Is secondary school a waste of time?

A home educating parent once mentioned that primary school level maths and English is 90% of what you need to know for everyday life as an adult an in most of employment. The remaining 10% can be learned as and when it is required. Most of what is taught in secondary school is not required for everyday life or most of employment.

Therefore is secondary school a waste of time from the perspective of education and knowledge?

Parents
  • Agreed that a lot of the curriculum content is out of step with the skills maybe considered useful for application in the real world.  However, it might foster an interest in further subject exploration, however it helps if the teacher is able to have the timetabled hours and the ability to bring those subjects to life and be able to contextualise them in order for them to appear relevant.

     A lot of learning at a school setting can be considered a passive act, you sit in a classroom and receive knowledge....sometimes there is limited scope to be able to allow students to explore, go off tangent, challenge thoughts, ideas and theories.  It depends if you want a society of questioning minds.... also people are individuals and learn in different ways - practical, academic etc...so it is a challenge to find a framework that suits all.

    I used to write degree programmes which needed to be endorsed by industry....some vocational qualifications follow the same remit... the secondary school curriculum seems to be lead centrally by macro government ideals.  Take the GCSE history curriculum...still tutors, stewarts, industrial revolution...britain as monarchy and empire...would it be more useful to understand more recent historical events and contextualise those? who knows?

Reply
  • Agreed that a lot of the curriculum content is out of step with the skills maybe considered useful for application in the real world.  However, it might foster an interest in further subject exploration, however it helps if the teacher is able to have the timetabled hours and the ability to bring those subjects to life and be able to contextualise them in order for them to appear relevant.

     A lot of learning at a school setting can be considered a passive act, you sit in a classroom and receive knowledge....sometimes there is limited scope to be able to allow students to explore, go off tangent, challenge thoughts, ideas and theories.  It depends if you want a society of questioning minds.... also people are individuals and learn in different ways - practical, academic etc...so it is a challenge to find a framework that suits all.

    I used to write degree programmes which needed to be endorsed by industry....some vocational qualifications follow the same remit... the secondary school curriculum seems to be lead centrally by macro government ideals.  Take the GCSE history curriculum...still tutors, stewarts, industrial revolution...britain as monarchy and empire...would it be more useful to understand more recent historical events and contextualise those? who knows?

Children
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