ROTHENBURGER: The eternal question – what should be taught in school?

What should and shouldn’t be taught in school has been debated ever since Socrates declared he had nothing at all to teach. His only job, he said, was to seek answers.

When I was in school, I was forced to sit in a lot of classes I had no use for. Algebra, for example. I was always terrible at anything to do with math. I can’t think of a single time I’ve had a use for algebra during my lifetime.

I did learn how to read and write and about the likes of Wordsworth, Lord Byron and Shakespeare and even Edgar Allan Poe, and about the history of the World Wars, and absorbed some cereal-box French, and enough Physics to know why we don’t fall off the Earth. One of the most important things I learned in high school was how to type — it’s a skill I use every day (and am using it right now).

I built a pair of wood book ends in Industrial Arts. The rudimentary carpentry abilities I picked up there have proven useful, too. While the boys were in IA, the girls were in Home Economics learning how to cook and sew, a couple of skills that would have been helpful for me to have.

From early grades, we learned the Maclean’s Method of Writing, a beautiful, disciplined method of handwriting that I and everybody else I knew ditched in favour of chaotic scrawls as soon as we got out of school.

Schools are asked to teach a lot of things. The three R’s are only a start. They’re now expected to teach our kids how to do everything they need to know about life, and the demands keep growing.

With the drug overdose crisis, schools are supposed to teach them how to administer Naloxone, how to use a defibrillator and give CPR. After a pilot program in Ottawa, schools across the country will be offered it as well.

And, of course, there’s racism. Schools are now expected to teach about that. As Education Minister Jennifer Whiteside has said, “Schools must be safe and welcoming places for students, families and staff.”

The BC Lions football team has been recruited to give presentations on “anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Along with the broad issue of racism, schools are being asked to teach about the residential school system and to revamp history courses to include the evils of colonialism.

With climate change pushing us ever closer to the point of environmental disaster, there’s growing demand for schools to teach how it can be stopped.

And there’s personal finances. We learned almost nothing of that when I was in school, but it’s increasingly important to know how to do a household budget, to understand mortgages and what they cost, and how to manage credit-card debt, and even about how stock markets work.

I referred in an editorial a couple of weeks ago to a survey on how people are financing inflation with their credit cards — non-mortgage debt for the average British Columbian is now around $22,000 and that’s scary.

Personally, I think schools should teach more about politics. I’m often appalled about how little people know who does what in government and why, at all levels. They vote in ignorance.

Some people think schools should teach work-life balance, how to grieve constructively, how to prepare income tax returns, how to avoid divorce, how to survive in the woods when we get lost, how to keep a room clean, how to fix a broken water pipe, and good nutrition.

There’s no shortage of lists of what should be taught in schools. Maybe what we need is a list of things that shouldn’t be taught.

Somehow, we need to narrow it down, because there aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week to teach everything that “should” be taught in schools. We look to schools to teach everything we as parents should have taught them, or that kids should have the good sense to learn themselves.

In this Internet world, there’s no shortage of information about everything under the sun, as long as we can sort out what’s real from the BS. In my world, we should go back to the basics plus a few other essentials but not expect schools to solve everything for us.

They just can’t do it. Getting rid of Algebra would be a good start but there’s no clear answer to the question of what should be taught in school. But if Socrates was still with us, he’d probably tell us to keep asking.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: The eternal question – what should be taught in school?

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