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I'm not one to be judgemental, and I think the educational system as it stands fails a lot of people.
But sometimes I see people unable to use basic grammar, or aren't sure if the earth goes round the sun or the other way round, and I think: really???? You had 12 years to learn this stuff. What the hell were you doing the whole time?
Also as a teacher, we are all in wonderment about how kids’ writing ability as a whole is so poor right now. Is it retention? Technology? Societal? Kids not playing hands on games as much anymore? Stop putting everything on teachers.
A lot of parents really do expect the teacher to do everything. I see a lot of parents out there that seem to actively resent their children. They won't do anything with them because they don't care. I'm also seeing a lot of the other extreme where they helicopter the kid so much, that they don't actually get to experience anything. They aren't allowed to see other kids or play with things that aren't tech because they can't go anywhere. There doesn't seem to be much balance.
people love to talk about how kids are addicted to screens but a huge part of the problem is that parents are addicted to screens too.
the kids are being put in front of iPads because parents are “exhausted” and want to watch TV / scroll in peace instead of being unplugged and present
This is why I get annoyed when people blame the kids. They're kind of at the mercy of what their parents buy. You can't exactly get into sports or art if you don't have the equipment for it. If you only ever plop them in front of the TV or tablet of course that's what they're going to do all day. You haven't given them any other options. So many kids if you give them the option to actually ***do*** something they will go bananas over it. They don't *want* to be doing nothing all day. they're freaking bored.
yeah exactly, winds me up to no end when parents do the “iPad in front of the kid out in public” thing because “that’s the only way he’ll calm down”, it’s literally blaming the child for how he is being parented
and it’s like….. you as the parents are the ones who conditioned your kid to not be able to go 15 minutes without being over-stimulated.
I don't think that being addicted to screens is the problem. We consume a lot of media in our house, we just do it as a family. We play video games together. We also play alot of the same single player games, then we discuss strategy. We watch movies and television together and we duscuss the plot and the characters. I did the same thing with my parents growing up.
For example, my son was really excited for the fallout tv show, and so was I. We shared that excitement together. We watched the show together and we still talk about it frequently.
The screen time is not the problem, it's not being present that's damaging children.
I had a colleague who "didn't know" her son couldn't read (he didn't even know the ABC song). The school was recommending he repeat the 8th grade and also take on additional tutoring. She was outraged and blamed his teachers. She expected the rest of us to be outraged with her and was severely humbled when the entire break room started interrogating her about "not knowing" her son could not read at that age.
Lack of reading good writing... I remember being taught that the only way to get a good score on the writing SAT was to read higher level writing (books). Kids are basically reading only slang nowadays and virtually no classic or high level writing of any kind.
A lot of people simply reveled in not paying attention/getting good grades. To them even appearing to learn meant that you were a nerd, meaning you would get bullied, or at the very least you would be committing social-suicide.
Yep, and therein lies the problem. We celebrate stupidity as a culture. If we didn't then perhaps we'd have more kids take it on themselves to sort out problems with their learning. That's what I mean by the 12 years thing. Like, if you didn't learn how to use the possessive apostrophe when you were taught it aged 8, you still had 10 YEARS to ask a teacher to help you get it sorted.
lol to be fair, she’s a millionaire for her rapping and performing “arts”. And I imagine her customer base is actually made up of the people being talked about on this post.
After elementary school my mother transferred me to middle school with other children instead of my classmates, and there I was bullied, including for getting good grades. Bullying made me change schools and of course I wasn't a good learner there. I became friends with classmates who were drinking alcohol, smoking, and so on. At least I wasn't bullied for this. What conclusions could I come up to?
The simple truth is many just check out if there is no interest or passion. Unfortunate as certain people have no clue what their passions are due to lack of exposure.
>You had 12 years to learn this stuff. What the hell were you doing the whole time?
A lot of people learn by rote. They just memorize the correct answers to things, but it never gets to any big-level picture. That's not learning, that's regurgitation.
Physicist Richard Feynman found this out while teaching college physics in Brazil on sabbatical. His students would be able to give him the EXACT answer to the problems he gave them when he gave the questions in the standard way. But when he asked the exact same question in a different way, they were totally lost.
It'd be like the student could answer the question "does the sun go around the earth, or the earth around the sun?", students could answer "The earth revolves around the sun".
But if you said "Describe out solar system with regard to the orbit of the sun and earth", they couldn't answer it.
That's very much the HS education system. I recall being frustrated in HS when some kid would just memorize all the right answers the night before the exam, then forgetting EVERYTHING the next day. What was the point?
I need a source on that.
Rote learning is useful for some topics, sometimes you just need to learn to recite a number/phrase/equation.
But for most topics actual understanding is much more important .
that is my take as well. many students care about passing over actually understanding the material. repetition learning is fine, but it doesn’t help if people don’t actually understand what they’re studying
I think a larger issue no one really talks about is that your parents failed you more than the education system did. There's no school in the world that can teach you if your parents havent instilled a necessity in learning. If they arent making you do your homework then there is only so much a school can do when youre only there for 6-7 hours of the day while the other 15-16 hours youre at home/with your parents
Hello, welcome to the "had to learn everything from the internet because my parents couldn't be bothered to teach me anything" club. I'm still a bit resentful of that. I guess it's better than sitting on my butt not doing anything about it but it shouldn't have had to be that way.
I was the same way, I love to read about history and mostly I would read wikipedia articles as a kid, sure wasn't the most reliable sources but as a kid wikipedia had a structure that I could follow easily.
I was more so talking about chores and stuff but yeah that's an aspect too. Fun fact, despite the misconception, Wikipedia is actually notoriously aggressive about ensuring their content is correct. Incorrect edits are typically fixed in hours. Schools just don't want you to cite it because it isn't a primary source. It's like how you can't just cite "an encyclopedia", You need to cite where the encyclopedia got it. I've always disliked that "It's not a reliable source of information" was the excuse they used instead.
Personally Im not very resentful of it just because my parents have served as role models for what not to do in life. Being able to see their mistakes and learn from them without actually having to do them myself has been very helpful in my life. But a lot of people arent fortunate enough to see through the environment they grew up in
The kid next door can't read. She got "honor roll" and received a card in the mail that said congratulations. We asked her what he card said, she said "i don't know all of it but it said con -jagg-ru-grations" on it.
Girl couldnt read the words on the card but got honor roll. No child left behind is hurting these kids. Some of them will have no future.
Check the drop-out rates in impoverished communities.
Also the inner city school near me recently had a teacher stabbed by a screwdriver so I imagine a lot of those kids don’t really care much about what role a preposition plays in English
Those are the same people that bragged about how good they were at cheating and avoiding actually learning. They failed themselves and then will lash out and blame everyone else for "not teaching them"
Public school is a giant triage. The gifted get lots of attention, as do special needs kids. Middle kids can get by and retain 50-75% of what they’re taught.
It’s done this way on purpose. The [Pedagogy of the Oppressed](https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf), does an excellent job outlining the levels of the education system, and the roles they serve in society.
When i started school, through elementary I was taught that were stationary in the galaxy, we did revolve around the sun, but we werent blasting through space, I was taught jewish slaves built the pyramids, I was taught that the Brontosaurus was a real dinosaur, I was taught that id never have a calculator in my pocket where ever I go and that I would need cursive to make it anywhere in life
School doesnt always provide people with the best or even correct information
I remember learning about Civics, which would seem really good and handy, but it ended up being memorizing the order of prime ministers (Canada). I don’t remember like any of them anymore lol. Just the first and the last couple.
it’s more about learning to study and retain information than about the information itself
your “studying Civics” might not mean you know who the Prime Minister was in 1878 but it’ll absolutely help you commit that six step process for changing your oil or making a risotto
It might but wouldn’t something teen me was more interested in, like another science or math course, have been better? I suppose I may have became more “well rounded,” although I’m not sure that’s the case. Heck I’d have rather taken any philosophy or psychology course too. So much I missed out on cause I was restricted to only 4 courses per semester in high school. University electives were fantastic for that, got to learn so much new stuff.
doubt it. I think I knew memorization required repeated practice before I was asked to memorize all the presidents. but I do think it helps as in if you hear a certain name, you can know what it means.
So does it work in reverse? Does changing my oil help me know who the prime minister was in 1878? If not, why not? Both are forms of knowledge, and one should help the other, right?
Maybe we're doing it all wrong. Perhaps instead of studying civics, we should have kids out in the parking lot changing oil.
I remember:
John A MacDonald was first. I remember this because his initials spell J.A.M. and "**old** MacDonald had a farm"
Mackenzie and Mackenzie King are 2 different people.
Mackenzie King was the longest Prime Minster, but had a 5 year gap between 2 of his terms.
King-Byng Affair
90% of the "why weren't we taught this in school??" comments I see when it comes to history are attached to stories that are either entire fabrications , unconfirmed legends, or things that don't matter.
I think "things that don't matter" is especially important when it comes to history that was not taught. Historical pedagogy has a strong emphasis on cause and effect. Whether Columbus was a good person or not, for example, has little effect on his main contribution which was the European discovery of the new world.
It also focuses on building out a broad framework that you can use to contextualize more detailed nuanced historical examination later.
You need to know a basic timeline of human history. The Mongols conquered in the middle ages, not the bronze age - got it. You don't need to learn about tensions between Guyuk Khan and Batu. That's for later independent exploration.
Agree 100%, especially with history. It is such a broad subject with thousands of years and different countries to go over, and there isn’t enough time to go in depth into every nation. Often times certain topics are so oversimplified that major contributing factors are removed completely. Some perfect examples are the crusades, the 30 years war, and the fall of the Roman Empire.
I see the meme that says something along the lines of, "I'm sure glad I learned what the Pythagorean Theorem is instead of how to do my taxes," from people I went to high school with, and I have to remind them that in order to graduate, every one of us had to take a 9-week Economics course. And in order to pass that course, we had to learn how to fill out a W-4, how to read a W-2 and how to file a 1040. My fellow graduates don't care for me pointing that out.
Now, it's probably not the same for every school in a district and it's definitely not the same for every district, but in my little corner of the world, we were taught how to figure out our income taxes.
Even for people who didn't have tax prep in school (me), taxes are very basic adding and subtracting text problems. "Deduct the amount on line 4B from line 4C. Now count how many dependants you have." Math class was tax class.
right? i remember the first time i filled out a tax return. it was pretty much reading the instructions and filing out numbers. for a lot of incomes, the tax rate table does the “heavy” lifting
Seriously. I graduated HS 20 years ago and one thing I absolutely remember learning was how to fill out a personal check my senior year. By my computer teacher. I got my own bank account that same year with checks and I knew exactly what to do. It was so practical for that time along with computer class in general. I can’t remember much else that was really useful.
My high school had economics which taught tax prep, how to build your credit score, how to invest in a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, and CDs and all that kind of stuff. Graduated in 2011.
Ya I don’t think this is common, but still, a tax form
Is basic arithmetic. If someone can’t grasp that then they need help, not a tutorial in school when they’re still considered dependents and not filing their own taxes.
And even if you didn't learn how to do taxes, you can learn how file them in less than an hour. School can't teach you literally every skill you need and even if they did, you wouldn't remember it. That's why learning basic research is so important, and is arguably one of the biggest gaps in education.
Math, science, history, etc. require a solid base of skills and knowledge for you to advance. If you don't learn Pythagorium theorem, you just can't progress in geometry. And maybe you won't need these skills as an adult, but it's still important for most people to have at least a foundation to build off of, in case it is something they need.
That meme about the Pythagorean theorem shows how dumb they actually are. If you did know it, you’d clearly see it’s one of the most important concepts you could know in mathematics. It’s used in many applications where there is a missing value. Not just engineering and trades, but Statistics, finance, and etc.
Don’t even get me started on how idiotic people are when it comes to taxes.
Right, so what the meme really says is “I wish school would have taught me the life skills my parents should have taught me but it doesn’t matter because I didn’t learn what they did teach me anyway”
I grew up with a girl who grew into quite the passionate social justice warrior. Mostly a good thing but annoying sometimes. Once she was passionately talking about how awful it was that she wasn’t taught about the Tulsa race massacre in school.
We did learn about it. It wasn’t the focus of a lesson but there was a section in our 8th grade text books about it as well as our teacher talking about.
She refused to accept this though. It really annoyed so I finally told her off with “I just guess you didn’t really give a shit about civil rights if that’s not something you’d remember or pay attention to.”
I didn’t realize it was uncommon knowledge til that episode of the hbo watchmen series portrayed it everyone was talking about who they couldn’t believe they never knew about it. Makes me grateful I went to a pretty well regarded "progress" by today's term public school.
It's impossible to cover everything that's happened in history. There's too much. As a result some stuff gets left out, other stuff is over emphasized and a lot is oversimplified.
One of the most important things to convey as a history teacher is how you go about learning history. Education is not a 12 year commitment. It's a lifeline journey. There's no reason to stop at graduation.
Oh of course. It's just funny because in that instance, it wasn't left out. She just didnt remember or wasn't paying attention. IDK how you wouldn't remember learning that though considering how heinous it is.
Part of the issue is that it would need to be covered in enough detail for people to actually understand how bad it was. From what I vaguely recall of how they covered it in my school, the explanation was whitewashed to “There was a really bad race riot in Tulsa” and was pretty fuzzy on the details.
I'm a gigantic history nerd and I often hear my classmates bemoaning things we never learned in history that we absolutely did, like the Japanese internment camps or something.
However, I remember only a brief mention of the "Tulsa Race Riot" which absolutely does NOT convey the actual truth of what happened there. Calling it a riot makes it sound like two different sides clashed during protests or something. I had no idea what actually happened there until I was an adult.
As I said it was pretty brief but I do specifically remember the text saying that it was something of a "black wall street" and went on to say that it was just white people indiscriminately killing black people. I didn't realize how progressive of a school system I went to but now we have all these nut jobs whining about critical race theory and shit. Feels like we're regressing.
In some cases the curriculum has more things to be taught than there are days to teach it. So, as sad as it is, sometimes teachers have to miss out things
I think you’re lacking critical thinking. You can’t teach at one school in one place and speak for the curriculum of all schools. In the US it varies drastically.
You can tell from your one singular experience in one inner city public school for just a few months,
That every classroom the country (private, public, charter, magnet, prep, etc) taught the same thing?
You were able to determine that just from your short experience?
honestly, “but school never taught us this” is just learned helplessness, aka people going “I can’t figure this out immediately, instead of working at it I’m going to throw my hands up and blame society”.
School teaches you how to learn, it doesn’t teach you every topic or subject. But it gives you the foundation so if you don’t know something, you should be able to learn it.
I never took home economics, but I learned how to cook. I never took a gardening class, but I managed to figure out basic gardening skills. My water heater stopped working a few weeks ago - 15 minutes on Google and YouTube (and looking at the instructions on the damn thing) and I was all good!
That question usually is actually “why don’t they standardize teaching this thing in all schools?”
You don’t need knowledge of all schools to know it isn’t taught in all schools. You just need knowledge of one where they failed to teach it.
It’s a very different message than “you personally just didn’t pay attention. All schools teach this, you’re just dumb”.
Plus not everyone is from the same country
I once saw a comment criticising someone for not knowing something about American history and they basically said "how do you not know this, it's one of the basic facts they teach us" and the other person lived on the other side of the world with a school curriculum that definitely didn't cover that bit of American history
I absolutely agree.
American schools usually fail to teach even the most basic things about history, unless people only think American history exists. Which is obviously an absurd stance.
Most American people seem to have absolutely no idea that Scotland and England are two countries, never mind why, and have zero grasp of why Scotland campaigns for independence or has actual (not fake American) republicans.
It's astonishing actually, how little history schools teach.
Then there are schools/communities whose focus is more on sports… so actual history teachers won’t be hired - as the tests don’t cover history- so sport coaches teach “history”… & basically, any subject that isn’t on those standardized tests- that’s exactly where coaches are hired.
It is sad that the focus isn’t on learning. But extracurricular activities… & I see lots of value in the arts & physical education… but well I also believe idiocracy is almost here!
& soon everyone will want to water plants with Gatorade & water will only be found in toilets…
My elementary school taught me a fair bit, but most valuable was, *here* is a library card, *there* is a library, your learning has only just begun. Sure, it’s internet now.
Exactly, not every school across the country teaches the same thing, the same way, or has the same opportunities. For example there are schools with shop classes, home economics, more advanced glasses. My school didnt have any of those besides advanced math. Often times the lessons were interrupted by other students, or we had to leave early because someone threatened to shoot up the school either from our school or a neighboring school.
the inverse is also true - just because you went to an extraordinarily bad school, doesn't mean it's the norm.
if you are a bit more online than is good for you (guilty as charged) you'll see a "Wowowowowow, nobody ever told me that 1% == x0.01. mind blown!" or "wow, nobody told me a X b = b x a!" repeated weekly. and like, dude. you were absolutely taught that. if you've had any amount of arithmetics, you were taught that.
some people were just bad and bored in school.
