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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

Also living in europe:

> Kids should be taught practical life skills over random trivia.

This is parenting vs schooling, ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services.

And more importantly, history isn't "random trivia". While the merits of a degree in history may be debatable, if the majority of the UK had a passable knowledge in why the EU exists, and what the UK did to become an empire, the attitude towards integration with the EU would likely be very different.

> PE in my school didn't teach any theory, which is just stupid looking back.

PE is the bare minimum amount of exercise and movement a child could have without being considered "entirely sedantry". For many kids it's the _only_ exercise they get.

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> history isn't "random trivia"

The discipline isn't, but the way at least I've been taught it unfortunately is... It didn't take me until I graduated to take an interest in history, when I could learn the cause and effect chains without getting distracted by rote memorization.

Do you think what makes you interested in [topic] now would've been relevant when you were a child?

If I'm being honest with myself, my answer is probably no. "If only they taught _" for me, can be boiled down to "If only I was 30 in grade school"

When it comes to history... yes, there's a large overlap. The ancient times, the history of philosophy due to the development of ideas, the recent modern times due to their relevance to today's neighborhood politics, are three topics that I am constantly interested in. With the exception of ancient history (maybe due to the dearth of established dates), school had problems teaching me those.

There are huge problems with locking an age cohort with wildly different interests, talents, abilities, and personalities into a room and expecting them to go through puberty together while also learning... something.

Even if you select for ability along some axis, you still get different interests and learning styles - and personalities.

Learning is basically industrial, uselessly abstracted [1] and commodified, when it could be individualised. A lot of talent is wasted because high school stunts the really bright kids. And given how brutal it is, it seems to damage everyone emotionally.

[1] Virtually none of the math you learn at school really makes any sense unless you're one of the small number of people who go into STEM - which is where you finally discover what it's for. Things are a bit better than they used to be, but basic financial math as a specific competence is far more useful to most of the population than even the most basic algebra and trig.

Even so, I'm not sure it's useful for kids to memorize names and dates, as opposed to events and their impact.

The dates are important if the kids are to draw their own understanding of history. They can be told that X caused Y and just accept that the X came before Y, or they can learn the dates well enough to examine the situation themselves.

For instance: How long was WWII? How long was Vietnam? When exactly did WWII start, before or after US involvement? Knowing those sorts of dates allows students to put today's wars into context. Has the US been in Iraq longer than WWII? Longer than Vietnam? They can memorize the dates and answer those questions themselves. That makes them informed citizens, and some of them eventual informed soldiers, better able to participate in very relevant current events.

You know what would be useful? Take all those events and ask the children to put them in a time-line. Let them search any book they need in the process.

You know what is completely useless? Telling the date each happened on their respective classes, and that this knowledge will be tested.

I disagree that it is completely useless. You're basically arguing that time is only useful as a relative measure, not an absolute one. While that is true in some sense (the ordering of events and the space between them is what matters), because history is so vast and interconnected and a total ordering is desirable, it just makes more practical sense to learn the absolute date of an event, not just the "relative" date

That would have been nice, if students actually internalized the dates they've been taught.

Memorizing dates is as dull as it can be, without having motivation from knowing the context. Dull things get crammed for tests and then forgotten, with near zero retention when those people grow up and actually want to use the context.

Even if dates were more important than causes, they stick less, reducing the utility of teaching them.

In my history classes we were never quized directly on things as dates. However, you were expected to be able to use those in context. Example of a question: "Some historians consider the Cold War to be an ideological conflict that already started in 1917, argue why:"

This is so true for a lot of liberal arts. I just think the social sciences are better left until later in the child's life. Younger children are more adept at learning math and science than we give them credit for, but we spend quite a lot of time explaining dinosaurs really poorly only to never return to clear that up.

