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by jfaucett
5017 days ago
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speaking for myself as a learner, the only things I've learned to a very high level (foreign languages, computer science, maths, etc ) have all been things that I've had an immense amount of self interest in and have dedicated tons of time to. In the us educational system I think one of main problems is that you take a lot of subjects you don't need and another is that most subjects are not presented in a problem solving approach manner. It might just be my opinion, but I don't think sociology, anthropology, or even anatomy have any reason for being on a high school curriculum. It seems much more important to me to give students in this age group a really solid understanding of core areas: math, physics, literature / writing (i.e. the analytical thought and expressive process), and foreign languages (for today's world I'd also add computer science). If you know and comprehensively understand the above areas there's nothing stopping a high school student from majoring in any field imaginable. As far as the second area is concerned I think this just has to do with less busy work and more active thought and problem solving engagement. For instance, force students to come up with their own formulas for finding the area of a square BEFORE you show them the formula and steps for sovling the equations. I think this helps engrain knowledge and internalize it, also this is how everything in the real world works anyway, and prepares students for their future career choices. Those are just some of my thoughts... |
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School can also be incredibly boring for students with interests outside the narrow scope of the specified curriculum. I found that many students that 'didn't like history', just hadn't found a topic they could really sink their teeth into. Once they did -let's say food in a particular time period- we could then build off that interest to learn about that time period as a whole (politics, society, wars, economics etc...)