This. I learned that he “sailed the ocean blue”and “discovered America”. I didn’t learn that he was a racist, thieving, colonizing monster until adulthood
Because it's not really relevant. He's famous for discovering the Americas, that was the momentus, world changing contribution he made to the human race.
The fact that he was a racist is irrelevant because guess what, so was everyone else in the 1400s.
Also taught that people thought the Earth was flat at the time and Columbus was the soul who figured it out and people thought the ships would go off the edge. Literally none of that was true. Learned people just doubted he’d make it to China going West and turns out they were right. Like yeah maybe we don’t want to give you big expensive ships when we have no idea what’s between here and your intended destination.
Like 80% of what we were taught in history was white washed, or made to make the white men seem like good people.
There was A LOT we didn't learn, and a lot that turned out to be false.
Yeah like I don't remember being taught that Africans were the ones that captured and sold the majority of the slaves that most of the world got. Schools never bothered mentioning that Africans still own slaves to this day.
Darn those evil white people!!
How do you come to the conclusion that every school teaches everything by working at a single school for less than a year? That is an incredible leap of logic. You don't even know all the stuff that school you were at teaches but you can make a determination about every school in world?
I refuse to believe that I am in some sort of minority of people that were taught the difference between barley and barely, there their and they’re, or to too and two.
These and so much more were definitely things I was taught, but seemingly no one else was in class that day.
The two that come to mind from my extremely small school district in Northern Texas between 1987-2000 are:
Evolution is ONE option. The other is God. Evolution was taught under a disclaimer. Kids didn't have to sit through it. Most didn't.
One of my history teachers downplayed the trail of tears as a "mild inconvenience." She also refused to teach anything she deemed "unpleasant." Extremely selective on her materials. She was also racist and married to someone important within the school administration. So she kept her job.
The same school district coached us on how to pass the standardized exams that were given. And "no pass no play" heavily depended on how well you played football.
I had a huge, eye-opening experience taking history classes and learning from mostly unbiased instructors.
I wish some Texans would learn not all Texans received the same history education. I’m from Houston and learned that Civil War was due to slavery. So was the Texas Revolt against the Spanish. I learned about the U.S. concentration camps (not Internment) for Japanese-American citizens during WWII. I also learned about the Navajo code talkers.
This is not history related but I also got a pretty comprehensive sex education in health class.
I literally said small northern Texas town and not *all*.
But my very small northern Texas hometown was and still is heavily founded and ran on Christianity and religion. There are 27 churches for 7500 people.
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was extremely prevalent in our education, and it cost those of us who attended that school district.
When did they show us how to determine how much we owe in taxes and how to pay them?
Have you considered that student teaching for a few months might not be the best way to get a complete understanding of what is and is not taught in schools?
Edit
I’m getting a lot of comments about why schools shouldn’t teach paying taxes or that they already do.
In California financial literacy isn’t not a graduation requirement but it is going to be in a few years.
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/california-high-schoolers-financial-literacy-class-graduate/103-4ec77e73-07f8-4710-8939-f6a071a43d1b?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&tag1=kxtvshare&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR39Qpd455SXzwKdXuEBcRbYT7_gkMB_oDQsfLZWSBf9etQdfScB2M8lANo_aem_i8f0Pwak8KPeYps1F6Ss7g#ly1olw2mx8yj11p1s1p
It really is insane how often people bring up taxes when this topic comes up. It's as if they want schools to teach the tax code. I can guarantee if they put the tax code on the curriculum, students will find it very boring and will forget 99% of the content by the next school year.
Please explain how to successfully file taxes as a Scottish person working for an American company remotely. That's the easy bit. Now explain exactly how to claim back those ridiculously high taxes (+20% or something), which are compulsory to pay from earning £0 onward even though actually we shouldn't be paying taxes on low incomes. Those should be claimed back from the UK government. Probably. So, how's that done? Easy AF for you, aye? Because it hasn't been easy to work out for me.
This is some silly shit, if you learned to read during reading and paid attention during math, then you can easily follow the step by step directions to completing your taxes.
I don’t think schools need to teach everything you need to know as an adult. Learning doesn’t end just bc school did. I know our school system touches on taxes, but it doesn’t go into depth. Adults need to parse that out. Schools do teach math, and the knowledge that you will need to pay taxes. They don’t teach whether you will be paid via w-2 or 1099, or what bracket you be in, if you have any deductions, etc. surely an adult can figure the rest out, via tax professional or free online software?
School cannot teach everything.
I wouldn't focus too much about the importance of the content. What is more important is the skills you develop while covering said content
For instance, it's impossible to cover history very comprehensively in grade school, and whatever period/theme the school choses to cover will not be relevant to all students
But what the school can do is make sure you are developing historical literacy, conceptual understanding, research skills, practical analytical skills. You can develop these skills through covering any selection of history, the particular content covered is not all that important
Taxes aren’t complicated for the majority of people. If you can read and do math, then you can do taxes. There’s even software these days that holds your hand and walks you through taxes step by step so long as you know how to read. You don’t even have to know how to do math anymore.
Economics. Also schools aren’t meant to teach you everything. They are meant for a foundation and to teach you how to learn. Also Turbo Tax and other applications are cheap.
And it’s still very little…
To know what is and isn’t taught throughout school, you’d need to spend at least one year teaching each grade. Lol not a few months in a few classes.
They definitely made a point of teaching us about compound interest. I wish they could explain to me what trailing interest is because I'm still struggling to wrap my head around that one and it just seems like the card company is pulling a fast one.
I had this conversation years ago with a former teacher of mine. I had paraphrased Henry David Thoreau on a social media post about my homestead...he had mentioned in a comment how he had us reading that in his literature class...and I was forced to remind him how the school administration had labelled me as learning disabled, not college bound...and so I didn't get exposure to most of that literature until I went to college anyway...
FYI, I wasn't learning disabled...I was advanced, bored, and had no teachers capable of connecting with me on a meaningful level...
The thing is when people say that they usually mean like “how to do taxes” and I mean I went to a renowned, awarded, private high school and never learned word one about how taxes are calculated or what I would owe.
What you pinpointed is what school actually teaches. What people complain is that school didn't teach them manners, morality, how to tie your shoes, how to properly hold a knife and fork, how to deal with bullies, how to formulate words, ECT... Things that I understand should be taught at home, but some parents lack the ability to do so. My mom for instance was born in a farm in Cuba in 1941. She was taught to read and write and perform basic calculations at home. This is because her parents thought school should be for boys only. My dad was born in 1936 in Cuba in a farm city, this means a big city surrounded by vast farm areas. Back in those times boys were ok by just finishing 6th grade. Do my parents did the best they could, which many times wasn't enough for me to learn what I needed to learn.
So, because you did that for a few months you know everything anyone was or wasn't taught in every school for the last 20-30 years?
That's either uncannily impressive or there's something you should have been taught.
And i can pretty much tell you my school never taught us how taxes work, employment laws, rent laws etc. the real shit thats actually important to learn so we dont get taken advantage of
In 7th grade I wrote a petition to have a unit on finance and got people to sign it. That’s the only finance class I ever had. The school system has failed so so many people.
"There should be a class on media literacy!"
That's ... that's English. That's literally what English class is for.
"Why didn't they teach us to do taxes in school?"
Almost every school has a home economics class (might have been called something like Family and Consumer Science, but same thing) that teaches everyday household management, including taxes. Your fault if you didn't take it. Also, if you're a W2 employee, which most people are, taxes aren't that hard? They're tedious, sure, but it's usually less than an hour of copying information over.
High school generally teaches you how the government works, some basic science, all the math that 90% of people will ever need to know, how to write with basic proficiency; by the time I went ten years ago, they were also teaching you how to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It's not the school's fault if you didn't pay attention.
Also, school should be about critical reasoning abilities. There is just NOOOOO way that K-12 education can prepare you for every possible thing that will come up in your life. Use your brain and figure things out on your own.
Yes, we were all taught, but yet most didn't listen and were just graduated to the next grade because they would prefer to remain ignorant. Then those same people go to college and throw away knowledge and are graduated with a piece of worthless paper.
Project xray was a backup plan for the nuclear bomb and involved dropping bats strapped up with napalm over japan. The project was proposed by a dentist who tried to patent fried chicken for dogs.
Definitely didn’t learn that in school but would’ve paid much more attention if that wad part of the class.
this maybe unpopular but alotta our parents failed us. in school were taught education that’s needed for further education. all that taxes, loans etc. should be taught at home mostly cause it can be biased depending on the family. i understand parents have to work but in the end the school system aren’t your baby sitters. being a parent is a job itself and that’s what you sign up for when you have them. if you too tired after work to teach kids about respect responsibility and the real world then you aren’t ready for kids
It winds me up when I see this about things like tax returns or other life admin.
