Schools Aren't Perfect

Look, I’m no fan of our current educational system. I feel like I could write an entire speech on the issues with the curriculum alone. That’s not mentioning issues with how children are taught, how bad it can be for mental health, and how little teachers are paid considering the job they do. The single greatest description of school I’ve ever heard is that it’s “a day-care centre, obsessed with an endless game of Trivial Pursuit.”

It’s quite an apt metaphor, don’t you think?

But, now we’ve been given time away with the whole virtual-learning we have to do, it’s got me to think about the positives of how our schools operate. They aren’t perfect, but they do get some things correct.

The sciences seem like a great place to start. Biology, Chemistry and Physics. What a waste of time right? Not quite. Sure, there’s a lot in there that I will forget about the moment I exit the exam hall in June, but a lot of it does a good job of teaching us about the world around us. Starting with atoms in physics, you reach how things are put together in chemistry, and eventually scale up to how the human body works in biology. Is the amount of protons and electrons in an atom being equal useful information? Not really. But does it teach us how the world works? Yes, it does. And as much as I hate the subject with a passion, biology is easily the most useful of the three. I mean, we’ve done a unit on how to prevent the spread of disease. I don’t think I need to go over recent events for you to figure out how that’s useful.

But here’s the main problem with science, in my opinion. A lot of it we will never use unless you plan on entering a field that requires that science. Even the things that show us how the world operates, such as atoms and bonding, isn’t all that useful in day-to-day life.

But does that matter? Does it matter if what we’re learning isn’t all that useful as long as it’s interesting? I’ll leave the answer to that up to you, as I have to more subjects to get through.

English is useless. That is, the things we study are useless. I will stand by the fact that studying 'A Christmas Carol' is useless until the day I die. But do you know what isn’t useless? All of the spelling and grammar practice English gives us. Not only does it help for some subjects, where we get marks based on SPaG (cough cough, science), but it’s also useful for day to day life. English reinforces those basic grammar rules, allowing us to write cohesive, coherent and understandable e-mails, letters and CVs. After all, writing a letter to apply for the job of your dreams may not end up going well if you don’t even use a capital letter and full stop. So, maybe someday I’ll be thanking my English teachers for persisting on about capital letters and full stops, commas and semi-colons, hyphens and brackets, but until that day comes, I will die on the hill that English is useless. Seriously, why do I need to know about 'Romeo and Juliet' in the modern day?

And finally we have maths. Without question, the most useful core subject. Sure, things such as the quadratic formula, factorisation and surds are completely useless for anybody who is not a maths teacher; but figuring out whether product A or product B is giving you a better deal is very useful. Figuring out how much you’re saving with a 20% off sale is useful. Figuring out how much interest you’re getting on your bank balance is useful. These are all things taught in maths. Yes, there is quite a lot of rubbish in maths, but simultaneously there’s some of the most useful skills you’re ever going to use.

That’s all of the core subjects covered. There’s no point in diving into the options as we’d be here all day, and we’ve already been here long enough. I still have a few benefits for school though, that don’t come from what we’re taught. For one, socialisation. School gives us the opportunity to talk to, and interact with people our own age. Human beings need socialisation (even though lots of us try to avoid it) so being forced to socialise is genuinely good for you; even if sometimes you wish the ground would just swallow you whole.

For my final point, let’s return to that metaphor from the beginning of this article. If you recall, it describes school as “a day-care centre obsessed with an endless game of Trivial Pursuit.” As stupid as it seems, this is a good thing. Imagine how much money parents would have to spend on babysitters if school didn’t exist. If they couldn’t afford it, then one parent would have to stay home, and if the parent is a single mum or dad, then they can’t work. Either way, you lose a worker. That’s one less person contributing tax money, making everybody else’s taxes increase slightly if we want our government to have the same amount of money it would if that parent was working. Now, magnify that one parent throughout the entire country. Suddenly, for our government to have the same amount of money it does now with half the parents not working, everybody’s taxes have to increase massively. But there’s another angle to look at this from. With one parent from every family (even if that’s the only parent) having to stay home, then the businesses of the UK have less workers. Less workers means less productivity. Less productivity means less products are made which leads to less sales. And as any business studies student will tell you, less sales leads to less revenue and therefore less profit. Profit that the government can tax. Now, the percentage of your income being taxed is even higher. This also means less products on store shelves for you to buy with what you have left from your highly taxed earnings. Sure, the babysitter business would boom, but that wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the rest of the economic impact. And that’s not mentioning that the impact on your earnings would be immense.

So, are schools perfect? Do they really prepare us for the real world? Is everything we learn useful? No. But are they necessary? Do they get some parts right? Are some of the skills used? Yes. Perfection isn’t achievable. It’s never going to happen. But as long as schools are taking steps in the right direction, I’m fine with learning about how Scrooge and Fred are foils for one another.