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What do we want from our school systems?

I don't remember who pointed me to this, but here's a short excerpt from a 2022 survey done by Populace, an education think tank, about what people expect of K-12 education:

Only a third of Americans have college degrees, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that "prepare a meal" ranks higher than "prepare kids for college." However, it is a surprise (to me) that college prep turns out to rank #47 overall—a gigantic drop from the previous year. What's more, this is in spite of the fact that the average prediction from survey-takers is that other people rank it #3.

In any case, if this survey is accurate at all it's cause for despair. Everything is important, and certain things are especially important to certain people. But overall? The only things on the list that should have made the top five are #2 and #4. And #2 is so vague and conventional that I have my doubts about that too.¹

But I'll take it anyway. Here's my top five:

  • Students can demonstrate mastery of basic reading, writing, and arithmetic—especially reading.
  • Students are prepared for college, a job, or a career.
  • Students are regularly tested to measure mastery of subject areas.
  • Students develop the ability to routinely do work they don't necessarily want to do—without going nuts or becoming unemployed and homeless.
  • Students develop the ability to think critically and ask appropriate questions.

What about you?

¹And call me a cynic, but I'd say the actual behavior of most Americans puts the lie to any suggestion that they really value critical thinking.

73 thoughts on “What do we want from our school systems?

  1. ColBatGuano

    #1 is an indication that our schools are doing a terrible job. Why anyone would expect those skills to be taught in school is beyond me.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      Au contraire, Colonel. I suspect #1 is an indication that parents are doing a terrible job, and the kids need to learn those skills in school or else graduate out into the world in a near-helpless state.

      When I went away to college, I had to do my own laundry, including ironing. I had to cook my own hot snacks on a hotplate. I had to keep track of my money in an account ledger. I had to budget my expenses so I wouldn't reach the third week of the month already out of money. I had to budget my time so I wouldn't run up against exams without having studied before the last minute. And I note that had I not gone to college, I would have needed those same skills to survive in the real world.

      My parents taught me those skills. That was sixty years ago. Interview a sample of incoming college freshmen today and find out how much they know about those things, and how they know.

      1. aldoushickman

        "That was sixty years ago. Interview a sample of incoming college freshmen today and find out how much they know about those things, and how they know."

        I know--kids today, amiright? And that stuff they call _music_!

        More seriously, ironing clothes is a skill that ranks right up there with properly identifying which one is the fish fork--it's at best culturally relevant, but substantively pointless. Hotplate cooking I guess is important if you happen to live in a facility without a real stove and it is also 1970. As for keeping track of money, studying, and showing up to class, I'm pretty sure college kids of today do that just as well if not better than the kids of 1962--if nothing else, they have more tools at their disposal.

      2. ColBatGuano

        But since no current parent ever received any training in those skills in school, why would they expect their kids to learn them there? In my high school there was a single home economics course that you could take instead of woodshop. The idea that kids would be ready to head out into the world with these abilities means those surveyed suffer from severe memory loss.

      3. lawnorder

        About fifty years ago, I started college, and my parents had taught me all those skills. However, one of the people I met at college had grown up on a farm. He was the youngest of seven children, five of them girls, and his family had a traditional division of labor; males did outside work and females did inside work. His approach to getting food was to ask one of his sisters; he basically wasn't allowed in the kitchen. He had zero housekeeping skills.

        Lack of those skills, especially among males, has been common for a long time.

    2. Austin

      1. Because parents are too busy to teach some of it themselves. We no longer live in a world where one parent is home all day to teach how to cook or sew or whatever.

      2. Because parents themselves may not know how to do practical stuff either, given that we’re multiple generations into nobody having the time to teach kids how to cook healthy food or pick up good habits, especially in poor families but increasingly in middle class families too.

      3. Because parents may neglect to teach their kids how to do practical things, as lots of parents got their current role simply by knowing how to stick a penis in a vagina, but otherwise are sh!tty human beings who basically let their kids grow up wild. Without the schools picking up the slack, nobody will teach the next gen, and society will continue to degenerate into apes that wear clothing. It’s always good to have a backup plan in case parents fail at educating their own kids.

