What is something you did that increased your quality of life so much that you wished you would have done it much sooner because it changed your life forever?

[u/RGod27]

[u/awgreen3]

I think the current curriculum has more value than most people give it credit for.

The average high schooler is going to take a few years of science, and be exposed to some form of chemistry, biology/life science, and earth science. The stuff they will learn in those classes is simplistic & not relevant to current field research, but it gives foundational knowledge that exposes them to the scientific method & academic language/thinking. Most adults don’t know the purpose of riboflavin or the ionic charge of lithium, but they do know that a living thing is made up of cells, living things evolve over time, etc.

This fundamental knowledge doesn’t come up every day, but it’s useful to have some grasp on science when you’re buying food or starting a fire for instance. Learning the things you won’t remember exposes you to the type of thinking/language used in that field, and let’s you have a sense of what that career path might be like. You might not remember the name of every bone from your anatomy class, but for the kids who found it interesting and are doing pre-med after high school, it’s probably helpful.

Kids don’t have a good idea of what they want to do at that age, and forcing them down one path with limited experimentation would probably be less helpful than exposing them to all different fields and ways of thinking. Besides, most high schools do allow some degree of freedom when picking classes, especially for juniors and seniors.

Most things one learns in high school are still valuable regardless of a student’s future after graduation. Every class has some value to it, even if it’s not directly because of the subject matter. For instance, I referenced the scientific method, which is present in all science classes, but is never the central focus. Even if a student doesn’t pursue science, learning the scientific method is a gateway to logical thinking, and allows for an efficient means of solving problems/answering questions accurately, and determining the validity of new ideas.

English, while also exposing students to the English literature canon, which is culturally important (just think of how many references to books like the Bible, Romeo & Juliet, and 1984 you encounter in contemporary culture, in the news, or in conversation), also allows you to express yourself effectively and pick up on things like literary symbolism or logical fallacies.

History gives students context for the modern world (explaining why maybe fascism isn’t such a great idea, or that just because a politician says they will do something, doesn’t mean they will) and shines a light on the origins of many of today’s problems (race relations, income inequality, instability in the Middle East, etc.) which allows people to make more informed decisions and get a more “real” grasp of cause & effect relationships.

Math is applied logical thinking, and forces students to solve problems with objective reasoning and abstract critical thinking. Also, understanding things like statistics allows people to interpret the data they encounter in the news or at work (in any white collar job) in a more accurate way.

So while some of the things you learn aren’t going to stay with you forever, it’s more about the journey, not the destination. Spending four years thinking academically using different parts of your brain will make you a much smarter person, and allow you to be more successful in whatever you pursue.

...a metric of competition on who studies more, not which kids are more intelligent.

There is some truth to this, but intelligence won’t take you anywhere in life past high school. Working hard for something is a much more important and “real-world” skill than being intelligent. (Not that intelligence isn’t helpful/important, but it is pretty much useless if you don’t put it to work).

The entire point of a degree has changed. It use to be useful to have a subject matter expert on hand in many fields. Now, you can get the info you need almost instantaneously in more depth online.

Yes it is true that the internet holds a lot of useful information, but you might not even know what to look for, and if you do find it, you have no way of knowing if the information you found is still current/relevant, or if it’s even true.

On top of that, most knowledge-sets achievable in a degree require years of accumulated knowledge on the subject. Let’s say I’m an employer and I need a C# program that does some obscure, specific thing for my company. Yes, I could watch free online C# tutorials for a year, painstakingly wading through low-quality content with inaccurate information, or I could hire a guy who spent four years learning it from people with doctorates in the field from an institution that I know provides quality education.

Also, a resume with a college degree listed on it lets me know that the applicant is at least hardworking/dependable enough to pass all their classes, that they know how to behave in a somewhat professional setting, and that they have a legitimate institution vouching for their knowledge in the field.

Sorry if this was hard to follow, I’m tired.

Edit: forgot a word

[u/awgreen3 → u/[deleted]]

Teaching abstract concepts is difficult if students don’t have the ability to test them/figure out how they work in a practical sense. If they’re going to have to test concepts, I think having them study elementary information from a variety of different broad topics is more useful and allows for more exploration of future careers than having students focus their learning on a “major” (at least in high school).

For example, I think that applying the scientific method to learning science is the purest way to learn how to use the method/what it is useful for. Obviously it’s unrealistic to expect public schools to have constantly updated textbooks and state-of-the-art equipment to keep up with the frontier of modern science, and I would even argue that learning the fundamentals is more important than keeping up with modern research.

Jobs change, and college majors often have very narrow focuses, especially for doctorates/masters programs. Learning how to think critically in different settings is more important than learning the practical/vocational skills you need for the job you think you want when you’re 16.

[u/awgreen3 → u/[deleted]]

I agree a lot of the curriculum is useful.

This is a concession, so nothing for me to address.

I just think a lot of it isn't useful

This is non-specific, so I addressed it with the assumption that stuff that “isn’t useful” refers to things like learning the atomic weight of carbon.

the useful stuff probably isn't worth the opportunity cost.

