Edyoukayshun

[John Mc]

Does anyone here actually use the stuff they learned at secondary school on a day-to-day basis? Up until the age of about 10 you learn skills that you actually use later in life such as how to read, write, count etc. But after that it seems that you just end up learning a load of facts purely for the purposes of passing exams which seems like a bit of a waste of time.

[paulwhite library bound]

i agree whole-heartedly, and it is something i often think about, and actually questioned it when i was at school.

it hasn't helped me at all, and if i re-took the tests now i wouldn't be able to answer a thing.

i believe you should be given a choice of learning creative subjects, because that is how you find out if you have a natural bent for that sort of thing, (i.e. music, art, drama, english),
but maths and science serve no purpose whatsoever.

i say more politics and religion in schools!.

sigh
whitex

[Tommy BOO]

[Guest]

i dont agree about your comments on religion, even though i'm not religious myself, i think that the basics of all religions should be told and reiterated right up until you leave school.

maybe you should be given the choice of subjects, presumebly science is essential if you want to be a scientist , but i still think that a lot of the stuff they teach you, especially in maths is completely pointless unless you want to become a maths teacher! i'd hate to see what A-levels maths was like....

I think they should teach you more domestic things as well, such as cooking, ironing, washing .etc, as i have no idea how to do those things, and am not particularly interested in learning how to do it in my own time, thankyou very much.

whitex

[John Mc]

I'm not at all religious but I think religion should be taught at schools now more than ever. But not just reciting the bible stories and being able to list the apostles, pupils should be taught about different religions and the people who believe in them. At school I learned all about how eskimos build igloos but nothing about how Muslims live their lives. I'm not sure how many eskimos there are in the world but there must be more Muslims.

I agree that school should be a place where you get to try out a load of different things to see if you like them without the pressure of having to achieve immediate results. And if you enjoy something then you should have the option of pursuing your interest further.

I took English A-Level and thats put me off reading novels ever since. You have to analyse books in such tedious detail that you grow to hate the stuff you're reading and just set it as a list of facts to be learned. In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" book the author said that you start off at school learning facts and then repeating them back to your teacher but as you grow up you do the same thing but have to disguise that is what you are doing and write it as though its your opinion, even though you and the teacher know that you're just writing it to score marks.

I can't see the system ever changing though, can you imagine the headlines if the government announced that children could stop learning maths at the age of 11 if they wanted to? Or if they decided that children should learn about Islam in all schools?

[Kris]

The only thing I can add to this conversation is that we now live in an extremely multicultural society, and thus all Nurseries now celeberate a whole raft of religious and cultural festivals.

I feel this is essential and I truly hope that this is carried on through all schools up to leaving age.

Kinks
_________________
"fashioned by the blade of a world that doesn't care,
feeling so removed, drifting thru stealing air then...
pause and think about it, try to move and shift the pain, but it's there you feel it kicking and you scream and feel alive."

[Tommy BOO]

Yeah, I learned about many religions in school as well, but not in the religion classes. I don't know much about Christian religion, I only studied it for a year when I was 7 or something. We were singing hymns every single time and then we just talked and talked about the ten commandments. Some of the teachings in the Bible are still very important, but my teacher didn't seem to realise that the world has changed during the last 2000 years. And we had to read a prayer before lunch time every day, I wonder if they still try to brainwash children in the religion classes. So me and my best mate (who sadly passed away seven years later) went crying to our mums (my family isn't religious either) and they called our teacher and told her that we don't want to study religion anymore. Still, years later, I think that was a good choice. Me and my best mate were the only kids in the school who didn't study religion, so we went to play football to the playground nearby and sometimes we got some kind of assignments to do... they were probably something very simple when we were still little kids, but they got more difficult, I suppose I could call them 'philosophical'.
This doesn't mean that I'm not religious at all, I just don't believe in God as most of the Christian people do. I don't even believe in Christian religion. I think it's just ridiculous to think that there's some guy with a beard above the clouds controlling everything and watching us. I don't mind if other people do though, I appreciate all religions and religious people, as long as they don't let it control their lives too much. I have another trauma from my childhood - I have a relative who's very religious, and every time I had to visit her, she wanted me to pray with him, and I couldn't say no to her of course even though I wanted to. She had all that religious stuff around the house, crucifixes, religious paintings and statues and books, candles, etc etc... It was all very scary really when I was a kid, I just couldn't wait to get back home safely.
I've never understood either why some people are so goddamn (!) fanatic about some religion... there have been so many bloody wars just because of some stupid story, and I just can't understand why . I feel nothing but disgust at people like that, people who kill each other because of a religion. That's surely
Anyway, although I don't believe in the stories in the Bible, my theory is that some graverobbers probably stole Jesus's body from that cave and the superstitious people started to believe the lies that someone started to spread around... if those graverobbers knew that they started a religion, they would probably be laughing their arses off.
My other theory is that the whole story in the Bible was created by some cunning ruler of some ancient land, to make the people he ruled fear the God, so that he could control them all through the church. That's how it worked in the Dark Ages at least - pay the taxes for the church or God will punish you.
No offense to anyone who actually believes in Christian religion of course, there's no way I could say that it's not true ... I just don't believe in it, that's all.
I do believe that there's some kind of a mysterious force that keeps the universe together though. Maybe there's a scientific explanation for everything, but as long as I don't know what it is, it's religion for me. My religion has no name, I suppose.

Amen.
_________________
"Tommy Boo has played a pivotal role in my life. I've looked up to him since I was a kid and he has inspired every note of music I have ever written. The man is a fucking genius" -BC

[pscenario]

[Tommy BOO]

Hahah, I just knew that someone would mention that Jedi thing!

Did you know that it's an 'official' religion in England?
_________________
"Tommy Boo has played a pivotal role in my life. I've looked up to him since I was a kid and he has inspired every note of music I have ever written. The man is a fucking genius" -BC

[Setareh Juventina]

Well, I think everyone had said it here really by now, but since religion is a big part of many people's lives it's good for everyone to know about them.

John, it's a tad strange comparing being an eskimo to being a muslim. Being muslim is more or less a choice, it's not an ethnicity (Jews are sometimes grouped as Jews because they are from the same ethnicity generally but same thing can't be said about muslims, there are muslims in the arab world, south east asia etc etc).
Being an eskimo is not something you can 'un-be', in the same way as a person can't stop being white/northern european etc etc. And you certainly cannot become an eskimo by reading a verse in a holy book (the convertion process according to Islam).

There are approximately 1 billion muslims in the world btw. And Mohammad is the most common boy name on earth. Both of these I learned in grade 11 and see, they were finally put to use!

Love and Peace
_________________
Man is the only animal clever enough to build The Empire State Building and stupid enough to jump from it.

[John Mc]

It was a bit lazy of me to compare eskimos to Muslims but it was too hot this afternoon to think of a better comparison. I've just tried to find out how many eskimo's there are in the world and failed but if anyone wants cheap internet access then www.eskimo.com appears to the place to look.

[ciaranm]

I think it's a load of cock to say that people don't use what they learn in secondary school, ever been to a pub quiz?

But seriously, I use Maths every day and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I use chemistry, biology, english skills and technical drawing too. I also am happy to know I've learned a little French and can speak my national language Gaelic. While I don't put all the stuff I've learned to use, you can't knock a good education, and even if you don't realise it, you will be constantly drawing upon it.

[Dave w.]

isn't part of school about learning how to learn stuff, so that even if you don't use much of what you learn, you're better able to learn new stuff (like the things you do need in order to do your job) in the future?