Make the case for why your subject needs to be in the school curriculum

I've made a number of recent posts where I've been scathing about the lack of importance the teaching of technology is given in the school curriculum. I've been doing so because technology is fundamental to every single aspect of modern day life and it's beyond bizarre that it's a subject that schools no longer regard as important to teach.

But let's forget my gripes about that for a moment and allow teachers of other subjects to make the case for why the subject they teach warrants a place in the curriculum.

Here's your chance to express what it is about your subject that made you passionate enough about it that you wanted to educate the kids who would be paying for your pension and health care needs when you retire. What benefits it would bring to their lives too, over and above anything else that might inspire them.

How does anyone decide what kids really ought to learn about above anything else? It it the wisdom contained within the King Jame's bible that a previous Secretary of State felt passionate enough to ensure that every school had a copy of, personally signed by him, in between snorting a line of coke after every ten copies?

Seriously though... Make the case for why you feel the subject you teach and are passionate enough to mark, deserves to be funded from my tax contributions,

 

Dukie, did you start out a a teacher? I'm assuming you did.

 

MFL
Never more important than in these current times: important to open young minds to other languages and cultures to counter the inward-looking mentality of Brexit UK.

As for technology, I was in awe of the genius of the engineers who built the sarcophagus at Chernobyl (Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb - last night on BBC4). Serious genius!

 

No, I've taught teachers and other adults in small stints, but not kids.

 

I don't think he ever taught.

 

Maths. You need to be able to measure and do arithmetic and then geometry and then trigonometry and then calculus and then...
Depending on your level, of course. Which brings in Physics and Chemistry and Biology and Computer Science at different levels. English to communicate clearly, unambiguously and concisely.

 

Because Hitler, Stalin, Texas fundamentalists and Michael Gove all tried to control the teaching of it, because they realise its importance to producing critical thinkers and active citizens.

 

Because History teaches you to dig beyond the surface and gives you the skills to examine what you find. It prompts you to ask inconvenient questions. It stops the evil misusing our past to reshape our future. It is the one subject who's very essence is a search for the truth. It is the final court of appeal, the last hall of justice.

When Hitler was told that he could not treat the Jews so badly, he just shrugged and said 'who now remembers the Armenians?"

We do.

Historians serve justice. And where justice fails - we serve vengeance.

(Much the speech I give my Year 7's. One year, a small child whispered:

"Sir, are you Batman?"

Methinks I had been a bit melodramatic..

I just said: 'Shhhhhhh....'.)

 

Maths.
Because without Maths ninety percent of the curriculum is too boring and the other half is prone to unacceptable error.

 

It would take an act of parliament to remove my subject, R.E., from the curriculum and that will not be happening anytime soon for many reasons.
R.E. has a unique position in this respect. Sadly, many other subjects do not have legal protections.

I could make the case for its inclusion anyway but this is no place for an essay.

 

It would be truer to say that I wasn't ever taught, well not taught about stuff that I would have liked to have been. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never understand why I had to suffer religion and PE.

I was getting an education in parallel to what the school offered, and it's that which I have mostly drawn on in my journey through life.

Over the last five or so years, I've been cramming as much history as I can get and I agree with those who claim it to be one of the most important subjects a citizen can learn. Sadly, at the time I started school, few people had got their head around the fact that Britain had all but lost its empire, so there wasn't much point in telling us how proud we should be of it.

I'm far better informed these days how it was acquired, the bad things it brought as well as the good. The genuine achievements I can be proud of being British and the reasons why no British citizen should trust snake oil salesmen like those who campaigned for us to leave the EU or reformed education into a money making scam.

Overall, I would say I had as good an education as was possible in a state school for the era I attended, but most of what I know has been acquired by my own endeavours.

 

which nicely concludes quite a wordy circumnavigation of the more pertinant question to the thread itself- "were you ever a teacher?".
Just to remind...

 

It depends how you define what a teacher is. I've never made any pretence to have been a school teacher, but I've taught a few jokes on here, ain't I?

As I said earlier, I've taught adults in occasional short stints and in longer ones when I had to get my employees up to speed with the technology their schools failed to teach them. I've also had a spell in a more formal arrangement in an architecture university, which was money for old rope.

I've taught my dog how to stop being a pain in the butt and my wife too, if she wishes to celebrate a ruby wedding anniversary. These days I teach the elderly about a myriad of stuff from how to get on with each other, how to embrace the tecnological revolution, what to expect when they need an operation and how to defeat utility customer sevices, in order to obtain satisfaction.

In my time selling technology, I taught countless clients how to cut through the nonsense my competitors were telling them and get down to the brass tacks of the science behind why my competitors claims were misleading, if not fraudulent.

I could tell you a thousand and one things I've taught, not least being that of teaching a kid who came hurtling out of a supermarket aisle on heelies and crashing into me that he wouldn't want to do it twice and taught his abusive father who accosted me for it, that one black eye is more than enough to think about getting his act in order.

How much more of my teaching experiences do you need to know about? I could keep you entertained all night, but I get complaints when my posts exceed the 140 characters, which we are led to believe is the maximum allowed these days.

 

I've not noticed that.

 

I'm sorry for answering for you. I was trying to prevent misunderstanding, nothing more.

 

What a good idea. Let's start a campaign to remove such clear bias from the curriculum... Esp. given the facts about religious observance in the UK these days...

 

Q: Why Media Studies?
A:

 

It’s English. No case making needed.

 

Science: When I began teaching, I thought it was vital for everyone to understand how the world around them works. Having realised that this is beyond a large proportion of the population, I now think science is vital to be taught so that the majority of people realise that they don't understand it.

 

Excellent post. I don't understand much of it because I didn't take it beyond O'levels but like many I am interested to hear about it from those who have.