> spend quite a lot of time explaining dinosaurs really poorly only to never return to clear that up

I wonder about this type of thing a lot when I think of my experience in school. a lot of the material they taught me in lower and middle school was just wrong. not like subtly wrong, but blatantly incorrect in a way that would be obvious to any undergrad major in that subject (which schoolteachers often are). I'm sure the teachers must have realized too. why spend so much time teaching stuff that needs to be unlearned as early as high school?

the best example I can think of right now is the answer to "why is the sky blue?". my lower school science teacher told us it was reflecting the ocean. I'm sure she realized this answer didn't make any sense, but that's what she taught us. I don't expect teachers to try to explain raleigh scattering to a group of third graders, but wouldn't it be better just not to explain it at all?

Where was this FFS

this was at a very well-regarded private elementary school in the midatlantic US (I try not to be any more specific than this on HN, although you can probably figure out the city if you delve deep into my comment history).

I can understand teaching general rules upfront with the expectation that exceptions will be covered later (eg, teaching lower school students that water boils at 212F/100C is okay, they can learn about vapor pressure later). but why would you teach that columbus was the first european to discover north america? not only is it completely wrong, but it's not a practically useful fact, nor does it create a solid basis for deeper understanding.

Because it sounds right to a lot of people.

From experience, this must be true throughout the United States. I went to a very good public school and had similar experiences?

Blue light bounces around the sky a lot so we see it in all directions. At sunset, when we look at the horizon, we see light that traveled through a lot of sky without bouncing away, so it's less blue.

Who's Rayleigh?

You know, I think that many teachers honestly do believe the things that they teach that are totally wrong. My eighth grade science teacher said, with a straight face, that hydrogen bombs are so explosive because hydrogen is very reactive.

It's actually worse than that, because public schools typically teach the government-approved version of history. It's not until much later that, after digging into multiple alternative sources and triangulating what is likely a more accurate story, does one realize how much of the history you were taught was distorted or omitted.

It’s history abridged. Hard to cover 3000 years of civilization in depth across 6 contents from multiple perspectives. Someone has to choose what to cut

That's very true, yet what's often cut is the most recent, and also the history that paints the host in the least pleasant light. I had history classes for probably 10 years, and so much of it was ancient civilizations, and middle ages.

I always thought this was odd too. I started learning history in second or third grade, but we never got past the first world war until tenth or eleventh grade. even then, we devoted only a couple weeks to the entire 20th century. modern US history (ie, 1945 to present) was a senior elective, and there was no analogous course for world history. in a well-regarded private school, it was entirely possible to graduate without having the faintest idea of what has happened since world war II. to this day, I know more about what happened in cyrus's failed campaign against artaxerxes than I do about the vietnam war.

in a weird contrast, we spent tons of time on the civil war and slavery (and not just the sugar-coated version either). we learned about thomas jefferson and sally hemings, and we learned about andrew jackson and the trail of tears. so I don't think it was out of squeamishness that they declined to cover more recent history.

I suspect that anything in living memory of the people who approve the textbooks doesn’t look like “history” to them, and also runs the risk of being considered overly political— it can be hard to be objective about events you lived through, so any stance the curriculum writers take will be attacked by the parents and grandparents that were on the other side if the issues.

I think there's definitely some of that to it, similar to /r/askhistorians "twenty year" rule. older events/topics can still be very controversial though. I went to high school very close to the mason-dixon line. there were a lot of parents who believed the civil war was primarily about states' rights, and some were very upset at the school's coverage of the civil war and european colonialism/imperialism.

I get that schools (especially private schools) ultimately need to satisfy the parents, but it strikes me as a massive disservice that my peers and I were able to graduate high school without learning a single thing to contextualize the two defining current events of our childhood: 9/11 and the iraq war. the film charlie wilson's war was the best explanation I got until I was in college.

Envious. My memory of history class here in Australia was pretty much entirely about the history of Australia. We are not a very old country. And then half of that was about how we oppressed our native population.

I think it's actually worse that what's taught isn't even coherent.

