REWRITE the school CURRICULUM

[droid]

Diary of Adrian Mole, Catcher in the rye, The Famous Five...

[droid]

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...080612049.html

London, UK - Schoolchildren in the UK who express support for Palestine face being questioned by police and referred to a counter-radicalisation programme for youngsters deemed at risk of being drawn into terrorism under new laws requiring teachers to monitor students for extremism.

One schoolboy told Al Jazeera he was accused of holding "terrorist-like" views by a police officer who questioned him for taking leaflets into school promoting a boycott of Israel.

The case reflects concerns raised about the expansion of the government's Preventcounter-extremism strategy into schools, with critics complaining that teachers are being expected to act as the "eyes and ears of the state".

[luka]

What I was getting at is that if you want democracy you must have an educated electorate that take their responsibilities as citizens seriously. The problem is that the world is now so complicated no one understands it. Nevertheless I think education should be geared towards making citizens, not scientists, doctors, footballers etc

[sadmanbarty]

I always thought it'd be good (in democratic terms at least) to have compulsory 'Reasoning' (for want of a better phrase) lessons.

Nothing too difficult, but combining very rudimentary logic, philosophy of science and statistics.

Students would be taught common logical fallacies, how statistics can be skewered/taken out of context and the principles of evidence-based, rational thought.

Of course this is all pie in the sky, but you can always dream.

[jenks]

Martin Robinson's Trivium in the 21st C is being heavily praised as a way of delivering some of the above:
https://headguruteacher.com/2014/01/...-be-the-answer

Other methods/models which are currently be tried are the Michaela school and School 21, both free schools with wildly differing ideas. I'm not endorsing either but there are plenty of people out there trying to grapple with the idea of what school/education is for.
https://school21.org.uk/21st-century-approach
http://mcsbrent.co.uk/ethos/

[rubberdingyrapids]

they should teach -

emotional intelligence
money
politics

[firefinga]

Doesn't matter what's in the curriculum, main thing is, throw smart phones and tablets at the kids, the sooner the better.

[sadmanbarty]

This is particularly boring suggestion, but after watching this, it dawned on me how much easier things would be for the left if people were taught about how government debt works: