If you could add a subject to the high school curriculum...

Mommyg8

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:05 pm

Squishy wrote:

They have this, but it is dummied down. DD took it, and it was so lacking details and depth to be meaningless. DD also found incorrect information being taught.

What is the sense of mastering nothing, but getting only minimum exposure and having it on your resume?

I THINK we're agreeing. In order to learn economics or finance properly, it really DOES have to be at the college level.

bigsis144

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:08 pm

Also, I knew how to do these already in high school, so maybe offer it as an elective, but I think it’s important -

Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint and most of all EXCEL) and typing
At first I thought that these were so simple and easy to pick up, but I saw among my Gen Z students that they use their phones waaaay more than actual desktop computers. They have pathetic WPM (two finger peck-typing! HaShem Yishmor!) and don’t know that you can put a sum function in an excel cell, they just think it’s a table with boxes going on infinitely.

These are such important job skills, they may be at the top of your resume for many jobs (especially the ones BY grads often end up in, like offices, administration, accounting/bookkeeping, teaching, running small businesses etc)

amother

White

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:13 pm

bigsis144 wrote:

Did this in HS. and quickbooks as well.

amother

Blonde

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:22 pm

Honestly, we learned practically everything mentioned here in my rw Bais yaakov. Except maybe how to change a lightbulb and plunge a toilet; but seriously, though, do those skills need more than five or ten minutes tops??

Yes, we had home ec and economics, where we learned how to write a checks, balance a company's bottom line, create a family budget for a month etc. Emunah? Bitachon? Did you guys not have in-depth hashkafa in every grade? Even parenting and sb skills were taught in my h.s. (though ofc the courses weren't called that) The problem, I think, is that so much of this is a joke when you're 15 years old and your biggest worry is acing your math midterm or getting into play. Sure, you can get drawn into intense discussions and heated debates about these topics, but it's still all so theoretical when having kids and a dh and a house to run and even having your emunah tested feels like a million years away.

Most life skills mentioned here need to be learned from life experience and not from a class.

The only thing I would have loved for my school to include is a basic kallah class-type course or lecture that includes a mikvah tour for 12th graders like they do in mo schools and in Baltimore, if I'm not mistaken. Would've been a wonderful addition to the curriculum.

33055

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:26 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

I THINK we're agreeing. In order to learn economics or finance properly, it really DOES have to be at the college level.

This course was at the college level. My point is they get college credit doing a small fraction of the work. It is not reasonable to think that carrying 18 subjects, most could learn a respectable amount of content - certainly not high school girls who have production, cheesed obligations, school spirit activities, Shabbotons, travel for vacations. They also have family obligations. Who really thinks they can legitimately carry more that many credits than college students? Top Ivy league students are not carrying 18 subjects - not even close. Full time college students carry around 5 or 6, but they actually get educated.

DD carries 9 secular subjects in addition to 9 lomedi kodesh subjects each semester.

If a girl fails a test, then she keeps getting tests often modified until she passes.

Mommyg8

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:30 pm

In my community college classes, there were plenty of students who were taking 15 credits while working full time. I agree that the course load in (I'm assuming I know which school you are talking about) is very intense. I don't know how this school gives college credit for high school classes, so I don't understand the process. And I did not go to this school, so I don't really know what their reasoning is...

SpottedBanana

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:31 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

Why do you think coding is so important? I have a working knowledge of COBOL, DOS, and C, and it has helped me ZERO in my life so far! Just wondering what your take on this is.

Those are all very old languages, so you couldn't really get a job in them now, but if you know how to write good algorithms then you could pretty easily learn a language like Java and get a job if you wanted to. It's an extremely marketable skill, which cannot be said of most things you can learn in high school.

Mommyg8

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:36 pm

SpottedBanana wrote:

It's very marketable, but I looked into the job market for programmers and it seemed to me that the hours required are incompatible with being a good mother/wife. I'm re-entering the job market now, so I'm ready to be convinced otherwise....

amother

Natural

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:36 pm

[quote="SpottedBanana"]
Oh man, I could write a magazine article or maybe a book on this -- Chumash and especially navi should be entirely focused on how we can apply it to our lives; the girls who will actually remember all the details of Elisha's nissim will learn it on their own anyway. [/quote/]

THIS! When I think back to my high school days I remember the DMCs the teachers had with us about applying the Chumash/novi to our daily lives. I also loved home economics and apply a lot of it to my daily life 18 years later. Everything else was an absolute bore. Why not teach them things they'll remember?
Thanks for all the suggestions so far!

SpottedBanana

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:41 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

I only have a part-time job since I'm a full-time student, but I do almost all my coding where I am right now, on my couch Smile

Are you looking for a part-time job? I agree that full-time hours are pretty brutal right now, but that's for practically any white-collar job in America (there's articles about how 9-7 or at least 8:30-5:30 has replaced 9-5).

33055

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:55 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

15 credits is the full time norm. That's 5 classes not 18! They are also not adolescents.

I also forgot how important their social life is to the girls. They travel in packs and are constantly group chatting even when home.

The schools get a college to partner with them for college credits. There is minimal oversight, so the girls get full credit for a fraction of content. The college gets tuitions from the girls with minimal cost since the classes are taught at the HS using HS teachers. It is a win win for everyone except those that care about education.

amother

Linen

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 9:59 pm

Chayalle wrote:

We actually had a basic computer programming course in my high school. Back in the day - really, really BASIC.

You and I must be similarly aged.I took BASIC in high school, COBOL and LISP in college. Going amother because I hate admitting how old I am!

Mommyg8

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 10:06 pm

amother wrote:

What to look for in a husband. Including red flags to watch out for. Twisted Evil

In general, how to tell if someone is lying to you. (Part of relationship skills mentioned before)

I think there are different red flags for each person, so it would be pretty impossible to teach that, I think. How to tell if someone is lying to you? I hope you're joking? Anyways, there's no way to teach that Sad

amother

Cerise

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 10:33 pm

I would have liked to learn how to recognize mental illness.

I became friendly with a girl in college. I tried desperately to cheer her up, to make her more hopeful and to take care of the aspects of her life that she was neglecting. I didn't understand how clinical depression was affecting her.

Later in life I befriended someone who was a lot of fun sometimes but I spent a lot of time walking on eggshells around her. I believed every criticism she hurled at me. I didn't understand how borderline personality disorder was affecting her.

Both of these friendships would have taken a different direction if I recognized how mental illness played a role.

amother

Orchid

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 10:39 pm

Mommyg8 wrote:

How to tell if someone is lying to you? I hope you're joking? Anyways, there's no way to teach that Sad

Yes, there is a way. You ask different questions and see how the person responds to each one and if the answers correlate to each other. I have an abusive neighbor who was always boasting about all of her purported accomplishments. When I started questioning her in depth about each one, I found out that she only has one associate's degree. She had used fancy language to make it sound like she had many more. Now I know that her self-proclaimed expertise in numerous fields is a work of fiction.

To be fair, this method only works if you give the other person a chance to talk with your undivided attention. I have a different abusive neighbor who interrupts me when I start to speak, and then concludes that I'm a liar. If I never got a chance to finish my first two sentences, how can she reasonably conclude that I'm a liar? I cut off contact with both of these neighbors.

perquacky

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 11:26 pm

My daughter is only in middle school, but she was complaining tonight about how the girls in her MO yeshiva have gym once a week and dance once a week, and the boys have two gyms. She hates dance, and a lot of the girls les feel the same. She pointed out that one of her brothers, in public middle school had to take Home Ec. It was more than cooking. They learned about budgeting, balancing a checkbook, etc. She wishes she could learn something that practical. Or music, which ended with elementary school. She takes computers, but it's all about learning Word and Excel. A complete waste of time and something you can pick up on your own. I want her to learn coding or programming. Instead of gym, martial arts or self defense. Practical electives that prepare you for life after school. And I know high school will be more of the same.

amother

Oak

Tue, Feb 13 2018, 11:57 pm

Squishy wrote:

That sounds like a lot of subjects! Reaching far back into my memory, I remember taking: chumash biyun and b'kiyus, neviim rishonim and achronim, halacha, parsha, historia, Ivris, hashkafa (but that wasn't a real class with hwk or tests, and it was just once or twice a week), then science, math, english, a foreign language and history. Total: 13 subjects.

What 5 subjects am I missing?

As far as comparing to college, to be fair, a 3 credit class = 3 hours per week. We definitely did not spend 3 hours per week on each of these 13 subjects.