Surely that is an indication that pedagogy should change, not that we should replace the discipline with something else. Especially when the "practical skills" people often point to are very much the sort of rote memorization things people complain about (budgeting, taxes, etc).

Somethings this is based on how a subject is taught, but other times I think this is simply maturity and focus. I have a much easier time reading through a dense book as an adult. As a kid, I couldn't sit still, I couldn't make myself care about the topic.

Although to be fair, history textbooks are often really terrible.

> This is parenting vs schooling, ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services.

While this may exaggerate the case, it will continue to largely be true so long as we relegate huge portions of our population to 2-3 jobs while the VC system sustained in part by Ycombinator rewards capital formation to a degree that is damaging to society.

The previous two comments mentioned Europe, where "multiple fulltime jobs" is essentially unheard of.

Not multiple fulltime jobs, but in Germany there are 3.5 million people with multiple jobs (350,000 with jobs subject to social insurance contributions "sozialversicherungspflichtig"; 250,000 with "mini-jobs"). More than 50% in a poll give financial issues as the critical factor why they have multiple jobs.

I think multiple "fulltime jobs" is extremely rare.

Usually when people say they are working 2-3 jobs I believe they mean they get a couple of shifts a week from a couple of different employers.

E.g. 16 hours a week at a coffee shop, 12 hours a week at a restaurant and 2 nights a week as a cleaner.

That would sum up to one full-time job, more or less?

I understood the comment to be angry about some large injustice, I'm not sure whether they were meaning to essentially say "some people have to work for a living, it's outrageous". With (Western) Europe's extremely strong social systems, the number of people who are forced to work multiple jobs because they wouldn't be able to eat otherwise is minuscule, I believe.

> And more importantly, history isn't "random trivia". While the merits of a degree in history may be debatable, if the majority of the UK had a passable knowledge in why the EU exists, and what the UK did to become an empire, the attitude towards integration with the EU would likely be very different.

As much as I agree with other points, I can only strongly disagree here. It strongly implies a condescending attitude that stupid and uneducated decided about British future. If only they could be brainwashed^H taught they would choose the “right” option.

Well, I strongly disagree with you strong disagreeing.

It's not condescending in the slightest, and debate around Brexit revealed that although theres's nothing wrong with being against european integration, a lot of people have almost no idea of what the EU does and does not do.

I never claimed brainwashed, uneducated or stupid. Far from it. But many major important parts of british history are glossed over. Much of the empire is taught as though britain was a trading partner rather than brutal occupier, the Irish plantations are glossed over as an unavoidable famine, ww1/2 are celebrated as the strength of the empire, and the postwar agreements and decisions which led to the current EU are mentioned in a sentence. These are massively important periods which directly explain huge parts of britain's "influence" over the rest of the world, and the information is available quite publicly, just never taught to children.

If people at large understood what happened and why we have the institutions we currently have, they are shown to be far more likely to be in favour of them.

I wonder if you have really tried to understand the intellectual case for Brexit. Your 'if people at large ... ' is merely an exercise in wishful thinking.

For serious analyses of the Brexit question by extremely well equipped academics (I rather think they 'understand') and others try https://briefingsforbritain.co.uk/

It would be unfortunate here to mistakenly leave the impression that briefingsforbritain.co.uk is in some way neutral. Until the start of this year they used to be called "Briefings for Brexit". The content on the site is rampantly partisan. It would also be regrettable if one were to look at their academic qualifications as being somehow indicative of the quality of their arguments, rather than the quality of their rhetoric.

> This is parenting vs schooling

We (collectively) want all children to have a good foundation of life skills by the time they reach adulthood.

Unfortunately there is no curriculum for what a parent must teach their children.

Luckily, there is a standardized curriculum in the form of schooling.

Instead of assuming all children get good parents (which is obviously a harmful assumption), let’s just take advantage of the fact that we can pretty much guarantee all students will learn the school curriculum and use it to teach important life skills to children who otherwise wouldn’t learn.

