School curriculum according to you

[Oscar's dad]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

I think they should be taught to tie a range of basic knots like the bowline.

[Wowbagger]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

I think they should be taught to tie a range of basic knots like the bowline.

And when they start hanging each other the Government can make rope illegal.

[alchemy]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

Manners and respect for others

[groucho]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

Manners and respect for others

Surely this a role for parents.

Sadly I know this is not the case. Mrs g works in a respectable primary school "leafy suburbs" and the kids have no listening skills, they are selfish and greedy as they wont for nothing. After every holiday she has to start again trying to install 'listening'! Her best teaching aid is a tamborine!

[David Martin]

To think. To have a clue that they can try to work it out rather than moanin 'naebodies taught us that'.

Yes, it would be good if today's students could learn instead of just being taught.

..d

[numbnuts]

Manners and respect for others
Surely this a role for parents

teach the parents first

[Jaded]

How to use their legs.

[Frenchie]

Maths?
Languages...

[Charlotte]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

How to ride a bicycle on the road
Cooking
Domestic and personal finance
First aid (particularly CPR)
Swimming
Wilderness survival
Very basic grounding in law (consumer law, contract, tort, criminal, public law, etc.)
How to grow your own food

...but as importantly as any of these, as has already been said is how to learn.

One of the most important things I ever discovered is that for most intents and purposes, it is completely unnecessary to know how to do a thing, as long as one knows that it is possible to do that thing and one knows how to learn to do it.

Until a couple of years ago, I had no idea how to install a bathroom suite.  But I know that I was completely capable of doing it and I knew where to go to learn the skills I would need.  Ditto installing Linux onna PC, building a bicycle wheel, making pastry, or whatever.

We need to give kids the confidence that they can do whatever they put their minds to by teaching them amazing things that they never thought they could do.

[HTFB]

What do you think kids should be taught in school that they are currently not?

I think they should be taught to tie a range of basic knots like the bowline.

I was taught my basic knots at school, with the cadets. I've taught them to a lot of university students, in the boat club. The trucker's hitch in particular.

[Rapples]

And when they start hanging each other the Government can make rope illegal.

John Cooper Clarke - Suspended Sentence

A poem from my youth

[pcolbeck]

A basic history timeline of British History. My son who is nearly 12 has done the Romans, the Tudors and the Victorians in nearly every class he has been in complete with lovely activities and even trips out but has never been taught about WWII, the Civil War, The British Empire (what we had one ?), The Reformation etc etc. I know theses are complicated things but I feel the kids need to be given a brief overview of what happened when before delving into detail.   

[Pete]

I think they should be taught to tie a range of basic knots like the bowline.

And when they start hanging each other the Government can make rope illegal.

[boy scout hat on]You cannot hang yourself with a bowline.  That is the whole point: the bowline knot does not slip.[/boy scout hat off]

[David Martin]

I think they should be taught to tie a range of basic knots like the bowline.

And when they start hanging each other the Government can make rope illegal.

[boy scout hat on]You cannot hang yourself with a bowline.  That is the whole point: the bowline knot does not slip.[/boy scout hat off]

A running bowline, however is perfectly usable as a strangulation device, and if you were to tie a bowline (non-slipping) around your neck, and hang yourself, then I 'm pretty sure it would be as effective a method of ending it all as a noose.

..d

[David Martin]

ob bowlines - did you know that the Royal Navy and the Dutch Royal Navy tie different versions of this knot?

..d

[CAMRAMan]

I'd appreciate it in Hungary if the school curriculum didn't brainwash kids into thinking Hungary was hard done by in the Treaty of Trianon following WW1.

On the face of it, they did lose out, but while their was some victors' justice involved, to my mind it was just allowing self-determination for the Croats, Serbs, Romanians and Slovaks who had been oppressed by the Magyars.

Sorry, but it permeates the whole of society here in a really negative way.

Steps down off soap box...

[Phil]

<interesting_fact>
  The hangman's knot wasn't widely used to hang people until the 19th century.  Before that, they used a
  simple noose made by passing the standing part of the rope through a reinforced bight. 
</interesting_fact>

Anyway, I'd like kids to learn at least one foreign language to a very high standard.  And also basic Latin.  I also think there needs to be a shake-up in the way IT is taught - at the moment kids are lucky if they leave school able to operate Microsoft Office.  I did computer-maintenance for beer money last year and some of my yearmates were shockingly ignorant. 

I'd also like schools to deal only in education.  I don't think it should be their job to teach children morals, manners, or how to eat with a knife and fork.  That's the parents' responsibility. 

[Jezza]

Chinese.

[pcolbeck]

I also think there needs to be a shake-up in the way IT is taught - at the moment kids are lucky if they leave school able to operate Microsoft Office.  I did computer-maintenance for beer money last year and some of my yearmates were shockingly ignorant. 

The fact that schools insist on calling it ICT when no one in industry ever does is the first clue that its going to be bad. The second is that half the ICT teachers have no clue about how computers work. Last time I was in a school the head of ICT couldn't get a DVD to play through a projector. She hadn't even logged into the laptop in question just plugged it into the projector and stuck a DVD in the drive. The lid was still down she though it would just play like a home DVD player. Loggin in and running some DVD playing software hadn't occurred to her.

[diapsaon0]

An adequate command of the English language.  Basic grammar, spelling and how to write a letter.

N

[Pedaldog.]

Civilisation skills?
Do Not Break Things if they are not yours!
Brign back corporal punishment.
And for all those that think it's the parents responsibility, how about telling the parents that and making them pay for little Jonnies "Artwork" on the local walls.
I still think people should have to take a test and get a licence before they are allowed to reproduce.

[Phil]

Yes, I think that beating children regularly is certainly the best way of showing them how to behave. 

[Charlotte]

I got beaten regularly and it never did me any harm 

[geraldc]

My school did all of those things, but it was a strange school.

We were taught English using the mummery system, which was basically reading Shakespeare and then miming it out in class.  They finally got rid of the mummery system a few years ago...

I think kids need to be taught not to be squeamish, and have them willing to get their hands dirty. Hardest thing I had to do as a kid was helping empty out chemical toilets from camps.  Blue chemical water and white bleached jobbies..
Teaches you a lot about your limits.

[Malandro]

I'd also like schools to deal only in education.  I don't think it should be their job to teach children morals, manners, or how to eat with a knife and fork.  That's the parents' responsibility. 

That would be an ideal situation but what about those kids who have crap parents who can't be arsed to teach them these things or who are totally ignorant themselves or just absent, in jail or even dead?  It's not right to keep them disadvantaged just because they started out that way.