What my HS failed to teach me.

[Brad]

Basically most of the (non English) European history of the 19th and 20th century.
:roll:

I have been doing some major ancestry research for over a year now and one of the many things I have learned is what a poor job my high school did of teaching any real world history. My best example is that many of my relatives come from Andau, Austria. But my great grandfather listed himself as Hungarian and coming from Hungary when he immigrated here in 1890. So that has sent me on a learning quest and I found out that it is because it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire back then. And it was known as Mosontarcsa, Moson-Tarcsa rather then as Andau. So I am Hungarian and Polish. Part of my Polish ancestry comes from Białystok which is also a very interesting city to learn about especially as a Jew. We learned very little about any of this region in school. I often wonder if it is because much of the area was still under control of the big bad USSR. My great grandfather on that side came to the US in 1913 on the eve of WWI. He spoke Polish and Russian. It was a smart move as my Polish family names later appear in quite a few ghetto and extermination camp records. Reading some of those records is not easy either.


Overall my high school, and even the lower grades, did a decent job of guiding my education but global history is the one that appears to be most lacking as I learned so little about it. I am curious to know if anyone else has noticed a specific area that their school fell short on teaching them?

 

[pg240]

I received a decent overview -- and then some -- in college, though. Western civilization was a required course back then. If you wanted to go deeper than that, you had to use some electives. Fortunately, I was a history major. You're right about high school, though. Decent on U.S. history, lacking in world history.

 

[Rose]

General life skills. Seriously.

If high schools want to be really successful, they should teach some more practical courses. Like understanding a lease agreement, how to manage bank accounts, understanding loans, how to do basic maintenance around a home, how to operate a washer and dryer (seriously, I know too many adults who are clueless about washing their own laundry) and how to pay bills.

 

[LacieLaPlante]

I never learned ANYTHING about taxes/filing taxes in high school and now that they're a huge part of my life, that would have been a big help. Just knowing ANYTHING about filing them would have helped. I honestly knew nothing and my parents never considered teaching me about it.

 

[KaterinaPryde]

My high school did alright teaching me. I just wish I would have paid better attention and applied myself more. I put any lack of education on me.

 

[JerryBoBerry]

Overall I went to a better High School back in the 80's. So they still had some teaching standards and weren't hindered by the incredibly bad 'No child left behind' crap that is plaguing today's schools.

I think where they were mostly being dragged down was by the books being used in schools. Textbook makers by then had already instituted 'panels' of people to review textbooks. They're sole purpose was to vote on any offensive material and have it removed from the book. So out of a large panel of people there wasn't much left that wasn't offensive. As a result most history books just have glimpses of what should really should be covered and was by and large not taught very well in my high school though due to the textbooks low quality.

I collect older books and I've noticed even going back to the 20's the history books for most grammar schools contained more American history than those in modern High School books.

One of the books that really shows how little history is covered (even in colleges today) is this one. It's a long title so i'll put it in quotes here.

Our first century: being a popular descriptive portraiture of the one hundred great and memorable events of perpetual interest in the history of our country, political, military, mechanical, social, scientific and commercial: embracing also delineations of all the great historic characters celebrated in the annals of the republic; men of heroism, statesmanship, genius, oratory, asventure and philanthropy (1878)

Basically it's the most notable 100 events of the first 100 years of American history. If you read it you'll notice MOST of those events you've never heard of. And even the ones you did hear of you probably haven't heard the whole history. If you want an example read chapter 103 on the assassination of President Lincoln (Chapter CIII, page 887 in the book).

It can be read online and even downloaded in multiple formats here.
http://archive.org/details/ourfirstcenturyb00deve Warning though. The color PDF version was done with full photographs, so it's huge. If you don't have a really powerful computer, I'd stick with online, DJVU, or text versions. Unless you want a really good copy.

 

[Sevrin]

Central-European history is a lot to stomach for most European kids, never mind kids anywhere else. Just look at all those polls where people can barely find the US on an unmarked map of the world. Can you imagine people like that staying awake through the vicissitudes of Bohemia and Moravia? :lol:

I took world history, business law, business basics and office machines & procedures in HS, because I thought they would be useful. They served me very well later on. I watched my mother do her income tax returns. The problem with the NA high school system is that students are not challenged to take responsibility for their own education and are allowed to pass courses they should repeat. I started HS in Germany, where you would have to repeat entire years if you flunked two courses. That had a way of focusing your attention.