      1. rrhersh

        I am bemused by the idea that even quasi-formal teaching is necessary to learn how to cook. About forty years ago, when I moved out of the dorm and into an apartment, it dawned on me that I was going to be eating my own cooking. So I bought a cookbook: a Better Homes & Gardens, which I still own and still use. It did a good job of being helpful to a wide range of experience levels. That and a thrift store run and I did just fine.

        If my mother taught me anything in this regard, it was that cooking, and cooking well, is a thing. I knew this because I saw her do it. I later got some recipes from her, but the mechanics of how to cook? Book larnin'!

    3. golack

      I believe that falls under "home economics", and it really does need to be taught. That's where you learn about compound interest, e.g. why it's bad to only make minimum payments on your credit card bill. If you have a 30 year mortgage, how much of the home to you own after 10 years?
      In other words, this is where students learn basic numeracy. Economics for those not going to study economics.

  2. Austin

    “Students develop the ability to routinely do work they don't necessarily want to do—without going nuts or becoming unemployed and homeless.”

    Um. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what most slaves were taught to do, and most of them managed to do it too. Same with serfs in medieval times. Same with all oppressed people everywhere who manage to survive into adulthood. And none of them had any formal education. Training the next generation to be mindless worker drones isn’t anything new, but it’s also not exactly something that requires 12 years of education to accomplish either. I’d hope that an organized system of education would have higher goals than just replicating what most of the world’s people have “learned” already.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      {preface--What slaves and serfs had to do to survive} "And none of them had any formal education."

      Yup. Absolutely right. But they sure got a good education in those survival skills, and right quick, too, I bet. They were not ejected from their mom's womb into a cold uncaring world where they had to figure those things out for themselves. They were immersed in a cold uncaring world where there were plenty of folks to teach them those lessons quickly and painfully.

      We hope we have evolved some better ways to learn the hard lessons of life.

      1. Austin

        It’s just dismaying to hear a self-professed liberal like Kevin rank “students should be able to suffer miserable tasks without breaking down” as one of the top goals of our educational system. I think what he means is that life itself requires suffering and adults need to be resilient to that in order to function well. But wtf. Raising billions of future kids to just take whatever the Powers That Be tell them to do without questioning it may be a life survival skill, but it’s also dangerous if it’s an end to itself. Lots of poor people all around the world are doing work they don’t want to do without going nuts or becoming homeless, but we shouldn’t let the corporations and ruling elites off the hook for creating that sh!tty world to begin with… and it takes education to see and counteract this.

        1. aldoushickman

          "It’s just dismaying to hear a self-professed liberal like Kevin rank 'students should be able to suffer miserable tasks without breaking down' as one of the top goals of our educational system."

          Would it be less dismaying if Kevin described that as developing delayed gratification skills? The ability to do something dull/unpleasant isn't valuable because nefarious forces have designed the world be unfun, it's because a lot of important things that people have to do ARE unfun.

        2. samgamgee

          It's less about gaining a slave mentality than it is developing the grit to do things you don't want to, because they need doing and life is full of them.

    2. lawnorder

      "Work that you don't want to do" may include the kind of menial jobs that college students often have to help pay their education expenses, but it may also include unpaid work like doing the dishes or the laundry.

      1. aldoushickman

        Or doing your taxes, or planning for end-of-life care, or deciding to check the shingles on your roof on the weekend instead of watching football--y'know, stuff that may not be fun, but is kinda important.

    1. Austin

      Yes. Maybe not the making part (although I’d argue that step is surprisingly hard for a lot of people). But *keeping* appointments is a skill that’s sorely lacking in a lot of people. Ask any interviewer how many people show up late for their interviews and act like it’s no big deal. Or ask receptionists how many people show up late for doctor’s appointments, hair appointments, whatever. Or ask any manager of a job in which people need to be there by a specific time. There is an epidemic of people who are chronically late to everything and it’s not even blameable on traffic, transit delays, etc.

    2. Ken Rhodes

      Make an appointment, then manage your time so you keep the appointment, is a challenge to a large number of bright and educated people. (Sadly, including all my kids, whose ages range from 52-62.)

      1. iamr4man

        Your experience in making appointments with people who come to your home to repair things and having them arrive at the appointed time must be very different from mine.
        Also, I was at a Dr’s office a while back. I arrived on time as always and was waiting about 20 minutes past the time of my appointment when a guy arrived 10 minutes late for an appointment with a different Dr The receptionist told him that since he was late he would have to reschedule.

