I love this suggestion… shows like “How It’s Made” and the like
introduce ways of thinking about problems and running projects
that have much more real-world applicability than so much of the
“knowledge” kids have to memorize and be tested upon. Read the
rest as well… via Zombie » Proposals for an Educational
Renaissance. Introduce and popularize “skills survey” courses
Too much of our school curriculum is totally disconnected from
the skill-sets needed to succeed in the real world. Even
students who get good grades in history, art, social studies and
science can graduate without a clue about how to get a job or
what they even want to do with their lives. Not every student is
going to become an academic or have a liberal-arts-based career.
To correct this glaring deficiency in our educational
priorities, I propose that all public schools introduce a new
type of required course in which students are briefly exposed to
a wide variety of realistic careers and skills to help them
decide what they may want to do u