“Teachers are paid to teach us, not paid to hand out a piece of paper with words on it and sit round and do nothing.”
“Do I honestly need to know what a= 1+rn to the 2nd power is, go over the treaty Waitangi every year since I was literally 5 or memorize the periodic table in order to get somewhere in life? Do I honestly need to know the structure of a seed and how it works and whatnot? No, I don’t think so.”
“In High School, we should be learning about the real world, how to pay my taxes, apply for jobs, mortgage my house, buy a car, things that we will actually use in the future. So far, I’ve only learned that whatever I manage to get done in a short amount of time isn’t enough.”
“It’s teachers like this that make us students want to skip class and not go to school …our teachers chose this career and need to try to cater for each individual’s education.”
These are just a few lines from Anela Pritchard’s speech to her class for a school project. Apparently her speech was so intense that a teacher was left crying. Maybe she’s right, maybe kids are expected to know things they will never use in real life.
Yes, there is a need for a basic understanding of math, science, history, and english. However, at some point kids need to learn the basics of living. Somewhere along the way parents stopped teaching this to their kids, maybe because they expected the school to teach it. We are a country swimming in debt and we act so surprised, but our students don’t know how credit works or how to balance their bank account.
It isn’t the teacher’s fault for teaching the curriculum, after all that is developed by the district and state. However, we could offer more life skills classes for students who need to learn them, versus a foreign language or an advanced math class. I’m pretty sure I would benefit from an IKEA building class or learning how to properly hang a picture so it isn’t crooked.
What do you wish you had been taught in school? Do you think we need to rethink what and how we are teaching our kids?
