Cheeze_Pavilion said:
Dys said:
While that's a valid point and I wouldn't ever contend that an entire subject is completely useless, what is the point in forcing someone who plans on studying medicine or engineering? What about people who plan on going into a trade?
These people will not spend 24/7 in their trade. They will be citizens, and as such, they will be called upon to be much more than just doctors or engineers or tradesmen in their lives.[/quote
It is not the job of the schools to raise children. The parents are responsible for making sure a child grows up to be a well balanced and informed person in the real world, it is the purpose of a school to supply skills with which a child can build a career off, and to prepare students for university or the workplace. It is no unreasonable for them to
offer subjects like history, but forcing high school students to do them is completely unreasonable.
Ultimately, those subjects have done very little to further my career, instead of the heavy focus on subjects like geography, english and other 'arts' subjects in highschool, I would have benifeted from a lot more physical science classes and maths.
You are more than just your career.
That's not the concern of the schools. It is the responsibility of my parents to raise me into a balanced, developed person. Of course people are more than their career, but by the time I had gotten to highschool I was well aware of what I liked and did not, and as such had some idea of the career I wanted. The job of school is to prepare me for university, I would have been far better prepared if I had been given the option to focus more heavily on maths and science than arts. I was literally forced to take music, art, LOTE, history and geography until year 10, that is bullshit and was in no way necessary for my education.
As a history major, I'm guessing you've never had reason to use any of the mathamatical concepts you were tought in highschool.
History majors use them all the time. Or rather, they fail to because they didn't think they were important, and they don't manage their finances very well.
There may be something wrong with me, but I've never used calculas, advanced probability or any form of algebraic function when managing my finances. While I am still living at home and my costs are relatively low, I still throw around a lot of money, I've completed two years of university and have no debt (in Australia the university system is based off of 'hex' which is a debt students owe the the government for the cost of their subsidized higher education). Obviously I've been paying it off myself (~$7000 a year, rather a lot given I study full time and thus have
very limited work opportunity, mostly over the summer holidays), I wouldn't pretend to know anything abotu finances if my parents (or anybody else) were covering it, so I'll point out that I've been paying it myself lest people assume otherwise.
I don't think any trend of history majors being bad with money (not entirely sure I agree with that either, btw, what makes you think that's the case?) is not likely to have anything to do with how much attention they paid to maths in highschool, it has more to do with how disciplined they are and how willing they are to sacrafice things they want to keep up with payments.
I'm not sure that subjects that the majority of people have no need to understand should be manditory, it doesn't encourage intellectual development in people who don't want to be there nor does it increase the culteral understanding of those who have no interest.
There's a difference between having a professional need to understand something, and not wanting to be there. I agree that anything but the bare minimum of life skills should be considered for people who don't want to be there, but, don't conflate that with someone who is looking to work in a field where that subject will not be directly relevant.
Again, I'm not saying they shouldn't be offered. English (which I had to study up until year 12) was one of my favorite subjects at school, as was sports (which was manditory until year 10). Neither of which have any relevance to my university studies (nor was I ever likely to study something relevant to either, much less both, of them), even had they not been manditory I'd have kept doing them as long as I did.
But, people who
know that a subject isn't directly applicable to them in later life are far less likely to pay attention, especially if they are of the opinion that their time could be better spent. I had a mate in highschool who was really into nutrition (he kept himself super fit, knew and understood all about healthy diets and how his body worked etc) and used to just fuck around in LOTE (I studied italian for LOTE, after 10 years of studying it I can't speak a word, guess I'm an example of this as well) and geography, generally causing mahem and not getting anything from the class. He's now studying sports science, and doing rather well. Had either subject been necissary for him to suceed in his career he would've had more interest(he had no love of chemistry yet worked a damn site harder than anyone else in my class).
We were too young to comprehend any serious subjects, the majority of students didn't even have the literacy skills or even conversational skills to have any meaningful discussion.
This is true--our academic subjects are not geared towards teaching, they're geared towards getting kids to pass tests. There's a difference.
I originially had a rant here that went way off topic, but it's been removed because:
A. It's more or less me agreeing with you
B. This post has already gone on way too long
and C. It's somewhat off topic.
