What is the most important subject taught in school?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Kadark, Dec 22, 2007.

?

Which is most important?

  1. Mathematics

    17.2%
  2. English

    13.8%
  3. Biology

    6.9%
  4. Chemistry

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  5. Physics

    3.4%
  6. History

    6.9%
  7. Social/Global Studies

    1.7%
  8. Economics

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  9. Physical Education/Gymnastics

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  10. Career and Life Management

    1.7%
  11. Philosophy

    3.4%
  12. Law

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  13. Geography

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  14. Geology

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  15. Software/Computer Courses

    1.7%
  16. All subjects are equally important

    20.7%
  17. Other (specified in thread)

    22.4%
  1. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    By the way, I agree with those who said that critical thinking should be taught at school.
     
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  3. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    And yet schools waste their time and money teaching useless shit


    Besides, even if the subjects are important, the method of teaching is ineffective AT BEST
     
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  5. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    11,529
    What's the dropout rate in the US? And how many were because of "boredom"?
     
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  7. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    19,083
    All schools? And what do you think is useless? Does the majority of people agree with your idea of useless?
    And all schools employ the same method?
    And perhaps you know of a more effective method, which no other knows of?

    How should I know? Never lived there.
     
  8. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    The average school

    What do I think is useless? Certain information that will never be used. Unless you are a scientist or mathematician, alot of it is useless. businessmen don't need to know the frogs innards


    But more importantly, METHOD. Do I know one? Perhaps, but it's really simple: activity, and immersion.
    memorization, tedium, lack of social development
     
  9. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    Certain information should be known by all - the general, basic knowledge of humankind.
    Basic anatomy is a must, or you have morons that think that humans are not animals, falling as victims to charlatans that cure with snake oil, etc.

    You should improve your language and communication skills.
     
  10. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    True, but as I said there is an extent at which it becomes useless



    Should I? Perhaps it is your comprehension skills that need improvement?

    What are the methods? memorization, tedium, and lack of social development in schools. Is that learning? Absolutely not. Lack of any diplomatic development either, or activity.
     
  11. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    Another reason for school education is for people to help choose their future field of study of profession. Useless is a very subjective term that is also very relative. You can not predict what will or will not be useless to you at some point in the future.

    ~~~

    You are simplifying. Memorization is a vital part of studying, you must know and remember something, or else it's truly useless. Lack of social development is a method? How? And why do you think there is lack of social development? I don't remember anything like that from my school days.

    Even furthermore, what is diplomatic development? As someone working in foreign affairs I can tell that you can have diplomatic development after you become a diplomat, which is a very specific profession.
     
  12. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    Well, you are right, but 18 is a poor age for this choice of profession. 16 is more ideal.


    Memorization when exercised only through tedium is not effective.

    How? Because there is never (and this goes for the diplomatic development) any development among young men on relations. It's always basically "teachers says it, you do it". This is why America has no Napoleans, people simply don't question authority.

    There is no question of authority in schools, and this subjugates the children when otherwise they could (obviously not when young) develop and learn about compromise and diplomacy

    Of course, for young children it's different, they can't take care of themselves, but I feel that if schools were tweaked, we'd see a lot more Einsteins and Napoleans

    There is also another evidence on my point: dropout rates.
     
  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    33,264
    Todays schools need self defense classes, weapons and their uses classes, how to deal with assholes classes and classes just for asses.