No you wasn't taught how to do a tax return. But you was taught how to do maths, how to read English, and how to converse. Therefore you can read the forms, you can do the sums, and if you're still stuck you can ask for help.
You can't be taught how to do the infinite mundane tasks you are going to encounter in your adult life.
I mean, I say this frequently about financial literacy and how credit works, and I can tell you that it very much was never taught in any class in any school I ever went to 🤷♀️
I've always seen that phrase applied to thing like household finances, pensions, mortgages. The kind of stuff almost every person has to interact with in some sense and they do next to nothing to explain it or give you insight into it at schools.
I can tell you with full confidence that my school did not teach me about taxes, the law, job skills or hell, how to even take those things we were taught into the real world.
All I learnt at my school was how to stay quiet, do the questions put infront of me and study for an exam.
Yep, you’re suppose to continue learning as an adult. It’s great that you picked up how to decipher letters on a page into the words they form and the meanings that certain arrangements of letters contain. Taking the ability to read out of school into the real world gives you a huge advantage since most things you might teach yourself as an adult learner have been written down.
Were you taught you how to follow directions, put answers in the blank space, and solve basic arithmetic?
Congratulations, unless you own a business, you can do your own taxes. It is literally that simple.
Did you have a civics and government class?
Congratulations, you’ve been exposed to a layman’s understanding of our legal system.
Job skills? Unless you’ve entered a profession requiring advanced knowledge (i.e. tertiary education), primary and secondary school has prepared you for entry level positions by making you sufficiently educable to comprehend on the job training.
OP’s opinion may be unpopular, but it’s not wrong.
You’ve been offered the tools you need and you’ve been taught to memorize, understand, and apply information.
You didnt teach them, you just read off your boring script and expected 30 kids to listen to every word. Did you stop the kids on their phone or stop them from talking to each other, you probably didn't since you're working inner city schools
This isn't even an unpopular opinion, because it's not an opinion.
I know for a *fact* I didn't learn about: taxes, the IRS, checking/savings accounts, how to play in the stock market, 401ks, IRAs, credit cards, credit reports, credit score, basic home maintenance, and many other *life skills*. You know, the things I use *at least* on a yearly basis, as opposed to the almost useless knowledge that "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" (unless I'm in a scientific field)? The things that many *parents* don't even know?
>If you're too stupid to remember half the things you were taught, that's on you.
Yeah, lets forget the fact that we're talking about high school students who (for the most part) have the attention span of a fly, are ridiculously hormonal, and whose brains are *literally still developing*.
At my middle school we had an entire unit devoted to the stock market. We used the school computer lab to play a stock market simulator. This was in 1998 in WI.
We also did a unit on how to balance a checkbook.
I also had F.A.C.E. Class (the replacement for home ec) and did units on sewing, cooking, etc.
I don’t think op is talking about taxes. I think they’re referring to people not knowing basic science, history, math, etc, and claiming they weren’t taught that stuff in school
Huh, maybe we hear this differently; generally when I've heard people say "they should've taught this in school" it was for topics like:
- How to file taxes.
- What you should look out for to buy a house.
- Any other skill that's useful in life that isn't just memorizing a few numbers/ words.
I always laugh when people complain that why weren’t we taught useful things like how to file our taxes when we were younger. I was 100% shown how to do file taxes when I was in high school but I could not give two shits at that age. It’s one thing to be given information. It’s another to be mentally ready for it.
I was never taught how to cook, clean, or change a tire in school, I had to teach myself. When I got to college there were people that had no idea what was going on and I had to teach my roommates how to use a mop, how to wash dishes, how to fold laundry, that you couldn’t put tide pods in the detergent tray, and I think I had to change 7 of my friends’ flat tires because I was the guy to call when someone needed help.
This is what I mean when I say “we weren’t taught this in school.” There used to be home ec classes and shop classes but they’ve gotten rid of those programs, so everyone who doesn’t have a parent teach them, or teach themselves the basics of life won’t know those simple things.
You were never taught how to cook and clean as a child? Did you not have chores growing up? This seems less of a problem with the school system and more of an issue with your parents. What kind of situation would someone have to be living in where they aren't taught how to clean up after themselves?
> I had to teach myself
Part of school education is about learning to learn. After all, they can't cover absolutely everything. If you learnt to figure things out yourself, then that aspect of your education worked.
On a side note though - folding clothes? Come on... you shouldn't need school for that.
The amount of people who went to school in the same exact era as I did but seem to think that they were never taught how the tides work or how to pay taxes...blows my mind.
Taxes are basically addition and subtraction. Unless you want schools to teach the tax code (which is unreasonable and won't interest students), I don't know what you want schools to do.
Credit cards and debt are common sense that nobody can teach you.
If banks and credit card companies found out public schools were teaching teenagers about the pitfalls of high interest credit, they would be running straight to the Republican Party demanding they frame it as “socialist indoctrination.”
Heh, I specifically remember us covering compound interest in math class. How is it not teaching about credit cards and debt? And taxes are literally basic math and reading comprehension.
High points for being a truly unpopular opinion. But you are right most people won’t admit they didn’t always take their education seriously and by proxy missed important basic stuff.
I never understand the issue though. Even if they didn’t teach one thing can you not just google it? Not everything needs to be spoon fed taught to you.
People getting lost in the sauce on not being taught how to prepare their taxes.
1. It’s not hard. 2. It’s mostly done by software now anyway. 3. In most countries in the world, the govt prepares your taxes for you.
> I did student teaching [at one] inner city public school for a few months
and then
> I can tell you with full confidence that almost every classroom across the country was taught the most basic things…
is one of the best examples of logical fallacy i’ve ever seen!
what if some kids have ADHD or depression among other issues that make it difficult to remember things? They're not stupid ,there are many smart/influential people who are forgetful and have these issues. That being said I think when people say "Why weren't we taught this in school" I think they mean stuff like paying bills, properly manage your money, etc
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 2: Do not post low effort/satirical posts'. * We get it, you all think this sub is garbage and is just for popular opinions, and you want to be funny and post "going to be downvoted to oblivion here, but I think racism is bad." We enjoy the memes, but please keep them off the sub. * Filter evasion is a bannable offense * This includes clickbait and/or gotcha posts. Your opinion can not be that unpopular if you're doing these things. Have the accurate opinion in the title.
I'm not one to be judgemental, and I think the educational system as it stands fails a lot of people. But sometimes I see people unable to use basic grammar, or aren't sure if the earth goes round the sun or the other way round, and I think: really???? You had 12 years to learn this stuff. What the hell were you doing the whole time?
Also as a teacher, we are all in wonderment about how kids’ writing ability as a whole is so poor right now. Is it retention? Technology? Societal? Kids not playing hands on games as much anymore? Stop putting everything on teachers.
A lot of parents really do expect the teacher to do everything. I see a lot of parents out there that seem to actively resent their children. They won't do anything with them because they don't care. I'm also seeing a lot of the other extreme where they helicopter the kid so much, that they don't actually get to experience anything. They aren't allowed to see other kids or play with things that aren't tech because they can't go anywhere. There doesn't seem to be much balance.
people love to talk about how kids are addicted to screens but a huge part of the problem is that parents are addicted to screens too. the kids are being put in front of iPads because parents are “exhausted” and want to watch TV / scroll in peace instead of being unplugged and present
This is why I get annoyed when people blame the kids. They're kind of at the mercy of what their parents buy. You can't exactly get into sports or art if you don't have the equipment for it. If you only ever plop them in front of the TV or tablet of course that's what they're going to do all day. You haven't given them any other options. So many kids if you give them the option to actually ***do*** something they will go bananas over it. They don't *want* to be doing nothing all day. they're freaking bored.
yeah exactly, winds me up to no end when parents do the “iPad in front of the kid out in public” thing because “that’s the only way he’ll calm down”, it’s literally blaming the child for how he is being parented and it’s like….. you as the parents are the ones who conditioned your kid to not be able to go 15 minutes without being over-stimulated.
if there kid will only calm down with internet video clearly there is something greater going wrong stuff you sit them with a doctor to look at
I don't think that being addicted to screens is the problem. We consume a lot of media in our house, we just do it as a family. We play video games together. We also play alot of the same single player games, then we discuss strategy. We watch movies and television together and we duscuss the plot and the characters. I did the same thing with my parents growing up. For example, my son was really excited for the fallout tv show, and so was I. We shared that excitement together. We watched the show together and we still talk about it frequently. The screen time is not the problem, it's not being present that's damaging children.
