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Nodrog · 13 Aug 2007, 12:59

I'd scrap around 90% of the current highschool curriculum because its completely worthless; an education shouldnt consist of memorising 8 hours a day worth of contextless trivia to be forgotten after the relevant exam.

The compulsory part of a school day shouldnt last more than 5 hours max since school shouldnt be used as a political institution that indoctrinates speople into a 9-5 lifestyle. On the other hand, I'd probably knock a few years off primary school since the end of it is pretty useless, so highschool would maybe last from ages 10 to 18. Pretty much all classes would focus on teaching ways of thinking rather than imparting knowledge; the core curriculum would probably focus around critical reading (which would incorporate aspects of politics/sociology/English lit/analytic philosophy/critical-theory), philosophy, maths (proper maths, not the drudgery that currently gets taught in highschool), art (which includes painting/music/poetry, all students being required to learn a musical instrument to a decent level and suchlike), and science (mainly physics, but also a rudimentary knowledge of evolutionary theory).

The voluntary part of school would consists of optional classes and individual projects. With optional classes, youd probably have 'teaser' lectures for each subject a couple of times a year so students could know what it involved and whether it interested them. Important electives here would be computer programming (taught as an extension of thought rather than an office tool), mixed martial arts, economics, and history. Individual projects would be anything that a student's interested in, preferably something they could find a teacher to supervise. The single most important thing to learn in life is a proper understanding of science - not an accumulation of scientific facts, but an understanding of how to actually do/think science properly However, I'm not quite sure what the best way to do teach this is; its difficult to do it in within science class since science needs to be taught in a somewhat ahistorical manner unless you have a lot of time to study historical context and read primary sources. As such, I'd try to design projects which force students to confront the most important parts of science (confirmation bias, prediction vs induction, statistics, etc) directly, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd structure it.

The 4-5 years or so prior to highschool would probably consist of some variation of Montessori education.

edit; obvously there would be a very high degree of segregation in classes, partially based on intellligence but primarilly based on willingness to learn and general world-openness.

edit2: as part of the science education thing, I'd probably have a weekly competition where some shoddy piece of scientific research thats been featured in the mainstream media (most likely evo-psych/social psychology, but anything really) gets given to anyone and the student who can point out the most methodological errors wins a prize. This has the dual effect of teaching scientific reasoning, and also brreeding a sense of scepticism so they can break out of that idiotically uncritical 'its true because science says so' mindset a lot of people have.

13 Aug 2007, 12:59	#5
Nodrog Registered User Join Date: Jun 2000 Posts: 8,476	Re: What Should be Taught in Schools? I'd scrap around 90% of the current highschool curriculum because its completely worthless; an education shouldnt consist of memorising 8 hours a day worth of contextless trivia to be forgotten after the relevant exam. The compulsory part of a school day shouldnt last more than 5 hours max since school shouldnt be used as a political institution that indoctrinates speople into a 9-5 lifestyle. On the other hand, I'd probably knock a few years off primary school since the end of it is pretty useless, so highschool would maybe last from ages 10 to 18. Pretty much all classes would focus on teaching ways of thinking rather than imparting knowledge; the core curriculum would probably focus around critical reading (which would incorporate aspects of politics/sociology/English lit/analytic philosophy/critical-theory), philosophy, maths (proper maths, not the drudgery that currently gets taught in highschool), art (which includes painting/music/poetry, all students being required to learn a musical instrument to a decent level and suchlike), and science (mainly physics, but also a rudimentary knowledge of evolutionary theory). The voluntary part of school would consists of optional classes and individual projects. With optional classes, youd probably have 'teaser' lectures for each subject a couple of times a year so students could know what it involved and whether it interested them. Important electives here would be computer programming (taught as an extension of thought rather than an office tool), mixed martial arts, economics, and history. Individual projects would be anything that a student's interested in, preferably something they could find a teacher to supervise. The single most important thing to learn in life is a proper understanding of science - not an accumulation of scientific facts, but an understanding of how to actually do/think science properly However, I'm not quite sure what the best way to do teach this is; its difficult to do it in within science class since science needs to be taught in a somewhat ahistorical manner unless you have a lot of time to study historical context and read primary sources. As such, I'd try to design projects which force students to confront the most important parts of science (confirmation bias, prediction vs induction, statistics, etc) directly, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd structure it. The 4-5 years or so prior to highschool would probably consist of some variation of Montessori education. edit; obvously there would be a very high degree of segregation in classes, partially based on intellligence but primarilly based on willingness to learn and general world-openness. edit2: as part of the science education thing, I'd probably have a weekly competition where some shoddy piece of scientific research thats been featured in the mainstream media (most likely evo-psych/social psychology, but anything really) gets given to anyone and the student who can point out the most methodological errors wins a prize. This has the dual effect of teaching scientific reasoning, and also brreeding a sense of scepticism so they can break out of that idiotically uncritical 'its true because science says so' mindset a lot of people have. Last edited by Nodrog; 13 Aug 2007 at 13:19.