in higher level physics? Do you recognize how truly absurd that sounds?
I was not talking about the usefulness compared to a college degree. I was talking about the usefulness of classes that get kids ready for college for kids that have zero intention of ever going to college.
Yeah, sure, teach kids how to safely handle firearms - I don't see why not. Just make sure they have weapons that don't actually function - if a kid wants to take a real gun to school, make it a bit harder for them to do so, yeah?
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Errrm... That was definitely not my High School experience.
As that will never happen, large scale training programs might be a solution, but I cannot fathom a basic safety class lasting more than 90 minutes, let alone an entire quarter or semester. Marksmanship and technique would make for longer classes, as would the philosophy behind actually using firearms, but that would get expensive, fast.
Tying it into a general "useful things to know" class offered to seniors might work, though. This would also allow for other life skills to be taught. The better teachers actually incorporate life skills into lessons; best does not mean all, though.
Cheers!
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So, where does all that money go? If we are spending THAT MUCH, why does ANY school lack supplies and equipment? because the money is not wisely spent. Instead of, say, improving the quality of teachers by paying them more, the football team gets new equipment. Instead of hiring a qualified art teacher, the superintendent gets a bonus, and the music teacher has to do double duty.
So, the problem isn't lack of funding, the problem is lack of proper budgeting.
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That's pretty much how my High School experience was... and then the same thing for my first semester of college. In my school career I took some form of intro to Spanish 3 times (elementary, Middle and high school), every math class spent the first half of the year redoing all of last year (this includes Calc 2 in college re-hashing high-school's AP calc), I swear we went over the five paragraph essay in every English class I ever took... That's just off the top of my head. I literally played Bomber man through AP calc in High School and did just fine skipping Calc 1 in college and going straight into Calc 2. I know I am not a Math genius, but when you learn the same thing every day for a week it sticks no matter how little attention you pay to it and also makes class extremely boring which encourages poor behavior.
Gun safety is something that could be taught in a single class so it's not something that really fits into a school curriculum unless it is rolled into a class on other things... hence why I brought up other life skills. I mean... if people are not even for allowing schools to teach basic life skills then I see no point in discussing having schools teach something that is actually controversial.
That's the difficulty of this kind of discussion, without a standardized curriculum we all have very different experiences depending on the year, the state and even the county or individual school.
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Where drivers ed was dropped because of insurance/liability issues, I can not see schools putting firearm training in high schools for the same reason. I do believe everyone should have firearm training regardless if you own a firearm or not. But it should be learned outside of the school atmosphere. There are enough distractions in school, dont have to add guns going off down the hall.
To be fair you could easily teach firearm safety with realistic-ish looking Nerf guns or guns that are not functioning. I assume the point of those kinds of classes would be simply to discuss things like the safety, how to hold a gun, only pointing at something you're willing to shoot, always assume the gun is loaded... none of those concepts require actually shooting. Another question I have though is would High School really be the appropriate place for this? How many 14-year-olds are finding their parent's guns and accidentally shooting someone? I feel as though that is a higher risk occurrence at younger ages.
And people should not get blasted and go drive their cars or get so drunk that they die of alcohol poisoning but that does not prevent us from having sensible laws around how late bars stay open, and having bartenders cut people off if they seem "too" intoxicated.
The fact is that some people underestimate their children's ability to get into trouble (find things), that being a fact even if all parent's were perfectly concision of that and tried to properly store their guns there is still a very good chance that a non-zero number of kids will find their way into wherever that gun is stored.
Because spending that hour watching Star Wars in class is much more important?
In my school career I think we watched a good 20+ movies between Middle School and High School, not all of them were even tangentially related to course work, they were used as a reward or a break. So don't tell me that it would be a huge waste of tax dollars to spend one hour actually teaching something.
Honestly I don't think fire arm safety itself is the best thing to put in school but I'd have to create a new thread for that.
I will comment though on your proposal that more math/English etc... would be better than gun safety (or some other life skill).
To what end? When I went to college my first class in any subject was literally nothing more than a re-hash of stuff I did in High School (the same high school where I spent 1/4th of my senior year not taking classes, spent almost a 1/4th of another year in cooking classes and more than a 1/4th of a year in computer classes). I took 200 level chemistry for a lab and my college professor looked at me like I was insane because only people that needed the 200 chem took 200 chem most people took the 100 level class for the lab credit... I learned nothing in that college class. It was a complete re-hash of high school chem. Similarly I stopped going to my college Physics class because I could take the quizzes online and I was not learning anything. College English was a similar re-hash of the stuff I was taught in English all through High School.... so what extra lessons do we want to cram into High School that we can re-hash in college (for those who choose to even go to college)?