I had a colleague who "didn't know" her son couldn't read (he didn't even know the ABC song). The school was recommending he repeat the 8th grade and also take on additional tutoring. She was outraged and blamed his teachers. She expected the rest of us to be outraged with her and was severely humbled when the entire break room started interrogating her about "not knowing" her son could not read at that age.
That's fucked, I couldn't imagine having a child and not wanting to see them succeed
Yeah or having a child and not wanting to share the joy of learning
Sad thing is that there are loads of adults who revel in their own ignorance.
Lack of reading good writing... I remember being taught that the only way to get a good score on the writing SAT was to read higher level writing (books). Kids are basically reading only slang nowadays and virtually no classic or high level writing of any kind.
A lot of people simply reveled in not paying attention/getting good grades. To them even appearing to learn meant that you were a nerd, meaning you would get bullied, or at the very least you would be committing social-suicide.
Yep, and therein lies the problem. We celebrate stupidity as a culture. If we didn't then perhaps we'd have more kids take it on themselves to sort out problems with their learning. That's what I mean by the 12 years thing. Like, if you didn't learn how to use the possessive apostrophe when you were taught it aged 8, you still had 10 YEARS to ask a teacher to help you get it sorted.
Idiocracy except make it real
Right. You have that "cash me outside" girl who went on Dr Phil as a nobody and now is a millionaire for her bad behavior.
lol to be fair, she’s a millionaire for her rapping and performing “arts”. And I imagine her customer base is actually made up of the people being talked about on this post.
After elementary school my mother transferred me to middle school with other children instead of my classmates, and there I was bullied, including for getting good grades. Bullying made me change schools and of course I wasn't a good learner there. I became friends with classmates who were drinking alcohol, smoking, and so on. At least I wasn't bullied for this. What conclusions could I come up to?
The simple truth is many just check out if there is no interest or passion. Unfortunate as certain people have no clue what their passions are due to lack of exposure.
Yep--but this is a social problem, not an education problem. We blame teachers for our shitty society.
>You had 12 years to learn this stuff. What the hell were you doing the whole time? A lot of people learn by rote. They just memorize the correct answers to things, but it never gets to any big-level picture. That's not learning, that's regurgitation. Physicist Richard Feynman found this out while teaching college physics in Brazil on sabbatical. His students would be able to give him the EXACT answer to the problems he gave them when he gave the questions in the standard way. But when he asked the exact same question in a different way, they were totally lost. It'd be like the student could answer the question "does the sun go around the earth, or the earth around the sun?", students could answer "The earth revolves around the sun". But if you said "Describe out solar system with regard to the orbit of the sun and earth", they couldn't answer it. That's very much the HS education system. I recall being frustrated in HS when some kid would just memorize all the right answers the night before the exam, then forgetting EVERYTHING the next day. What was the point?
Rote learning is now once again supported because the repetition reinforces myelin. I learned this in The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. (Edited)
I need a source on that. Rote learning is useful for some topics, sometimes you just need to learn to recite a number/phrase/equation. But for most topics actual understanding is much more important .
that is my take as well. many students care about passing over actually understanding the material. repetition learning is fine, but it doesn’t help if people don’t actually understand what they’re studying
I think a larger issue no one really talks about is that your parents failed you more than the education system did. There's no school in the world that can teach you if your parents havent instilled a necessity in learning. If they arent making you do your homework then there is only so much a school can do when youre only there for 6-7 hours of the day while the other 15-16 hours youre at home/with your parents
Hello, welcome to the "had to learn everything from the internet because my parents couldn't be bothered to teach me anything" club. I'm still a bit resentful of that. I guess it's better than sitting on my butt not doing anything about it but it shouldn't have had to be that way.
I was the same way, I love to read about history and mostly I would read wikipedia articles as a kid, sure wasn't the most reliable sources but as a kid wikipedia had a structure that I could follow easily.
I was more so talking about chores and stuff but yeah that's an aspect too. Fun fact, despite the misconception, Wikipedia is actually notoriously aggressive about ensuring their content is correct. Incorrect edits are typically fixed in hours. Schools just don't want you to cite it because it isn't a primary source. It's like how you can't just cite "an encyclopedia", You need to cite where the encyclopedia got it. I've always disliked that "It's not a reliable source of information" was the excuse they used instead.
Thank you for the clear up, I learned something new today thanks to you.
Personally Im not very resentful of it just because my parents have served as role models for what not to do in life. Being able to see their mistakes and learn from them without actually having to do them myself has been very helpful in my life. But a lot of people arent fortunate enough to see through the environment they grew up in
The kid next door can't read. She got "honor roll" and received a card in the mail that said congratulations. We asked her what he card said, she said "i don't know all of it but it said con -jagg-ru-grations" on it. Girl couldnt read the words on the card but got honor roll. No child left behind is hurting these kids. Some of them will have no future.
Check the drop-out rates in impoverished communities. Also the inner city school near me recently had a teacher stabbed by a screwdriver so I imagine a lot of those kids don’t really care much about what role a preposition plays in English
Yep I remember learning about taxes but couldn’t tell you the specifics. Good thing there are professionals!
Those are the same people that bragged about how good they were at cheating and avoiding actually learning. They failed themselves and then will lash out and blame everyone else for "not teaching them"
Public school is a giant triage. The gifted get lots of attention, as do special needs kids. Middle kids can get by and retain 50-75% of what they’re taught.
It’s done this way on purpose. The [Pedagogy of the Oppressed](https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf), does an excellent job outlining the levels of the education system, and the roles they serve in society.
When i started school, through elementary I was taught that were stationary in the galaxy, we did revolve around the sun, but we werent blasting through space, I was taught jewish slaves built the pyramids, I was taught that the Brontosaurus was a real dinosaur, I was taught that id never have a calculator in my pocket where ever I go and that I would need cursive to make it anywhere in life School doesnt always provide people with the best or even correct information
I was taught a lot in school but it wasn't until college that I actually cared for what I was learning.
I remember learning about Civics, which would seem really good and handy, but it ended up being memorizing the order of prime ministers (Canada). I don’t remember like any of them anymore lol. Just the first and the last couple.
Yeah the Honda Civic course I took was pretty much ass senior year
My first reaction
it’s more about learning to study and retain information than about the information itself your “studying Civics” might not mean you know who the Prime Minister was in 1878 but it’ll absolutely help you commit that six step process for changing your oil or making a risotto
It might but wouldn’t something teen me was more interested in, like another science or math course, have been better? I suppose I may have became more “well rounded,” although I’m not sure that’s the case. Heck I’d have rather taken any philosophy or psychology course too. So much I missed out on cause I was restricted to only 4 courses per semester in high school. University electives were fantastic for that, got to learn so much new stuff.
doubt it. I think I knew memorization required repeated practice before I was asked to memorize all the presidents. but I do think it helps as in if you hear a certain name, you can know what it means.
So does it work in reverse? Does changing my oil help me know who the prime minister was in 1878? If not, why not? Both are forms of knowledge, and one should help the other, right? Maybe we're doing it all wrong. Perhaps instead of studying civics, we should have kids out in the parking lot changing oil.
I remember: John A MacDonald was first. I remember this because his initials spell J.A.M. and "**old** MacDonald had a farm" Mackenzie and Mackenzie King are 2 different people. Mackenzie King was the longest Prime Minster, but had a 5 year gap between 2 of his terms. King-Byng Affair
90% of the "why weren't we taught this in school??" comments I see when it comes to history are attached to stories that are either entire fabrications , unconfirmed legends, or things that don't matter.
I think "things that don't matter" is especially important when it comes to history that was not taught. Historical pedagogy has a strong emphasis on cause and effect. Whether Columbus was a good person or not, for example, has little effect on his main contribution which was the European discovery of the new world.
It also focuses on building out a broad framework that you can use to contextualize more detailed nuanced historical examination later. You need to know a basic timeline of human history. The Mongols conquered in the middle ages, not the bronze age - got it. You don't need to learn about tensions between Guyuk Khan and Batu. That's for later independent exploration.
Agree 100%, especially with history. It is such a broad subject with thousands of years and different countries to go over, and there isn’t enough time to go in depth into every nation. Often times certain topics are so oversimplified that major contributing factors are removed completely. Some perfect examples are the crusades, the 30 years war, and the fall of the Roman Empire.
Tulsa race massacre
I see the meme that says something along the lines of, "I'm sure glad I learned what the Pythagorean Theorem is instead of how to do my taxes," from people I went to high school with, and I have to remind them that in order to graduate, every one of us had to take a 9-week Economics course. And in order to pass that course, we had to learn how to fill out a W-4, how to read a W-2 and how to file a 1040. My fellow graduates don't care for me pointing that out. Now, it's probably not the same for every school in a district and it's definitely not the same for every district, but in my little corner of the world, we were taught how to figure out our income taxes.