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  14. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    I'm not on my own turf (the Linguistics board) so I'm not being as scientifically rigorous as I would be there. Excuuuse me! I don't know that there isn't some other language out there that's superior to Chinese, but it's not one of the top ten in number of speakers. (Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish, Bengali, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, French). I have studied many of the Indo-European languages and a few others such as Japanese and Hebrew, and I am convinced that Chinese is a better tool for making one's way in the world than any of them are. The main reasons are:
    • Chinese has been stripped of Stone Age artifacts including gender, number, case, tense, prepositions, articles and inflections. Everything is expressed by invariant nouns and verbs. Chinese don't struggle to make fifteen prepositions describe every possible relationship or to use three tenses to discuss quantum physics.
    • It is a word-building language, allowing expressions for new concepts to be coined freely, by consensus, and with no artificial limitations. Chinese does not need to borrow words from other languages and indeed this is almost impossible phonetically.
    • One result is that it takes fewer syllables to express a given thought than in other languages. I've checked it against English and French, which are the most concise languages I've come across, and the syllable ratio is about 7:10. Because of this it is spoken more slowly, making it easier to learn and harder to misunderstand.
    Well sure dude, I'm just spouting off. Nonetheless I have a serious point to make, which is that the Chinese have an advantage over the rest of us during a Paradigm Shift: Their language adapts more quickly. Since our thoughts are shaped and limited by our language, this limitation is less onerous on the Chinese.
    Of course. As the Moderator of Linguistics, I weep over the steady loss of languages which have never been recorded, as their populations of necessity assimilate to their neighbors.
    At least these works are written down and we could read them in translation, enduring the inevitable loss of nuance. These Stone Age paradigms like prepositions and tense inflections do carry a bit of charming subtlety that is hard to carry over into a Chinese translation. Even accidental things like phonetics have an impact. It's hard to make poetry rhyme in English because there are so many ways a word can end and therefore only a few words that end in any one way. But we can't even save the works of literature in languages that have no writing system! The legends of hundreds of Indian tribes are simply lost forever.
    Excellent point! How many times in a single day do we witness the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc -- "correlation implies causation"? Entire political policies are crafted that way.

    Or how about, "Do what you're already doing that isn't working, only more of it, and expect it to start working!" Persecuting drug users causes more crime, so let's persecute them even worse and crime will suddenly start decreasing.
     
  15. Kadark Banned Banned

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    3,724
    Fraggle Rocker

    You make a fine proposition, I will admit. I must apologize if I came off as rude. Overall, however, I don't see your vision becoming a reality, as English is clearly the lingua franca as of now, and it doesn't seem as if it will change positions with Chinese anytime soon. Oh, and about translations: I don't think translations ever do justice to literature, but that's just me.
     
  16. Defiant Registered Member

    Messages:
    46
    Basicly there are 2 skills what they actually going to use in real life later on:

    English (reading,writing,comprehension) and Math (basic arithmetics). The rest is based on these 2 skills. Also if after school the kid becomes a garbage collector (nothing wrong with that) he doesn't need to know history or biology but he still needs to know how to balance a checkbook or read and understand a legal form...
     
  17. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    Basically you are saying that school education should be only about survival, but not about creating an educated member of a society. I don't agree with that.
    People who don't know history are bound to repeat its' mistakes and people who don't know basic biology, chemestry and physics have no idea how this world works and who they are.
    Such ignorance is not only diminishing them, but also creating a group of people which are a danger to civilized society.
     
  18. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    I said history was indefinite, one of the most important things to learn.

    I also said that a basic knowledge of all subjects is of importance, but there comes a time when it becomes unnecessary and, unless it's your field of study and work, it also becomes a waste of time.
     
  19. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    You can know what you need to study in depth only after you have chosen your field of study and schools help to do that - allow you to make an educated choice.
     
  20. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,529
    Precisely, so college should begin at about 16 or 14 not 18, because then no matter what you waste time

    Also the methods of education, as I said, are very horrible from what i remember
     
  21. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    I don't agree. You haven't yet learned chemestry, biology and physics by 16 according to our school system, but only one of them.
    Generally physics is at form 10, chemistry at form 11, and biology at form 12.

    I have no objections to education methods at my former school.
     
  22. Defiant Registered Member

    Messages:
    46

    On the small chance that you are talking to me, since your post is after mine, you missunderstood. the OP's question was about the MOST important subjects.
    All subjects can not be most important, so we have to pick some. I picked the 2 objectively most important, reading and counting, basic skills.....
     
  23. Chatha big brown was screwed up Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,867
    So basicaly, lets assume the most important subject taught in school is to find yourself and what you want to do, after all it all comes down to each's own?
     

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