        1. cld

          People who come to the house to repair something are invariably at least an hour late but I've always rationalized that as their having run into some unexpected trouble at their other stops that day, and the same thing at the doctor, where I'll be there on time and they'll be running late.

          1. Special Newb

            It's more like "why should I hurry? They'll call someone else and have to wait longer. Or do your own plumbing sucker!"

          2. iamr4man

            Nice if they let you know they will be late. Rarely get that information. Last time I called and they said I wasn’t on the schedule. Person who took my call when I made my appointment didn’t bother to put it in the computer.

  3. antiscience

    What about civics ? history ? Understanding our role in our country, our responsibilities and privileges, and *esp* our responsibilities ? Understanding who we are as Americans, and why and how the many kinds of Americans are equal ?

    I grew up in small-town North Texas (East Incest, TX (aka Weatherford)) and we never learned about the Tulsa race massacre; we were taught all about bootleggers, and nothing about prison farms, the use of vagrancy to lock up black men, the Wilmington coup, and lord-knows-how-many-other abominations from our history. Let's not go into the history I didn't learn about women's rights, nor about Native Americans (Wounded Knee? What's that?) And so, I emerged from high school a bigoted man, both male chauvinist and racist. It took me decades to unlearn these things.

    1. Ken Rhodes

      Anti, your experience is far from unusual. I admire you for making the effort to overcome that background. And sadly, as you well know, there are many jurisdictions in our country where that mis-education (rather than simply the lack of education) is still the norm.

    2. Salamander

      Thanks for pointing out the importance of history, and the accompanying civics! I was working my way down through the many musings on "ironing" and "hot plates" and wondering if anybody would bring up preparation for every adult's fundamental role of Citizen of the United States.

    3. Yehouda

      +10.

      Absolutely essential part of schools is teaching people what society they live in, wcich means teaching history and other people's cultuires , what is the reasonable behaviour in this society (i.e. civics).

  4. stilesroasters

    one of my hills I would die on is that we need to bring back Home Ec with some reasonable updates for the modern world, but learning how to feed yourself, balance a basic budget, and maybe fix a flat tire on your bike are all very useful for a person's actual life.

    I'd also require schools to offer either woodworking or shop classes to give more students the opportunity to develop manually oriented cognitive skills.

    1. Salamander

      Bring it back? Both of my offspring availed themselves of Home Ec and Shop courses. Each took both a "homemaking" and a "shop" class, so both the male and female child can sew, cook, and do woodworking.

    2. sonofthereturnofaptidude

      I worked in a school that had a home economics teacher who had a doctorate and had the highest salary of any teacher in the school. She also had the biggest space -- an enormous room with many appliances, tools, etc. She used to have the kids baking cookies, cupcakes and making jello much of the time, and she could not manage a classroom of high school students to save her life -- they wandered freely, distributing goodies. It made the principal grind his teeth just to mention her name.

      Shop and home ec are expensive to run, so it's no surprise they often get short shrift.

  5. ruralhobo

    Students' curiosity is stimulated rather than dulled. Their autonomy is appreciated rather than punished. They work on individual and collective projects rather than rote learning.

    Had I known my kids would benefit from none of the above, and had I spoken Finnish, I'd have moved with them to Finland while there was still time.

  6. middleoftheroaddem

    I wish our high school education had a robust trades ( lab tech, electronics repair, plumbing etc) and internship track somewhat similar to Germany. There are lots of kids that college is not the best next step and they require marketable job skills.

  7. Leo1008

    Regarding this:

    “However, it is a surprise (to me) that college prep turns out to rank #47 overall—a gigantic drop from the previous year.”

    My completely unscientific guess is this: the numerous stories regarding censorship at Colleges and universities have an impact.

    We hear stories about right wing attempts at censorship, and we also hear a steady stream of disturbing tales about Left wing censorship.

    The incident at Hamline university, and its astoundingly hapless administrators, is a good example. Readers of the NYT, WP, Reason, Slate, Atlantic Magazine, and even the dailykos all encountered the story: a professor lost her contract and was labeled both by a Muslim student as well as school administrators as an Islamophobe all because she displayed a picture of Mohammed during her art class. Making matters worse, the clueless university president herself explicitly responded by stating that the feelings and perceived safety or comfort of students supersede any notion of academic freedom. Then the university brought in a Muslim speaker who informed the students that they should go to a local library (not an American university) if they actually want what the rest of us would recognize as an education. When the school’s own academics attempted to challenge that Muslim speaker during his presentation, they were told (and at times actually physically restrained) to be quiet by the University’s DEI administrators.