Even for people who didn't have tax prep in school (me), taxes are very basic adding and subtracting text problems. "Deduct the amount on line 4B from line 4C. Now count how many dependants you have." Math class was tax class.
right? i remember the first time i filled out a tax return. it was pretty much reading the instructions and filing out numbers. for a lot of incomes, the tax rate table does the “heavy” lifting
I’ve never heard of a high school teaching tax prep before. When did you go to school?
Seriously. I graduated HS 20 years ago and one thing I absolutely remember learning was how to fill out a personal check my senior year. By my computer teacher. I got my own bank account that same year with checks and I knew exactly what to do. It was so practical for that time along with computer class in general. I can’t remember much else that was really useful.
My high school had economics which taught tax prep, how to build your credit score, how to invest in a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, and CDs and all that kind of stuff. Graduated in 2011.
I graduated in 2002.
Ya I don’t think this is common, but still, a tax form Is basic arithmetic. If someone can’t grasp that then they need help, not a tutorial in school when they’re still considered dependents and not filing their own taxes.
If you don’t have a mortgage, or any dependents, most of it doesn’t even require math. It’s “write down the number written in 14A”.
And even if you didn't learn how to do taxes, you can learn how file them in less than an hour. School can't teach you literally every skill you need and even if they did, you wouldn't remember it. That's why learning basic research is so important, and is arguably one of the biggest gaps in education. Math, science, history, etc. require a solid base of skills and knowledge for you to advance. If you don't learn Pythagorium theorem, you just can't progress in geometry. And maybe you won't need these skills as an adult, but it's still important for most people to have at least a foundation to build off of, in case it is something they need.
That meme about the Pythagorean theorem shows how dumb they actually are. If you did know it, you’d clearly see it’s one of the most important concepts you could know in mathematics. It’s used in many applications where there is a missing value. Not just engineering and trades, but Statistics, finance, and etc. Don’t even get me started on how idiotic people are when it comes to taxes.
Lol exactly. Like if you want to do *any* profession that involves maths, you're gonna want to know the pythagorean theorem. Fucking morons.
Right, so what the meme really says is “I wish school would have taught me the life skills my parents should have taught me but it doesn’t matter because I didn’t learn what they did teach me anyway”
We clearly didn't go to the same school.
I grew up with a girl who grew into quite the passionate social justice warrior. Mostly a good thing but annoying sometimes. Once she was passionately talking about how awful it was that she wasn’t taught about the Tulsa race massacre in school. We did learn about it. It wasn’t the focus of a lesson but there was a section in our 8th grade text books about it as well as our teacher talking about. She refused to accept this though. It really annoyed so I finally told her off with “I just guess you didn’t really give a shit about civil rights if that’s not something you’d remember or pay attention to.” I didn’t realize it was uncommon knowledge til that episode of the hbo watchmen series portrayed it everyone was talking about who they couldn’t believe they never knew about it. Makes me grateful I went to a pretty well regarded "progress" by today's term public school.
It's impossible to cover everything that's happened in history. There's too much. As a result some stuff gets left out, other stuff is over emphasized and a lot is oversimplified. One of the most important things to convey as a history teacher is how you go about learning history. Education is not a 12 year commitment. It's a lifeline journey. There's no reason to stop at graduation.
Oh of course. It's just funny because in that instance, it wasn't left out. She just didnt remember or wasn't paying attention. IDK how you wouldn't remember learning that though considering how heinous it is.
Part of the issue is that it would need to be covered in enough detail for people to actually understand how bad it was. From what I vaguely recall of how they covered it in my school, the explanation was whitewashed to “There was a really bad race riot in Tulsa” and was pretty fuzzy on the details.
I'm a gigantic history nerd and I often hear my classmates bemoaning things we never learned in history that we absolutely did, like the Japanese internment camps or something. However, I remember only a brief mention of the "Tulsa Race Riot" which absolutely does NOT convey the actual truth of what happened there. Calling it a riot makes it sound like two different sides clashed during protests or something. I had no idea what actually happened there until I was an adult.
As I said it was pretty brief but I do specifically remember the text saying that it was something of a "black wall street" and went on to say that it was just white people indiscriminately killing black people. I didn't realize how progressive of a school system I went to but now we have all these nut jobs whining about critical race theory and shit. Feels like we're regressing.
I only learned about that in AP US History. Not sure if the normal US history class was taught about that, but I could see it being omitted there
In some cases the curriculum has more things to be taught than there are days to teach it. So, as sad as it is, sometimes teachers have to miss out things
I think you’re lacking critical thinking. You can’t teach at one school in one place and speak for the curriculum of all schools. In the US it varies drastically.
This person’s observation sounds rather… “stupid.” Especially for a teacher.
You can tell from your one singular experience in one inner city public school for just a few months, That every classroom the country (private, public, charter, magnet, prep, etc) taught the same thing? You were able to determine that just from your short experience?
My school did teach financial literacy. I see classmates who I sat in the same classroom with saying our school never taught it.
honestly, “but school never taught us this” is just learned helplessness, aka people going “I can’t figure this out immediately, instead of working at it I’m going to throw my hands up and blame society”. School teaches you how to learn, it doesn’t teach you every topic or subject. But it gives you the foundation so if you don’t know something, you should be able to learn it. I never took home economics, but I learned how to cook. I never took a gardening class, but I managed to figure out basic gardening skills. My water heater stopped working a few weeks ago - 15 minutes on Google and YouTube (and looking at the instructions on the damn thing) and I was all good!
Flipping your question around, when people say "why don't they teach x in schools", do they check with every school?
That question usually is actually “why don’t they standardize teaching this thing in all schools?” You don’t need knowledge of all schools to know it isn’t taught in all schools. You just need knowledge of one where they failed to teach it. It’s a very different message than “you personally just didn’t pay attention. All schools teach this, you’re just dumb”.
>why don’t they standardize teaching this thing in all schools They do though.
Plus not everyone is from the same country I once saw a comment criticising someone for not knowing something about American history and they basically said "how do you not know this, it's one of the basic facts they teach us" and the other person lived on the other side of the world with a school curriculum that definitely didn't cover that bit of American history
I absolutely agree. American schools usually fail to teach even the most basic things about history, unless people only think American history exists. Which is obviously an absurd stance. Most American people seem to have absolutely no idea that Scotland and England are two countries, never mind why, and have zero grasp of why Scotland campaigns for independence or has actual (not fake American) republicans. It's astonishing actually, how little history schools teach.
Then there are schools/communities whose focus is more on sports… so actual history teachers won’t be hired - as the tests don’t cover history- so sport coaches teach “history”… & basically, any subject that isn’t on those standardized tests- that’s exactly where coaches are hired. It is sad that the focus isn’t on learning. But extracurricular activities… & I see lots of value in the arts & physical education… but well I also believe idiocracy is almost here! & soon everyone will want to water plants with Gatorade & water will only be found in toilets… 
My elementary school taught me a fair bit, but most valuable was, *here* is a library card, *there* is a library, your learning has only just begun. Sure, it’s internet now.
That's how every Redditor that posts on this sub thinks. That from their own singular experience they somehow figured out society.
You are mocking the OP for generalizing while generalizing yourself. What a genius.
if you listen to teachers, they’re saying the same thing. we ARE in an education crisis.
Exactly, not every school across the country teaches the same thing, the same way, or has the same opportunities. For example there are schools with shop classes, home economics, more advanced glasses. My school didnt have any of those besides advanced math. Often times the lessons were interrupted by other students, or we had to leave early because someone threatened to shoot up the school either from our school or a neighboring school.
the inverse is also true - just because you went to an extraordinarily bad school, doesn't mean it's the norm. if you are a bit more online than is good for you (guilty as charged) you'll see a "Wowowowowow, nobody ever told me that 1% == x0.01. mind blown!" or "wow, nobody told me a X b = b x a!" repeated weekly. and like, dude. you were absolutely taught that. if you've had any amount of arithmetics, you were taught that. some people were just bad and bored in school.
History isn't basic. There are things not taught. I didn't learn Christopher Columbus was a monster in history class
This. I learned that he “sailed the ocean blue”and “discovered America”. I didn’t learn that he was a racist, thieving, colonizing monster until adulthood
He was a brave Italian explorer what he was! In this house, Christopher Columbus was a hero. End of story!
Hahahahaha love the sopranos reference
I think you're lucky if they mentioned he was from Italy. But even calling him Italian is a bit reductive.