Children only have a certain amount of time in school. We can't just keep adding subjects that everyone needs to learn. Kids already spend a massive amount of time in school and on homework, so something's got to give if we want to add to the curriculum.

Right, don't forget that we can remove things too, though

Life skills are not completely disjoint from current curriculum subjects. You don't need to dedicate an hour every day to a class called "Life skills" (and if you did I suspect many children would pay less attention).

Why not use that math class to teach personal finance, mortgage rates, basic economics, etc.

Why not couple English with a stronger focus on proper communication (especially negotiation, conflict resolution)

etc.

Teachers are given a document that says in X weeks you need to cover the following topics/units. Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement -- regardless of their parental upbringing.

I get your point, but the issue is that people don't grok the link between the fundamentals and day-to-day life.

> Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement

I'm pretty sure by age 14 my school math problems were along the lines of "John takes out a loan for $x, with a compounding interest rate of Y%, how much does he pay back in total?"

I agree that we could do better at teaching however!

> Unfortunately there is no curriculum for what a parent must teach their children.

I do not believe that having a specific curriculum is necessary to have a good foundation of life skills. In addition I would argue that the curriculum in schools is absolutely disappointing if this is the target.

> Instead of assuming all children get good parents (which is obviously a harmful assumption), let’s just take advantage of the fact that we can pretty much guarantee all students will learn the school curriculum and use it to teach important life skills to children who otherwise wouldn’t learn.

The issue here is that you are basically torturing these students that would end up learning (either due to their parents or to some other resource) regardless in order to improve the life of these that would not. I would understand your point however if school was not mandatory.

Well then there's not much E in the PE, is there?

I completely agree that the physical activity is important, but then let's not pretend that it's educative when it isn't.

I guess YMMV, because at my school (a long time ago) we learned a new sport each term. And it took the better part of the term for the average kid to achieve some level of competency, much like an academic subject. It's certainly different in nature than academics, but you still need to "educate" your brain to arrive at the correct movement, timing and balance for any sport.

I've moved past my bitter feelings about the failings of my sports education.

It feels like PE was 2-3 years of gymnastics followed by 6-7 years of "let's just play basketball/volleyball/soccer" with a semester of swimming here-and-there. Certainly no instructions or structure to any of it.

As a fat kid, I was always the happiest when sitting out entirely (or swimming, where it turns out natural buoyancy is actually helpful).

Always getting Ds and Fs and being chosen last for any team activity led to me spend my college years on the couch.

Only through getting back pain and posture problems I found out 5 years later that I enjoy jogging and yoga and weightlifting and isometric exercise - if properly instructed.

It feels like I missed out on the years in between simply because PE at school never had the goal of helping kids be healthy - just keeping them busy in any way possible.

If I had to guess, I'd bet that the majority of kids were happy to kick a football around, and the 2-3 that woild be happy doing something else (i.e us) were just outnumbered. As a teacher, would you rather have 2-3 kids complaining about soccer or 15 kids complaining about yoga because they've never done it?

This was at a school with 7 years of compulsory Latin lessons. It would, in fact, be very much in line with the general syllabus to make students do stuff (Yoga, Latin) which they didn't appreciate for their primary effect (flexibility/muscular health, general language understanding) until years later.

Physical exercise is an extremely positive adjunct to education, like providing healthy food, useful facilities (eg buildings).

Workspaces aren't educative, of themselves, but they're a pretty important facet of running a school.

Completely agreed with you there. That said, when I was 16/17, our school let us choose between a few activities (ball sport, racket sport, running sport or "other" - gymnastics, swimming, rowing, archery, horse riding). Had I had those options rather than just soccer aged 7 instead of 17, I would likely have been far more active in the years in between.

We were given a similar choice at that age (in Germany).

Due to all my previous negative experience, I chose to sort-of-quit PE altogether. It was impossible to actually quit, but you could compensate it with an equal amount of extra credit, so I happily replaced it with Arts credit.