    And it seems highly likely to me that when schools keep shooting themselves in the foot so badly, people eventually take note.

    So maybe that’s why preparation for college is dropping as a priority for so many people: perhaps higher education can get bullied by right wing demagogues and cater to Lefty snowflakes for only so long before people start to rethink the value of the college experience.

    1. sfbay1949

      It's way simpler than that. The endless stories about massive student loan debt would seem to be the main reason.

      All the hand wringing about Left Wing censorship sounds like a straw man. A way to rag on perceived left leaning in universities.

      1. Leo1008

        The story I reference in my post is anything but a straw man.

        I think there is a tendency among liberals/leftists to discount such stories because they are sometimes covered (gleefully) by right wing outlets like Fox News;

        But, no: the fact that too many schools offer up that kind of story for right wing outlets does not mean that all such stories aren’t true.

        1. sfbay1949

          I'm not saying they're not true. I'm saying I don't think they are a major reason why people are less interested in sending their kids (and high school kids themselves) to college.

          There are many trade jobs that provide a very good living and are careers in themselves. One of our kids is a lineman, another owns a tax business (he does have a BA in Spanish), the last is a pilot. All great jobs that don't require a college education. What they do require is a level of intelligence that allows them to learn the skill.

          1. Leo1008

            I agree that there are alternatives to college, but I’m not at all certain that the cost of a college education is in itself enough to dispel interest.

            Many people are still surely aware of lower cost college options. Speaking for myself, I’m about to finish an MA at a state school, and I was able to do that (while also working) without incurring any debt.

            But the censorship scandals cast a negative light on ALL of higher education - as a whole - and, that being the case, I consider them much more damaging

  8. cephalopod

    I find the desire for practicle skills to be one of the hardest to implement. My kid is currently working on his final project in cooking class, which requires making food that uses at least 17 ingredients. Who cooks like that these days? Plus, the immense diversity in students makes it hard to select the right skills and recipes to teach. Meanwhile, personal finance is so political, it's hard to do it well anymore. Bitcoin and gold are hard to talk about, and even encouraging the use of banks or investing in the stock market are political minefields.

    There does seem to be some technology mismatch these days. The young can make tiktok videos, but may not know how to change a lightbulb, google the contact info for their dentist, or use a photocopier. Some medical information is still required to be transmitted by fax or snail mail for security reasons, and I have no idea how many young people can manage either of those!

    1. aldoushickman

      "but may not know how to change a lightbulb . . . or use a photocopier"

      Fortunately, since LEDs outlast incandescents by about 25 times or more, kids today hardly ever need to change a lightbulb (and, since it's a brainlessly easy task, they can figure out it pretty quick when they have to) compared to in the olden days.

      Photocopiers are rather pointless machines in a world of digital originals (just print something afresh--there's no downgrading in image quality that way); anybody fortunate enough to have escaped being forced to learn how to use them is better off (same with fax machines).

      1. Special Newb

        There are also YT instructional videos aplenty. Definitely used those when dealing with things like minor car and plumbing issues

        1. aldoushickman

          Very good point--I shudder at the thought of how much harder it was to solve basic maintenance problems before there was vast (and free!) video library of easily searchible useful tips accessible on a device I carry in my pocket.

  9. HalfAlu

    If by "Students are regularly tested to measure mastery of subject areas." you mean a day of standardized testing every year or two years to assess school performance, then yes. Standardized testing that takes more time away from learning, no.

    If you mean the teachers give students tests in each subject periodically, then no objections.

  10. Henry Lewis

    One problem, from my view, is that this list of "priorities" contain overlapping items which are inconsistent. They are contain lists of "goals" and "process" which, to my mind, should not be on the same list. The desire for one, should not push down the need for the other.

    For example, Kevin's #2 was #6 on the list (prepare for a career). But way down on the list is be repaired for an internship or entry-level job. These are overlapping to my mind, but well apart from one another on the list.

    #7 is that student advance if they show mastery of a topic. This is more process related, than goal related.