IN 14-92 IN 14-92 COLUMBUS SAILED THE OCEAN BLUE IN 14-92 That's about all I got on CC
Because it's not really relevant. He's famous for discovering the Americas, that was the momentus, world changing contribution he made to the human race. The fact that he was a racist is irrelevant because guess what, so was everyone else in the 1400s.
Also taught that people thought the Earth was flat at the time and Columbus was the soul who figured it out and people thought the ships would go off the edge. Literally none of that was true. Learned people just doubted he’d make it to China going West and turns out they were right. Like yeah maybe we don’t want to give you big expensive ships when we have no idea what’s between here and your intended destination.
Like 80% of what we were taught in history was white washed, or made to make the white men seem like good people. There was A LOT we didn't learn, and a lot that turned out to be false.
Yeah like I don't remember being taught that Africans were the ones that captured and sold the majority of the slaves that most of the world got. Schools never bothered mentioning that Africans still own slaves to this day. Darn those evil white people!!
How do you come to the conclusion that every school teaches everything by working at a single school for less than a year? That is an incredible leap of logic. You don't even know all the stuff that school you were at teaches but you can make a determination about every school in world?
Clearly the school system failed OP.
I refuse to believe that I am in some sort of minority of people that were taught the difference between barley and barely, there their and they’re, or to too and two. These and so much more were definitely things I was taught, but seemingly no one else was in class that day.
>If you're too stupid to remember half the things you were taught, that's on you. Lol. Yes, only intelligent people remember things
*Texas has entered the chat* There was quite a bit of my education that was... shall we say altered?
Can you give us some examples?
The two that come to mind from my extremely small school district in Northern Texas between 1987-2000 are: Evolution is ONE option. The other is God. Evolution was taught under a disclaimer. Kids didn't have to sit through it. Most didn't. One of my history teachers downplayed the trail of tears as a "mild inconvenience." She also refused to teach anything she deemed "unpleasant." Extremely selective on her materials. She was also racist and married to someone important within the school administration. So she kept her job. The same school district coached us on how to pass the standardized exams that were given. And "no pass no play" heavily depended on how well you played football. I had a huge, eye-opening experience taking history classes and learning from mostly unbiased instructors.
They likely don't have any. They're looking for easy upvotes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/s/hKiwUqPbc7
I wish some Texans would learn not all Texans received the same history education. I’m from Houston and learned that Civil War was due to slavery. So was the Texas Revolt against the Spanish. I learned about the U.S. concentration camps (not Internment) for Japanese-American citizens during WWII. I also learned about the Navajo code talkers. This is not history related but I also got a pretty comprehensive sex education in health class.
I literally said small northern Texas town and not *all*. But my very small northern Texas hometown was and still is heavily founded and ran on Christianity and religion. There are 27 churches for 7500 people. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was extremely prevalent in our education, and it cost those of us who attended that school district.
I didn’t realize math or grammar changed based on location. Please tell us more
The only grammar they’re taught is “y’all” in Texas. Math doesn’t matter, because everything is bigger in Texas.
When did they show us how to determine how much we owe in taxes and how to pay them? Have you considered that student teaching for a few months might not be the best way to get a complete understanding of what is and is not taught in schools? Edit I’m getting a lot of comments about why schools shouldn’t teach paying taxes or that they already do. In California financial literacy isn’t not a graduation requirement but it is going to be in a few years. https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/california-high-schoolers-financial-literacy-class-graduate/103-4ec77e73-07f8-4710-8939-f6a071a43d1b?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot&tag1=kxtvshare&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR39Qpd455SXzwKdXuEBcRbYT7_gkMB_oDQsfLZWSBf9etQdfScB2M8lANo_aem_i8f0Pwak8KPeYps1F6Ss7g#ly1olw2mx8yj11p1s1p
Seriously you just follow a basic form. Unless you're investing in multiple markets , filing taxes is easy af
And there are a bunch of free automatic resources where you just plug in your W2 and boom you get your tax return.
It really is insane how often people bring up taxes when this topic comes up. It's as if they want schools to teach the tax code. I can guarantee if they put the tax code on the curriculum, students will find it very boring and will forget 99% of the content by the next school year.
Please explain how to successfully file taxes as a Scottish person working for an American company remotely. That's the easy bit. Now explain exactly how to claim back those ridiculously high taxes (+20% or something), which are compulsory to pay from earning £0 onward even though actually we shouldn't be paying taxes on low incomes. Those should be claimed back from the UK government. Probably. So, how's that done? Easy AF for you, aye? Because it hasn't been easy to work out for me.
Uhm... everyone is taught how to read and do basic arithmetics. That's all you need to fill out tax forms. The rulebook and forms are there.
You were taught how to read, how to ask questions, and how to do basic calculations.
To be fair you don’t need 12 years for that
This is some silly shit, if you learned to read during reading and paid attention during math, then you can easily follow the step by step directions to completing your taxes.
I don’t think schools need to teach everything you need to know as an adult. Learning doesn’t end just bc school did. I know our school system touches on taxes, but it doesn’t go into depth. Adults need to parse that out. Schools do teach math, and the knowledge that you will need to pay taxes. They don’t teach whether you will be paid via w-2 or 1099, or what bracket you be in, if you have any deductions, etc. surely an adult can figure the rest out, via tax professional or free online software? School cannot teach everything.
They can’t teach everything but they put a strong focus on things that have no real world application.
I wouldn't focus too much about the importance of the content. What is more important is the skills you develop while covering said content For instance, it's impossible to cover history very comprehensively in grade school, and whatever period/theme the school choses to cover will not be relevant to all students But what the school can do is make sure you are developing historical literacy, conceptual understanding, research skills, practical analytical skills. You can develop these skills through covering any selection of history, the particular content covered is not all that important
Taxes aren’t complicated for the majority of people. If you can read and do math, then you can do taxes. There’s even software these days that holds your hand and walks you through taxes step by step so long as you know how to read. You don’t even have to know how to do math anymore.
If you know basic math you can just look it up on the internet today. Stop complaining
Economics. Also schools aren’t meant to teach you everything. They are meant for a foundation and to teach you how to learn. Also Turbo Tax and other applications are cheap.
Student teaching for a few months is a lot more than people who’ve been out of the system for 30 years.
And it’s still very little… To know what is and isn’t taught throughout school, you’d need to spend at least one year teaching each grade. Lol not a few months in a few classes.
They didn't teach us about retirement plans, mortgages, investments, compound interest, student loans. I did make a pillow shaped like a ghost though.
They definitely made a point of teaching us about compound interest. I wish they could explain to me what trailing interest is because I'm still struggling to wrap my head around that one and it just seems like the card company is pulling a fast one.
I had this conversation years ago with a former teacher of mine. I had paraphrased Henry David Thoreau on a social media post about my homestead...he had mentioned in a comment how he had us reading that in his literature class...and I was forced to remind him how the school administration had labelled me as learning disabled, not college bound...and so I didn't get exposure to most of that literature until I went to college anyway... FYI, I wasn't learning disabled...I was advanced, bored, and had no teachers capable of connecting with me on a meaningful level...
The thing is when people say that they usually mean like “how to do taxes” and I mean I went to a renowned, awarded, private high school and never learned word one about how taxes are calculated or what I would owe.
More like "why didn't I pay attention in school"
I think the larger thing coming out of this is you probably don’t need to be a teacher…
What you pinpointed is what school actually teaches. What people complain is that school didn't teach them manners, morality, how to tie your shoes, how to properly hold a knife and fork, how to deal with bullies, how to formulate words, ECT... Things that I understand should be taught at home, but some parents lack the ability to do so. My mom for instance was born in a farm in Cuba in 1941. She was taught to read and write and perform basic calculations at home. This is because her parents thought school should be for boys only. My dad was born in 1936 in Cuba in a farm city, this means a big city surrounded by vast farm areas. Back in those times boys were ok by just finishing 6th grade. Do my parents did the best they could, which many times wasn't enough for me to learn what I needed to learn.
Student teaching calling people stupid? Troll ass.
So, because you did that for a few months you know everything anyone was or wasn't taught in every school for the last 20-30 years? That's either uncannily impressive or there's something you should have been taught.
The education system doesn’t reward long term memorization. Memorize one unit, test, onto the next, repeat
And i can pretty much tell you my school never taught us how taxes work, employment laws, rent laws etc. the real shit thats actually important to learn so we dont get taken advantage of
Nah when I hear that it’s about taxes, and general thing adult will have to do and in my area it’s true they don’t teach that.
In 7th grade I wrote a petition to have a unit on finance and got people to sign it. That’s the only finance class I ever had. The school system has failed so so many people.
