School Subjects

Loughton_Monkey

wymondham wrote: »

With all the news on students not getting the right skills for jobs etc, what does the panel think should make up the core educational requirement that would put our children on the right path to job success?

The most important 'skill' cannot be taught at school. It's called "Common Sense".

Very few people in a successful career would put their success down to what they physically learned at school/university. Their success is due to:

Common Sense
Self Responsibility
Ability to learn essential knowledge quickly
Logic
Inter-personal skills

These things generally emanate from one's upbringing and general environment, both in and out of school. With a growing number of parents, and teachers, who don't demonstrate these skills either, what hope is there for the child?

ninky_2

practical trades
critical thinking
chinese
networking skills
business skills
replace religious education with philosophy
obviously english / maths / science
fitness class every day

jamespmg44

Chinese - they're going to be the #1 economy in most current school kids working lifetime.

vivatifosi

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

The most important 'skill' cannot be taught at school. It's called "Common Sense".

I agree. However if at some point they did try to teach it, could one lesson please be titled "Why watching a YouTube video does not make you an expert on something"?

STing

I'd like to see ratiocinatation taught in schools.

lostinrates

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

The most important 'skill' cannot be taught at school. It's called "Common Sense".

Very few people in a successful career would put their success down to what they physically learned at school/university. Their success is due to:

Common Sense
Self Responsibility
Ability to learn essential knowledge quickly
Logic
Inter-personal skills

These things generally emanate from one's upbringing and general environment, both in and out of school. With a growing number of parents, and teachers, who don't demonstrate these skills either, what hope is there for the child?

One of the things I have read extensively about in the past and played about with somewhat is animal training. Some things are possible to ''teach'' surprisingly.


From now a strictly amateur perspective self responsibility is taught by giving them enough rope to explore...not over controlling or instilling ''learned helplessness'' (a popular critique of animal training and pet ownership that I think is evident in many, many people too).


The attitude I take is the most important part of learning is ''learning to learn''. You can't necessarily help the speed of this but you c an help the likelohood of achieving it some time, and speeds should increase with success and confidence. If you can train a chicken to do an assault course....and people do, you can train most children to read and learn, and research and learn I would have thought.

Logic is interesting: my outdated research seemed to suggest some species have a trend more than others...to our perspective at least. I find its remarkably individual within species, and some reproductions of logic testing I have done have yielded different results. Mine were less likely to be accurately performed though. e.g. maze tests. I have constructed mazes, but with my gates are on the right, most of the animals will want to head towards the gate somewhere they know....it means and freedom the end of the fooling around with the mad woman who has really lost it today, making them walk round hay bale mazes.

Interpersonal skills....well, you know, I do think these can be enhanced. If someone has a form of autism then there might be a limit but the tools by which we navigate these tricky waters are manners...and they can be taught even to people who struggle with compassion and sympathy. In fact, of course, many very successful people have appalling interpersonal skills. This hits all quite near one of my areas of interest in animal welfare and something I did a little more reasoned work in. Its certainly very easy to make things antisocial and give them poor interpersonal skills, and its also possible to reduce their occurrence by meeting needs (environmental/physiological).



Common sense however, stumps me. If I had some of my own maybe I'd be able to think about an experiment to investigate it.

ninky_2

STing wrote: »

I'd like to see ratiocinatation taught in schools.

i guess the teachers would need some capability first which could be a problem in many cases.

chewmylegoff

Pffft to interpersonal skills, you don't need them to get ahead. I was once praised for my "negative rapport", I'm not even making this up, I actually got positive feedback saying that.

lostinrates

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Pffft to interpersonal skills, you don't need them to get ahead. I was once praised for my "negative rapport", I'm not even making this up, I actually got positive feedback saying that.

Congratulations...(I think?!)

ninky_2

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Pffft to interpersonal skills, you don't need them to get ahead. I was once praised for my "negative rapport", I'm not even making this up, I actually got positive feedback saying that.

jeremy clarkson.