 

[AmeliaArcana]

I wish my high school would have taught me more about pre-World War II Jewish history... or anything about the constantly-changing Slavic mess of merging/dissolving countries that birthed my ancestors. I'm also really into ancestral research and it's been nearly impossible to track down much of anything... a lot of which has to do with my general ignorance to the prior existences of places like (non-Spanish) Galicia.

High school also failed to teach me that slavery never ended.

 

[Rose]

Oh I learned all the book stuff and learned it well. The high schools in this area just don't teach any practical stuff that you'll need to know as an adult and most of them don't offer home ec classes either. Which is retarded if you ask me. Makes you feel like a dysfunctional robot. All of the information and none of the knowledge.

 

[Jessi]

I was never taught about
-Taxes
- How to do basic bank things
- How basic elections and levels of government worked

Seriously, I knew more about the American political system from TV and stuff than that of my own country until I was like 18.

 

[Just Me]

Oh I learned all the book stuff and learned it well. The high schools in this area just don't teach any practical stuff that you'll need to know as an adult and most of them don't offer home ec classes either. Which is retarded if you ask me. Makes you feel like a dysfunctional robot. All of the information and none of the knowledge.

I agree and they should bring back home economics classes and not treat it as an alternative to the shop classes. It should be a required class for everyone.

 

[Rose]

Oh I learned all the book stuff and learned it well. The high schools in this area just don't teach any practical stuff that you'll need to know as an adult and most of them don't offer home ec classes either. Which is retarded if you ask me. Makes you feel like a dysfunctional robot. All of the information and none of the knowledge.

I agree and they should bring back home economics classes and not treat it as an alternative to the shop classes. It should be a required class for everyone.

Seriously, never underestimate the ability to change a diaper or use common sense. Since becoming a parent I'm completely shocked at how 'hard' a 'simple' task is for so many people. I honestly didn't think there were that many people that were clueless as to how to change a diaper.

Or cooking or washing your clothes. Maybe basic home keeping skills have gone the way of common sense and the dinosaur. :?

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

I never learned ANYTHING about taxes/filing taxes in high school and now that they're a huge part of my life, that would have been a big help. Just knowing ANYTHING about filing them would have helped. I honestly knew nothing and my parents never considered teaching me about it.

I think financial literacy is the biggest single thing missing in today's high school and even universities. Taxes are important, but so are basics like budgeting, understanding how credit cards work, leases (both cars and apartments), mortgages, credit scores etc on the borrowing side. On the investing side, how and why you should buy stocks, or mutual funds, the basics of 401K, IRAs, 529s etc. how insurance works etc.

I minored in economics and even got a bloody MBA, but outside of a single class of financial derivatives which was basically a stock market game, I learned nothing practical about money management in 20+ years of formal education.

Which is real pity cause all of this stuff lends itself well to book learning. It is a lot cheaper to learn this stuff via a book than to wake up one day and realize that all the stuff you put on a credit card and paid the minimum payment on cost you three times as much due to interest charges.

 

[curvyredhead]

I think financial literacy is the biggest single thing missing in today's high school and even universities. Taxes are important, but so are basics like budgeting, understanding how credit cards work, leases (both cars and apartments), mortgages, credit scores etc on the borrowing side. On the investing side, how and why you should buy stocks, or mutual funds, the basics of 401K, IRAs, 529s etc. how insurance works etc.

Word, I can't tell you how lucky I am to have my mother.

 

[Brad]

I had not even thought about financial skills. Great points and it would have been nice to have classes that would have helped teach those type of life skills. I did take home economics when I was in 8th grade. It was an elective and I learned to cook and sew. I actually really enjoyed the class plus as a bonus it was filled with girls.
:-D

I also took "business education" as my elective for the other semester. That turned out to be a typing class but that also ended up being a great class as I learned to be a decent typist.

I was also fortunate to have attended an excellent public grade school and good public Jr and Sr high schools. I just went to my 30th HS reunion last Saturday night in fact so obviously I graduated in 1983. The real glaring omission was world history. As mentioned it was mostly American history and as a young country much of it was real boring stuff.

 

[ThePioneer]

My high school never taught me how to douggie...

Growing up my family was really poor and I did not want to make the same mistakes that my parents made, so I was one of the very few people that took accounting, adv. math, and economics as electives. I attribute a lot of my success today to those classes because they got me started off on the right foot. I was able to graduate from college with zero debt.

I haven't really thought about it much until recently, but my HS actually did a pretty decent job teaching a variety of topics (as long as you were willing to apply yourself).

 

[Kokoro]

Oh Lord, where do I begin?