    I'm also willing to bet there are wide variances as to the priorities depending on where in the K-12 process the respondent's kids currently are.

  11. D_Ohrk_E1

    Students develop the ability to routinely do work they don't necessarily want to do—without going nuts or becoming unemployed and homeless.

    Why do I feel like this is an accidental criticism of people with ADHD?

    1. HokieAnnie

      Also completely discounting issue #5 - kids are all different, some of us really could have used better support in school to do our best. Like not telling me I was lazy because my spelling was atrocious and my handwriting poor, then telling me my essay was crap because of the other two issues and me thinking I was a terrible writer. Kevin lacks the empathy gene at times. This is one of those times.

      1. aldoushickman

        That easily could have been Kevin's number 6; at any rate, it's rather subsumed in the other 5, as for an education system to have such substantive goals as outcomes for all students, it would necessarily have a process goal of providing each kid the tools that kid needs to achieve the other outcomes.

    2. aldoushickman

      "Why do I feel like this is an accidental criticism of people with ADHD?"

      I'd guess perhaps because you are being a bit hypersensitive, or willfully looking for fault? Learning how to knuckle down and take care of tasks you might not enjoy but which are important to do has nothing to do with ADHD.

      I'd imagine that very few people always enjoy doing homework or studying for an exam, but in addition to the knowledge and direct skills such tasks help a student develop, there's also something useful about learning how to get through unpleasant work as a way of achieving long(er)-term goals.

  12. painedumonde

    I get the drop in importance of college prep - the majority of people are going on to post high school education with crippling fear of debt and expectations of grandeur. If at all. So why even try? But shockingly unions aren't on the upswing in membership. What could this mean? Americans are, on the majority, on the hustle. Doing too much with too little. All by design.

  13. Zephyr

    Think back to what were the most important things you learned in high school. For me it was this stuff in roughly this order: critical reading and writing, working in groups, math up through trig, history, social networking and speaking, organization and time management. I use this stuff every day in life.

  14. kenalovell

    'Students develop the ability to think critically and ask appropriate questions' is a typical educator's 'desired learning outcome'. It's akin to requiring students to 'develop the ability to drive a vehicle safely according to the conditions' and assuming they will therefore apply that ability in practice.

    It would be better to express it thus: 'Students demonstrate that they have acquired the ability to ground arguments in evidence and logic, by adopting such arguments in all their interactions with teachers and their fellow students'.

    1. aldoushickman

      You're quibbling over the distinction in language between students having a skill and educators observing that students have a skill. The former presupposes the latter.

      As per your example, you're preferencing as an outcome "students drive safely" over "students learn to drive safely." There's not much of a distinction that isn't persnickety linguistic happenstance.

      1. kenalovell

        Not at all. Most learning outcomes can only be assessed in isolation, by tests or simulations or assignments and the like. It's not practicable to observe whether students have internalised them to the extent they apply them in practice in everyday situations.

        Critical thinking/rational evidence-based argumentation, on the other hand, can be constantly evaluated by observing the way students relate to teaching staff and each other, throughout all the years of schooling. It's similar to Kevin's fourth outcome - it is best assessed by observing the extent to which students demonstrate it in everyday tasks.

  15. azumbrunn

    I think people do value "critical thinking". Very much in fact. The problem is that they understand "critical thinking" as "agrees with me".

    1. kenalovell

      That's why I prefer to refer to 'using evidence-based logical arguments' instead of the somewhat vague 'critical thinking'.

  16. Heysus

    Yes indeed, sounds like low expectations from uneducated folks. Seems they want day care or a babysitter. Education(school) is not a place to lie low and slime out. It is a prep for life. Buck up kids and parents and lets make it that way.

  17. sonofthereturnofaptidude

    At the high school where I work, emphasis among teachers and the administration has long been placed on kids getting into college, and the school puts its money there whenever possible. Sports programs, for example, are really about providing fodder for college applications more than anything else. I suspect the same goes for theater and music extracurriculars. I will probably never know the true cost of the extracurricular programs in our district because the budgets never break them down.

    Special education programs, however, eat up tremendous amounts of resources, and since they are federally mandated, you would think that the federal government would provide $$ for them. Many of the complaints about school budgets these days are made by people who have no IDEA about federal requirements for SPED. (Sorry, I couldn't help the pun).

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