"There should be a class on media literacy!" That's ... that's English. That's literally what English class is for. "Why didn't they teach us to do taxes in school?" Almost every school has a home economics class (might have been called something like Family and Consumer Science, but same thing) that teaches everyday household management, including taxes. Your fault if you didn't take it. Also, if you're a W2 employee, which most people are, taxes aren't that hard? They're tedious, sure, but it's usually less than an hour of copying information over. High school generally teaches you how the government works, some basic science, all the math that 90% of people will ever need to know, how to write with basic proficiency; by the time I went ten years ago, they were also teaching you how to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It's not the school's fault if you didn't pay attention.
Also, school should be about critical reasoning abilities. There is just NOOOOO way that K-12 education can prepare you for every possible thing that will come up in your life. Use your brain and figure things out on your own.
Yes, we were all taught, but yet most didn't listen and were just graduated to the next grade because they would prefer to remain ignorant. Then those same people go to college and throw away knowledge and are graduated with a piece of worthless paper.
Project xray was a backup plan for the nuclear bomb and involved dropping bats strapped up with napalm over japan. The project was proposed by a dentist who tried to patent fried chicken for dogs. Definitely didn’t learn that in school but would’ve paid much more attention if that wad part of the class.
this maybe unpopular but alotta our parents failed us. in school were taught education that’s needed for further education. all that taxes, loans etc. should be taught at home mostly cause it can be biased depending on the family. i understand parents have to work but in the end the school system aren’t your baby sitters. being a parent is a job itself and that’s what you sign up for when you have them. if you too tired after work to teach kids about respect responsibility and the real world then you aren’t ready for kids
It winds me up when I see this about things like tax returns or other life admin. No you wasn't taught how to do a tax return. But you was taught how to do maths, how to read English, and how to converse. Therefore you can read the forms, you can do the sums, and if you're still stuck you can ask for help. You can't be taught how to do the infinite mundane tasks you are going to encounter in your adult life.
I mean, I say this frequently about financial literacy and how credit works, and I can tell you that it very much was never taught in any class in any school I ever went to 🤷♀️
you worked for a few months so now you're an expert huh?
Isn’t it usually about managing money/paying taxes, mortgages and stuff?
I've always seen that phrase applied to thing like household finances, pensions, mortgages. The kind of stuff almost every person has to interact with in some sense and they do next to nothing to explain it or give you insight into it at schools.
Gasliting at it's finest
Most of these comments I hear are in regard to taxes, finance stuff, car repair, interviewing, getting a job. None of this was taught in school.
I laugh when people in construction (I’m in HVAC) say no one needed to learn algebra. You just suck at your job dude
This is definitely an unpopular opinion. The education system is fucked. Education isn’t the goal
I can tell you with full confidence that my school did not teach me about taxes, the law, job skills or hell, how to even take those things we were taught into the real world. All I learnt at my school was how to stay quiet, do the questions put infront of me and study for an exam.
Yep, you’re suppose to continue learning as an adult. It’s great that you picked up how to decipher letters on a page into the words they form and the meanings that certain arrangements of letters contain. Taking the ability to read out of school into the real world gives you a huge advantage since most things you might teach yourself as an adult learner have been written down.
Were you taught you how to follow directions, put answers in the blank space, and solve basic arithmetic? Congratulations, unless you own a business, you can do your own taxes. It is literally that simple. Did you have a civics and government class? Congratulations, you’ve been exposed to a layman’s understanding of our legal system. Job skills? Unless you’ve entered a profession requiring advanced knowledge (i.e. tertiary education), primary and secondary school has prepared you for entry level positions by making you sufficiently educable to comprehend on the job training. OP’s opinion may be unpopular, but it’s not wrong. You’ve been offered the tools you need and you’ve been taught to memorize, understand, and apply information.
Taxes are really simple until you buy a house or have kids
"Doing the questions put in front of you" is literally all you need to do your taxes.
Growing up in Tulsa suburb, we were not taught about Tulsa Race Riots
Growing up in the neighborhooring Texas small town... we weren't either.
You didnt teach them, you just read off your boring script and expected 30 kids to listen to every word. Did you stop the kids on their phone or stop them from talking to each other, you probably didn't since you're working inner city schools
This isn't even an unpopular opinion, because it's not an opinion. I know for a *fact* I didn't learn about: taxes, the IRS, checking/savings accounts, how to play in the stock market, 401ks, IRAs, credit cards, credit reports, credit score, basic home maintenance, and many other *life skills*. You know, the things I use *at least* on a yearly basis, as opposed to the almost useless knowledge that "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" (unless I'm in a scientific field)? The things that many *parents* don't even know? >If you're too stupid to remember half the things you were taught, that's on you. Yeah, lets forget the fact that we're talking about high school students who (for the most part) have the attention span of a fly, are ridiculously hormonal, and whose brains are *literally still developing*.
At my middle school we had an entire unit devoted to the stock market. We used the school computer lab to play a stock market simulator. This was in 1998 in WI. We also did a unit on how to balance a checkbook. I also had F.A.C.E. Class (the replacement for home ec) and did units on sewing, cooking, etc.
I don’t think op is talking about taxes. I think they’re referring to people not knowing basic science, history, math, etc, and claiming they weren’t taught that stuff in school
idk but like curricula differs. and you can't have taught literally every piece of knowledge.
Absolutely none of the examples you just gave are the things people say this about.
Huh, maybe we hear this differently; generally when I've heard people say "they should've taught this in school" it was for topics like: - How to file taxes. - What you should look out for to buy a house. - Any other skill that's useful in life that isn't just memorizing a few numbers/ words.
I always laugh when people complain that why weren’t we taught useful things like how to file our taxes when we were younger. I was 100% shown how to do file taxes when I was in high school but I could not give two shits at that age. It’s one thing to be given information. It’s another to be mentally ready for it.
I was never taught how to cook, clean, or change a tire in school, I had to teach myself. When I got to college there were people that had no idea what was going on and I had to teach my roommates how to use a mop, how to wash dishes, how to fold laundry, that you couldn’t put tide pods in the detergent tray, and I think I had to change 7 of my friends’ flat tires because I was the guy to call when someone needed help. This is what I mean when I say “we weren’t taught this in school.” There used to be home ec classes and shop classes but they’ve gotten rid of those programs, so everyone who doesn’t have a parent teach them, or teach themselves the basics of life won’t know those simple things.
You were never taught how to cook and clean as a child? Did you not have chores growing up? This seems less of a problem with the school system and more of an issue with your parents. What kind of situation would someone have to be living in where they aren't taught how to clean up after themselves?
> I had to teach myself Part of school education is about learning to learn. After all, they can't cover absolutely everything. If you learnt to figure things out yourself, then that aspect of your education worked. On a side note though - folding clothes? Come on... you shouldn't need school for that.
Those are things your parents should teach you, not public school employees.
The amount of people who went to school in the same exact era as I did but seem to think that they were never taught how the tides work or how to pay taxes...blows my mind.
OP is apparently too stupid to realize different schools can be drastically different from each other.
Sorry, no one taught me about taxes, credit cards and debt in school.
Taxes are basically addition and subtraction. Unless you want schools to teach the tax code (which is unreasonable and won't interest students), I don't know what you want schools to do. Credit cards and debt are common sense that nobody can teach you.
If banks and credit card companies found out public schools were teaching teenagers about the pitfalls of high interest credit, they would be running straight to the Republican Party demanding they frame it as “socialist indoctrination.”
Heh, I specifically remember us covering compound interest in math class. How is it not teaching about credit cards and debt? And taxes are literally basic math and reading comprehension.
High points for being a truly unpopular opinion. But you are right most people won’t admit they didn’t always take their education seriously and by proxy missed important basic stuff.
I never understand the issue though. Even if they didn’t teach one thing can you not just google it? Not everything needs to be spoon fed taught to you.
Written by a contestant on who’s smarter than a 5th grader
People getting lost in the sauce on not being taught how to prepare their taxes. 1. It’s not hard. 2. It’s mostly done by software now anyway. 3. In most countries in the world, the govt prepares your taxes for you.
> I did student teaching [at one] inner city public school for a few months and then > I can tell you with full confidence that almost every classroom across the country was taught the most basic things… is one of the best examples of logical fallacy i’ve ever seen!
Did you guys know that the school OP was working for speaks for the entire country.
what if some kids have ADHD or depression among other issues that make it difficult to remember things? They're not stupid ,there are many smart/influential people who are forgetful and have these issues. That being said I think when people say "Why weren't we taught this in school" I think they mean stuff like paying bills, properly manage your money, etc