How I Would Change the Educational System if I Could

I remember learning about stuff that now seems to be not worth having spent time on. Why did I need to learn about all the wars we had? Great, it shaped our country, but we need to be producing business/industry leaders and people who are motivated to join the workforce. We need to spend time on practical skills like how to lead people, daily living skills like balancing a checkbook, budgeting, calculating what the best credit card would be, the mortgage process. We need to teach kids conflict resolution, about differences in personalities and how to work with others effectively, cultural differences.

Why didn’t I learn more about important women and minorities? I feel like I learned only that is was men who bought civilization and this country along.

I understand that all of what I learned wasn’t obvious – I know now I learned critical thinking by doing those word problems in math. But I also know I needed to be guided in applying skills to other areas. Do kids know that they can apply their critical thinking skills to TV-watching to know that reality shows exist because they are cheap not because they are good? Do they understand that TV news is a visual medium and that some of what is reported is solely because they have video of it and not because it is important to know? How come we learned about electricity in the same way the discoverers probably did rather than looking at the light switches in our own classrooms?

Turn Signals: A Dying Art

Have you noticed many more people are turning their signals on just as they are braking for their turn? Or pulling into the ‘left turn only’ or ‘right turn only’ lanes and THEN putting their signals on? It like it’s part of the rules to do it but people don’t really know what its purpose is. I’m not in your car with you so I can’t ask what you are planning to do. I don’t drive behind you every day as you drive the same route you’ve driven for years, so I don’t know you are going to turn there. Using the turn indicator tells me you may be slowing down ahead. That I should look ahead of you to see if anything will be forcing you to low down a little quicker. I can back off your tail a bit if I am too close. If you put your indictor on while braking, I am reacting to the brake and turn signal at the same time, it will be a bit slower of a reaction. If I’m behind you, I need to know you are pulling onto the ‘left turn only’ or ‘right turn’ only lane so I can make any adjustments to my driving. Once you’re in that lane, I know where you’re going.