Whys of the education system - rohb/rupe

You still have a checkbook?

Actually yes I do, do I use it, ehhh not all that much but I have one

Well. Almost nobody else does. Any teacher who spends class time showing you how to use even one check let alone how to process the entire book is a teacher who should really think about retiring. They may as well teach you how to use a typewriter or to read a telegram.

There is a lot of truth there even more so since they are also removing cursive writing so the next generation cannot read things like i dunno the Constitution. What a ridiculous this has become.

*What a ridiculous world this has become.

OH MY GOD HAVEN'T YOU FIGURED IT OUT YET? Cursive was always useless, the whole time. Right from the start. It was a total waste of your time.I have never been denied a bank account for not signing in cursive. Never lost a lease. Never had a check bounce in the old days when we still used checks. THERE WAS NO BENEFIT TO WRITING IN CURSIVE. It was just teaching you something just for the sake of teaching you SOMETHING, NO OTHER REASON. It was bullcrap. Forget about cursive. Let it go.

Sure it was until you can't read the actual laws or the constitution, might want to pay attention and quit actin' like you know everything.

Oh my God, what sorcery is this??? The entire text of the Constitution and no cursive! I'm a witch!

Yeah cause wiki or any other webpages never misrepresent anything - there is a reason for the national archives buddy but keep depending on the internet and wiki

If you think there's something wrong with the text of the Constitution on Archives.gov then raise it with them!!!!!!

Yes yes because the internet is forever and could never be shut down oh and next time add another exclamation point to point out your flawed logic.

What? Nobody is going to shut down the internet because you submitted a dispute of the transcription of a historical document to a government website. What nonsense are you talking about?

No one said the internet would be shut down over a dispute, you need reading comprehension, I'm done it was a meme not a debate, thanks for playin' champ!

Not everyone has credit cards, and knowing how to track and balance your budget is the key to not drowning in debt.

The absence of trade and shop has meant a growing absence of Americans with mechanical skills. We're dependent on foreigners for 'our' technological developments. As prosperity rises in those countries, those people have the tendency to stay home.

A surrogate dependent economy isn't one with a strong foundation. Once the oil and the Ogallala Aquifer run dry, stuff is gonna get pretty bad. The Cannibal Riots of 2065 were not exceedingly pleasant.

And I recognize that as a time traveller from the future, you will have a perspective on this that I, an immortal from the ancient past, will not yet have seen.

But I will say this: there isn't a teacher on Earth who wouldn't give their right hand for a chance to teach kids Important Life Skills of all kinds. It's what teachers live for. No teacher wakes up in August and thinks "oh boy, I hope we stick to the curriculum even more closely this year!" Teachers live for those moments where their students aren't just more educated, but more wise, as a result of their lessons.

But.

Of course, it doesn't always land that way. I have seen excellent teachers with pedagogic expertise out the wazoo run lessons on household budgets, and their students still can't do it. And those students will grow up to screw their finances up in a debaucherous youth.

It's not like they're not trying, it's just the fundemental challenge of education: kids learn when they're interested in something they care about, and there just aren't a lot of kids who care about household budgeting at that age. Telling them they're going to need and that the country needs them to do well kind of misses the point of what a child IS.

I forgot to mention my cursive is really sloppy, and abandoned it for print sometime during hs.
But it still is a nice thing for those who can.

Our 6th grade homeroom teacher tried to teach us about the stock market! Like a pretend version for us to do in school. He was young, funny, well liked, but we just didn't get into it, so it fizzled.

Same went for my freshman homeroom teacher (called "mentors" in my school). He tried real hard to teach us Speed Reading which was a thing back then. Poor guy, I felt bad because he'd look exasperated as we didn't get into it. It should have made reading assignments easier for us, so why not groove on it, right?

I hated having to learn Latin then, but wished I did in college.

eh, we be stoopy

My 8th grade math teacher ran a lesson on the stock market, and I have to say he made it sound way more fun than it actually was. I would look through the Sunday paper to see which of the class stocks went up or down while my parents looked on in dazed confused timid fear like if they made any sudden movements, I'd dart off like a startled elk and would never show interest in finance again.

But he did try to also explain WHY stocks exist, not just that they're a number that can go up and down - and I have to say, I did not get that part at all. He explained it so well and it just flew over my head. It wasn't really until I played Railroad Tycoon 3 about ten years later that it started to click in my head what it was all about.

Yeah, we just couldn't. He'd pass around the daily pages and we just saw endless columns of numbers which barely made sense and if they did, there were too many screaming at us at the same time. Most of us were low brows to be begin with, so it was like trying to teach Urgh the Neanderthal in 52,986 BC Java Script.

My 1st grade teacher once gave us a homework assignment that required clipping pertinent articles to whatever the subject was from the NYTimes! Parents were aghast.

I knew a Neanderthal named Ned in 52983BC who had an amazing grasp on object-oriented abstraction. Way ahead of his time. All he really needed was a concept of HTML and he would have beaten Java straight to the punch.

Sadly, he got fatally punched by an actual guy named Java.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Sad, but cool.

To beat Java or be beaten by Java. That little question.