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Asked by VIKING2 to Sharon, Sahra, Matthew, Jenn, Candace on 12 Mar 2017.
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Xueyuan Jiang answered on 12 Mar 2017:
Great question! I also doubted how “useful” my classes are when I was a kid. But now, I realized that what I have learned are extremely important, and I can’t think about something better to teach.
Skills like paying tax or getting a car can be easily learned by yourself. Skills like writing and math, however, require a lot of training. And they CAN help you to find a good job. As a biology scientist, I use math to analyze my data everyday. When I have something to share with other scientists, I will need to write a paper to get my work published. No matter what career path you choose in the future, (lawyer, doctor, engineer…) you will need to communicate with other people in an efficient way. What you’re learning at school right now are preparing you for that.
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Matthew Bainbridge answered on 13 Mar 2017:
Some schools are starting to teach things like this. My high school taught us how to make a resume for getting a job. Not sure it was very useful, though.
What’s weird about the tax system is the the US government KNOWS 99.9% of everything you put into a tax form already. In some countries the government sends you a completed tax form and you can just correct anything you think is wrong. Paying taxes SHOULD be easy.
I wish schools would make sure kids understand the practical importance of science. Chemistry dictates how cleaners work and how cooking works. Biology is pretty important for understanding how YOU work. I never made these connections until I was older.
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Sahra Uygun answered on 14 Mar 2017:
Great question! In the classes, some part of the lessons could be dedicated to “why did we learn this?” or “how can we use this knowledge in our lives?”.
Also, even though the things we learn do not have immediate practical application, the school is preparing us to search how to do things and evaluate the circumstances and make decisions. -
Candace Lewis answered on 14 Mar 2017:
This is a fantastic question. The traditional model of public education was to teach the general public about academic topics – reading, writing, sciences, mathematics. As far as I know, the institution of publicly funded education was never intended to teach us those skills. Traditionally, we have learned those skills in home from our parents or other caregivers. I think you bring up an excellent point though and large parts of our population are not learning these skills at home. Maybe, when you are an adult in the workforce, you can propose a new model that solves this problem 😀
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Jennifer Hintzsche answered on 14 Mar 2017:
Great question! I think some schools now are trying to do that but I agree we definitely need to be learning more things like that! I think originally it was thought that these things would be taught by parents but that isn’t always the case!
Jenn
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