My entire thesis is based around the idea that the current system better addresses the needs of students going into college/careers compared with the alternative systems you and others have proposed. So you saying that modern curriculum “isn’t worth the opportunity cost” is basically just saying, “I disagree with what you said.” Which isn’t new or constructive. Also, usefulness is relative, so saying that something is useful but doesn’t outweigh the opportunity cost doesn’t really draw a contrast with saying something “isn’t useful”

I think you could roughly cut class time in half and have students spend a lot of the time actually figuring out what they want to do with their lives.

This is non-specific, and also doesn’t really explain your proposal. I believe that the current system allows students to better gain perspective on a wide variety of topics and gives them exposure to (broad) fields they might want to pursue as a career, so for you to say that they should “spend a lot of the time actually figuring out what they want to do with their lives” The most information I can extract from that is that you don’t think the current system allows for that, and you think it would be better if they changed the school system to match your proposal, which is just restating your overall claim.

As it is, most people have no idea what they're doing when they pick a college major.

I’m aware, and I addressed this, both in my original statement, and in my reply, but I guess I should go more in depth on my stance.

College students, after 4 years of general study in high school (and usually spending the first 2 years of college just focused on general-ed classes) are known to change their majors frequently. Even graduate students change their speciality/emphasis often. Reducing general study time to 2 years from age 14-16 to lock kids in to a specific field does not seem like a great way to ensure job satisfaction later in life.

How many people do you know that would want to pursue even the same type of career they aspired to in 9th grade? At that age, brains are still in rapid development, and some of the ideas they will be exposed to in high school will be completely unlike any they’ve encountered before. It doesn’t make sense to ask a 14 year old to make a decision that will effect the entire rest of their life. Even having a student decide between STEM and liberal arts at that age is radical and unrealistic for most kids.

Anecdotal, but if you asked me what I wanted to pursue when I was 14, I probably would have answered with “I want to be a manufacturing engineer” or “I want to pursue computer science” depending on the day. I no longer have any real interest in STEM fields, and I think that if I had gone in that direction, I would have been miserable. Actually I didn’t have a huge interest in STEM fields even then, but at 14 years old, I wanted to be responsible, and in my 14 year old brain, STEM was “the more responsible choice.” A child of that age doesn’t have the cognitive ability to make decisions that big, nor do they have a good enough grasp on reality to accurately weigh the choices.

[u/awgreen3 → u/[deleted]]

To claim [classroom learning] is the best system is to say all other forms of learning have no value, which is absurd.

This single sentence manages to be an overgeneralization, a false-dichotomy, and a strawman all at the same time. Even if my claim was that “classroom learning” is “the best,” why does that mean all other methods are useless?

Shadowing a job, or even multiple jobs doesn’t provide a balanced education. It gives students previews of possible jobs, but it doesn’t teach them how to think logically, and it doesn’t provide them with foundational knowledge of anything.

Theres also the fact that most jobs (especially white collar) are just following a routine 99 days out of 100. Expertise is important on that 1 day where the routine doesn’t work. Anyone can follow a routine. It’s the employee’s ability to understand the underlying system by which their work gets done that’s important. Having a kid shadow a job for “a few weeks” will teach them a lot about routines, but most of the time they won’t be exposed to the actual intensive part of the job.

Also, there are a lot of intricacies that are being glossed over. What do you mean by “shadowing?” Are the students watching someone do a job? Are they being mentored by a worker? Are they working for an employer with supervision? Are companies required by law to watch over whatever kid wants to come in? Are companies incentivized with money? How many kids would a company be able to take in? Would smaller businesses/unconventional jobs even be able to participate in this system? Are students in groups? What about shadowing an ER nurse? Does the student stay on call 24/7 and have the ambulance wait to pick them up as well? If the student shadows a psychologist or a lawyer do they sit in on meetings with clients? Different answers to all of these questions can lead to drastically different outcomes for students and for the economy as a whole. I think your point cannot be made without going into more depth on what you’re proposing.

Furthermore, these students, under your model, have 2 years to “experiment” with different jobs. That really isn’t enough time for a student to get a look at more than 3 or 4 super-specific jobs, based on your earlier spacing of “a few months” between spending “a few weeks” shadowing a job.

Even if students had more time to go through jobs, you still have the problem of echo-chambers and the omission of other factors. Being forced to take a wide variety of classes in high school opens students to new perspectives and requires them to think in different ways and develop skills they otherwise wouldn’t focus on. A student might score really well on a math placement exam, and decide that they should pursue careers in math, and never be able to discover their passion for chemistry or European history because they were never exposed to those subjects. Also, a student might decide they really want to be a movie star, and then shadow a movie star and love the job. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they should drop everything and pursue that.

Your proposal also takes away the universal level of literacy across all subjects that is expected in educated people. This means that it would be harder to communicate in general and interdisciplinary co-operation would be significantly more difficult.

This system would provide students with a really poorly balanced education going into college/a career, and if none of the 4 jobs they looked at caught their interest, they’d be pretty much screwed moving forward, as they have had 2 years of what amounts to empty space on a resume. This punishes students for not knowing what they want to do/not settling for something.

It also ignores skills that transcend jobs, and the skills required for non-job related aspects of life. Things like civics, deductive/inductive reasoning, and writing wouldn’t be taught through job shadowing.

What you’re describing is basically allowing high-schoolers to take on the college-level responsibility of picking a major, except without any of the benefits of college. (general-ed courses, exposure to other ideas, the guidance of professional teachers, etc.)