My high school failed to teach me basic life skills. Things that everyone needs to know, like how to file taxes and basic math without a calculator. Those are the two most important things I should have been taught. I have severe dyscalculia and I was put in the special ed math class. The taught everything using a calculator. I think they just assumed that those of us in the special ed program wouldn't make it to college (or out of our parents house) so teaching us how to actually do things wasn't necessary.

I graduated high school with a 3.2 GPA and honors. I think that if they were actually putting us to the challenge and not just passing us along, I would have scraped by with a 2.5.....maybe

 

[bob]

it's been so long since hs that it's difficult to even remember what it taught me...but reading this thread, a few things come to mind

i learned the basics of money and it's mysteries from my folks, and made damn sure my kids got the sense of it, too....by most accounts, that is something that has been lost.....hs taught be the basics of our political system, but it took a good decade out of high school to grasp that book learning and real life don't always match :lol:

and it took another 30 years to clarify for me just how much of human history has been driven by the social geography of tribes....i'd always thought of tribes as little pockets of people locked into their native ecosystems, the leftovers of history, remembered only because they were passed by in the march of what was taught as world history...it's taken 911 and my interest in dem eastern european models to finally grasp that most of what is presented as world history is actually just the story of empire, meant to trace the roots of civilization, and especially western civilization.....that world history is just a single thread of human history, and that human history is -so far- pretty much just the story of trying to find a better cave . :twocents-02cents:

 

[Sevrin]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what high schools should teach, and what parents should teach. It's the parents' responsibility to ensure that their child is equipped to go out into the world capable of functioning on their own. That is not something that can be passed off to schools, especially publicly-funded ones.

 

[Rose]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what high schools should teach, and what parents should teach. It's the parents' responsibility to ensure that their child is equipped to go out into the world capable of functioning on their own. That is not something that can be passed off to schools, especially publicly-funded ones.

The problem though is that a lot of parents can't/won't/don't know how. Then there's always the issue of what about the foster kids or kids who attend public school but are stuck in the system and so don't have an adult, except at school, to teach them this stuff.

My mother did her best to find those kids and invite them into our home enough that she could help teach them those skills and I've been lucky enough to see these kids graduate high school with book smarts and common sense so they could get themselves out of the system and off on their own. One is actually getting married next year and has a nice job.

 

[JerryBoBerry]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what high schools should teach, and what parents should teach. It's the parents' responsibility to ensure that their child is equipped to go out into the world capable of functioning on their own. That is not something that can be passed off to schools, especially publicly-funded ones.

The problem though is that a lot of parents can't/won't/don't know how. Then there's always the issue of what about the foster kids or kids who attend public school but are stuck in the system and so don't have an adult, except at school, to teach them this stuff.

My mother did her best to find those kids and invite them into our home enough that she could help teach them those skills and I've been lucky enough to see these kids graduate high school with book smarts and common sense so they could get themselves out of the system and off on their own. One is actually getting married next year and has a nice job.

Agreed. I tend to think enough time was wasted in high school they could have fit in a class that just went through a lot of the finances and daily living stuff that's been mentioned before here.
Study period. Let's get real, did anyone ever actually 'study' during that time?

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what high schools should teach, and what parents should teach. It's the parents' responsibility to ensure that their child is equipped to go out into the world capable of functioning on their own. That is not something that can be passed off to schools, especially publicly-funded ones.

I think it is parents jobs is to teach values not the schools. While I agree parents should teach their kids life skills plenty don't know and or won't teach. Plenty of adults are financially illiterate so I am not sure how they could teach kids stuff they don't know themselves.

 

[HiGirlsRHot]

I think there is a bit of confusion as to what high schools should teach, and what parents should teach. It's the parents' responsibility to ensure that their child is equipped to go out into the world capable of functioning on their own. That is not something that can be passed off to schools, especially publicly-funded ones.

I think it is parents jobs is to teach values not the schools. While I agree parents should teach their kids life skills plenty don't know and or won't teach. Plenty of adults are financially illiterate so I am not sure how they could teach kids stuff they don't know themselves.

I think the situation is even worse for camgirls, who unlike most 20 somethings don't have payroll taxes deducted, must less state or federal income income taxes. I imagine many are quite shocked to find out on that first April 15 how much money they owe in taxes. Which is where budgeting becomes important.

 

[Sevrin]

I think it is parents jobs is to teach values not the schools.

After right and wrong, parents are responsible for teaching their children the *value* of an education. There are millions of immigrants in North America, especially from Asia, who work shit jobs and can barely speak English, let alone complete an income tax return, but make damn sure their kids are glued to their books and respect their teachers, so that they can have a better life. They send their kids to the same schools as native-born Americans.