#119. What School Lessons Might Be Useful as Training for Life?
I’m asking here for your thoughts, to contribute to my next letter.
Dear friends,
As regular readers of my writings know, I’m not a fan of compulsory (forced) schooling. It wastes huge amounts of children’s time. In its modern rendition it is the primary cause of anxiety and depression among kids (see here). And remarkably little is learned, remembered, or used from all that time and effort spent. My research and that of others have made me a fan of Self-Directed Education (see, for examples, here and here).
In my most recent (June 20) Zoom meeting with paid subscribers to this Substack, one of the questions and subsequent discussion got me thinking along this line: Given that we have a coercive educational system, and given that for some time to come, many if not most kids are going to be victims of it, what courses should be required? What lessons are so important that we should try to get everyone to learn them? Let’s focus this question on secondary school, not elementary school.
Suppose we believe there are certain things everyone should learn so they can go on to live a good life—a life in which they are happy, can support themselves well, and contribute at least as much to society as they take? What are those things?
In other words, if our compulsory schooling system were truly designed to enable people to live a good life, and if we persisted in the (in my opinion mistaken) belief that certain courses or lessons should be required, what are those courses or lessons?
I’ve been playing with that question a bit myself and have some thoughts, which I’ll share in my next letter. But now, with this letter, I want to get your thoughts. Here are two sets of questions to you:
1. When you think back on your secondary schooling (middle school or high school) what course or lesson seems most valuable to you now, in the sense that it has somehow enriched your life? How has it enriched your life? Do you believe such a course or lesson is sufficiently useful that it should be part of the required school curriculum?
2. When you think back about the years of your secondary schooling, what do wish had been part of the curriculum that was not? What course or lesson might have helped you best as you entered independent adulthood? Given that we have compulsory schooling with required courses, do you think that course or lesson should be among the requirements?
If you have thoughts about either or both of these questions, please share them in the comments section here. Your responses, along with some of my own thoughts, will contribute to my next Substack letter.
With respect and best wishes,
Peter
As a highly motivated student years ago and a teacher of secondary level history for over a decade before leaving to start a microschool, I find these questions interesting and important.
In my own education, I definitely think that literature was important. I am truthfully not an avid reader of literature but I feel like the exposure to quality stories, how to analyze text, and the critical thinking and communication skills it helped developed have been utilized and further developed throughout my adult and professional life in a way they would. It have been without that foundation in high school.
Related, I feel like oral communication was beneficial for me. It was another class that helped mold my communication skills, but took it one step further and forced me to communicate orally in front of an audience— something I would have never done on my own and that truthfully still makes me nervous. But that foundation was laid in high school and built upon in adulthood.
As for things I think would have been beneficial, math tops the list. Not because I didn’t take math— in fact I took quite a lot of advanced math— but because I realize now what math is important to daily life and am only now learning the “why” behind so much of it. I was very much taught math through memorization and never knew why we do things the way we do. Only through teaching my own kids have I begun to investigate this and understand it for myself. I think that teaching math at its root and for practical use is what I missed and should be a part of every education.
I also echo many of the other comments that social studies are important for understanding contemporary people, societies, and the issues we currently face. These were things I did not fully appreciate until college because my instruction in these areas wasn’t absent in high school, it was poor. This was something I sought to rectify in my own small way through being a history teacher, myself.
A large part of the problem with traditional, compulsory school is not so much with the requirements themselves, but with the way they are actually implemented in the system. What good is studying a topic if it’s only done to check a box and not for actual deep understanding of how it is important and connected to the other things we study?
Not directly related to your prompt, but I also think it’s worth commenting on the way schools stratify students. I was on a “college prep” track and so placed in classes that were “more advanced” to prepare me for college and beyond. I wasn’t disallowed to take CTE classes, but there was a stigma to them, and I got the impression that those were not for me. Consequently, I was dissuaded from taking courses I probably would have actually enjoyed, like Home Economics. Not taking a class in high school did not keep me from eventually learning those skills, but it delayed my exposure to them. I love to cook and bake now, but I could have discovered that love earlier if I wasn’t coached to see those classes as inferior to traditional academics.
Critical life skills I wish school actually taught us: money skills (it’s shocking to me the number of adults who are clueless and reckless with their money), cooking & nutrition, taxes, and some type of social skills or kindness. One class I did take in high school that was wildly helpful (and still is to this day) was Keyboarding. Learning how to type without looking.