If it’s so important for students to learn these subjects in school along with science, math, history, and English, then why are they not getting the right education on everyday money matters to survive in the real-world? Just wondering.
Because schooling is not the same as education.
Education is the ability to understand, manage, and control one's environment, that is, the so-called real world. Schooling is the ability to sit still and do repetitive tasks for many hours, every day, all year long. These are different goals.
During the beginning of the industrial massproduction system, the lack of schooling was actually a huge problem. Workers were bored and frustrated doing the same simple action all the time and they would simply go home when they made enough money. Worker retention rates were terrible.
The solution to this was the modern school system when students sit in rows and do trivial/simple/well-specified tasks that are handed out by the teacher (think manager) at the head of the class. All problems are close-ended and pretty much in the form of 1) Here are the components. 2) Don't think. 3) Just perform the correct procedure on them and you will get the right answer.
Schools are essentially turning out employees and they do a good job on it. Schooling has been very successful.
On the other hand, education has been a huge failure. If you want an education in the sense of knowing the real world, some of the important parts of today's environment are the following: the ability to think critically, applied statistics, systems theory, personal finance, an understanding of advertising/psychological manipulation, the ability to build simple things (like tables and shelves), rudimentary appliance repair, clothes mending, how to do your taxes, how to start a business, ...
Of course none of these things are taught in the school system because such knowledge tend to create bad employees. However, if the purpose is to turn out people who are good consumers who are helpless with a job income, the school system works just as it should.
These days people are very well schooled. It's education that's lacking.
Don't get me wrong, I am plenty cynical about many elements of the modern public education system.
I even just posted a blog entry on just that topic
http://biodieselhauling.blogspot.com/2012/10/education-now-with-references.htmlBut what you are describing does not remotely describe the experience I had in public school.
(btw, did you even go to public school in the US? How do you know what its like?)
We were rarely discouraged from thinking. We had plenty of open-ended problems. Things like essays, for example, or engineering projects (bridge out of toothpicks, string, and cardboard, atl-atl out of whatever we could think of). One year we had to research our own family history, and write a book about it. One test consisted of a book of brain teasers to answer. In high school polysci class the teacher kept trying to trick us with forms, until we learned to read contracts before we sign them. In history class we learned about the "Nacirema" people and their strange habits, and watched "The Gods Must Be Crazy" to get us to question our own cultural habits and assumptions. In junior high all the students put in a few dollars and we collectively bought one share of stock - we all voted on the company, and then the teacher actually bought it for us, and then we learned about the company and tracked its stock performance. We read and analyzed classic literature and poetry, made independent films, wrote short stories. Our history teacher told us about the 60s - from his own personal first hand experience. We built things in woodshop (one of which I have and use to this day).
The reason not all the things on your list are taught is not some conspiracy, its because very few Americans can do those things themselves, including the teachers and administrators who come up with curriculum, so it would never occur to most people to teach it.
Of course, though we had standardized tests, schools were not funded based on them, so teachers had the flexibility to teach for real, instead of teaching ways to pass standardized tests. But this is a modern thing, not something inherent to public education.
Consider SummerHill school, which is probably the most child self-actualization focused of any that has ever existed - all lessons are strictly voluntary, students are allowed to do what they like with their time so long as they don't infringe on others, and rules are determined by popular vote, with teachers, students, and staff getting one vote each. Yet even there they have nothing revolutionary about the lessons themselves.
Learning to read, write, and do arithmetic are actually pretty vital skills for life. Nearly everything you listed as important is dependent on those basic skills. It is a testament to how well education has worked that we are able to take them for granted - realize that for most of human history the vast majority of people did not have these skills. It is a monumental task to teach reading, writing, math, history, all of the sciences, plus PE and various "electives" to millions of children for 12 years each.
Of course it has to be done in a classroom, and of course the kids have to be at least somewhat attentive. What alternative would you propose?
Not every parent has the time, the skill, the knowledge, or the interest in being a full time teacher. Without public education ignorance would become hereditary.
An educated population is necessary for workforce, yes - and much more so for highly complex and technical jobs than for tedious ones.
It is necessary, too, for democracy to function - which is the real reason it was instituted in the first place.
Yes, of course, there will always be some people, like Richard Finmann, or, I have no doubt, you Jacob, who would have educated themselves from a young age no matter what. But yall are not the norm. Far from it.
Our system needs reform, no doubt. But not having it at all would only make everything much much worse.