Surprisingly, no one as much as batted an eyelid at that. The snobby attitude of "who needs PE anyway" was certainly prevalent in my age group.

There were three camps in my school - the "soccer is our life" group, the "who needs PE anyway" and the "I've got to go for a 10k run for my extra curricular sport anyway, might as well do it during school time" group. PE for 3 years just saved me having to do a run before school that day.

> ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services

I think you need to face this fact to understand schooling in 2020.

In 2020 specifically quite a lot of schooling has happened with the kids being quarantined at home. It's been quite messy, especially at the margins, but it provides a sort of natural experiment on what's actually going on.

There seems to be huge resentment on this site over the fact that kids being in school allows one of parents to get employment. No, it really does not mean the babysitting is the only or primary function and it is definitely not something bad.

And if quarantine changed anything, it is that I value school more then before. And I am not one of those people desperate to somehow making remote school and work function, thankfully we had no stressful deadlines during that time. But the kids still missed it and still learned better when in school then home alone.

Well it's not a bad thing. It's just a fact that working parents need somebody to handle their kids for about 10 hours a day.

Yeah, all I'm saying is that pretending school is a purely education institution is awkward at best.

It's better if school policy can be discussed admitting it has two main purposes.

Physical Education is very much a “get out of it what you put into it” sort of thing, really like any class. And there’s going to be regional/world differences. It’s also partially there for the student athletes, in order for there to be job infrastructure and education/training. Source: father was a physical educator for 40ish years and is a good man

The financial education and time management lines really resonated with me from the parent comment. The problem is that there is not anything resembling equal footing at home. Rich kids, realistically the top 5-10%, are going to get financial education at home and the others will have to learn in the school of hard knocks. I had to learn “tough” lessons about finance because the resources for what I needed to know didn’t exist at home. And I talk to people now who are older about how they prep their kids for the world, and it’s just a classic information imbalance. You could do a lot of good by leveling the playing field here.

get out of it what you put into it

Physical Education wasn't my favorite class, but never once did anyone talk about the theory behind developing athletic performance or recruiting the proper muscles for a movement or anything like that. It was just "go run" or "play a game of baseball".

In my opinion, you can still get a lot out of PE just by doing it even with little instruction. Being made to play basketball will almost certainly develop team-working skills, hand-eye coordination, fitness etc, with no involvement from the teacher.

But I agree that there is some lost potential in terms of building a strong knowledge base about fitness and well-being. The paper below suggests there are likely a lot of moderating factors in the benefits of PE.

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701809817

When 2008 happened I realised that my parent’s generation knows close to nothing about the modern financial system.

Meanwhile they prevent my generation from building houses and rob our pensions.

The history curriculum really matters and it's almost impossible to generalise over. Mine was ok in the primary school and then degraded to "which army led by whom moved where (occasionally why)". Took me years to realise that if you learn more about the progress of wars than the reasons they started, it's worse than wasted time.

> This is parenting vs schooling, ignoring the fact that many schools are really glorifed babysitting services.

Modern school systems are pretty much entirely this... only they aren't really glorified. To be fair, a society in which every adult is expected to be working needs some kind of daycare for kids, but there are probably better ways to go about it.

Parenting vs schooling seems like a mistake to divide in that way. If everyone is expected to know it then it should be taught period, otherwise it is left to the "random" potentially lacking the abilities themselves let alone the ability to teach them.

History is not random trivia any more than math is memorizing random formulas.

If the applications of mathematics are not made clear, it is quite literally memorizing random formulas. Which is exactly the scenario you'd find in most public high schools in america.

Which, that sentiment applies directly to history.

> PE is the bare minimum amount of exercise and movement a > child could have without being considered "entirely > sedantry". For many kids it's the _only_ exercise they get.

A study has shown that PE in schools have show it has zero benefits and only teaches some kinds to skip classes.

> A study has shown that ...

You'll need a slightly stronger argument to meaningfully shape this debate

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