Do children today receive a 'rounded' education??

It astonishes me just how much is fitted into Minibags's school day. I just wish people would stop being negative about schooling. It never was meant to cover a person's entire childhood education. Kids are meant to learn from elsewhere as well – attitudes, for instance, largely from parents.

Here's an interesting blog about some of what school is for and how to achieve it: websofsubstance.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/encouraging-moral-behaviour/

Agree Lilygran, but it would have been a very long and boring post that listed all programmes of study and schemes of work. I don't agree with all aspects of the DT curriculum and I have concerns about some of the changes, especially to History, but I do think the National Curriculum is still pretty broad and balanced. The problem is fitting it all in.

And I think designing a party menu etc is an almost total waste of everyone's time. But cheap, doesn't make a mess, doesn't need a cooker.

I agree, Bags, the school my DGS go to offers a really good curriculum. Only pointing out that there's more than one way to interpret the list.

Minibags is doing real experiments and wirting them up, as I did at school. She is not buying food as yet, but she is learning to prepare simple meals. Also learning about nutrition. As well as that she is reading real books.

Any more questions you'd like me to answer with regard to a real school?

No good looking at the subject headings, what's the content? Are they carrying out experiments in science or are they watching a demonstration, writing it up and doing a test? Do they learn to buy food and prepare and cook simple meals or do they 'design' a party menu for eight-year-olds? Are they reading REAL books, plays and poems or are they answering multiple choice questions on a paragraph or a scene?

Yes gangy5, the Design Technology curriculum includes what used to be called the craft subjects so they wouldn't get a whole year of textiles, for example; there just isn't enough curriculum time. Vocational education is a thorny subject; there were some good things going on under the last government and a plan for a new 14-19 curriculum, but the proposals got swept away by this government. I don't get the impression that Michael Gove is very interested in vocational education. Having said that, I have been visiting secondary schools for my eldest granddaughter and the facilities all look pretty good to me.
The trouble is that people always want to put stuff into the curriculum, but nobody ever suggests what you might leave out!

Actually Mamie I have to agree that is a rather good selection. The one thing though that I have gathered from my grandchildren is that a few subjects are bundled together in design and technology and only one term a year is spent on each. This hardly gives a child the chance to shine or get the feeling that they would like to pursue something in particular.

If I'm being honest, my real gripe is the fact that children are not encouraged to take up vocational subjects and that simply too much emphasis is placed on academic ones - probably something to do with targets. I am speaking from the heart when I say how much I enjoyed being creative and doing things with my hands. Not everybody can be created into a brainbox whatever efforts teachers make - this is an impossibility. All that some pupils need is a good basic education and then be allowed to follow their hearts.
Money is always going to be the bottom line. Where have all the technical colleges gone to? Some pupils would appreciate a move at 13/14 to something like this.

These are the subjects that are compulsory at Key Stage 3 (11-14)

English
maths
science
history
geography
modern foreign languages
design and technology
art and design
music
physical education
citizenship
information and communication technology (ICT)
Schools can develop their own ICT curricula or follow the programmes of study.

They must also provide religious education (RE) and sex education from Key Stage 3.

Interested to know what else people think should be there (or not there).

Twelve National Curriculum subjects at Key Stage 3. Seems pretty rounded to me.

Minibags had lessons today about healthy eating (including special stuff about not overindulging in sugary stuff) and alcohol abuse. This latter included telling the kids about how police can tell whether someone is drunk, quite apart from breathalysing, and why they as twelve and thirteen year olds should steer clear of alcohol. She also had her usual art lesson, and PE which today consisted of running and archery.

Seems pretty rounded to me and much greater in scope than I ever had at school. As well as fun stuff they are learning what it is important for young people to know. I imagine it is similar elsewhere in the UK where there is, after all, a national curriculum.

When it comes to life skills, that is undoubtedly a parents responsibility. Where parents fail, the answer is to teach them in the form of extra curricular activities, rather than remedying their deficiencies, at the expense of the children of functioning parents in school time.

I think it is a sad state of affairs if parents haven't got time to teach their children some life skills, and other things extra to the normal round of schooling. Perhaps they need to make time.

As far as I remember my education was very academic from the word go. The 3Rs were drummed into us along with dates in History and geographical features - blank maps to fill in! We did have a bit if cookery and needlework which did me no good at all as my mum taught me all I needed to know, but the top stream dropped those to concentrate on languages and so on. I don't think that was a specially rounded education. My GC all get the opportunity to learn an instrument and there are plenty of extra curricular activities: GS1 goes in early every Monday to learn judo, for example.

I must admit that I am probably showing my age a little here. I do look back at my days of schooling and remember doing the boring stuff but intermingled with this were just as many lighter options which helped to encourage our interests in later life.
Yes, out of my 5 grandchildren (hence Gangy5) four of them are teenagers and as they all live within 2 miles I see alot of what they are doing at school. One family's 2 go to a really good school which offers wonderful opportunities but the others go to a normal state comprehensive where I get the feeling that most of their learning is a bit of a drudge.
Yes, we as grandparents try to do our bit. I have taught them all to cook and we have enjoyed taking them to a nature club.
I agree that school can never offer a fully rounded education and am not expecting teachers to provide this. I don't think it a workable suggestion that parents should provide alot of what schools don't --- please!! The ones I know don't seem to have enough time for this!!
Yes, we as grandparents can do alot to help and I think that most of us on gransnet do - but lets face it - we are probably a minority.

Was education anymore rounded in our generation, or is it just the definition of what we consider to be a rounded education?

I benefited from an excellent education but I think I learned as much in my own time by my interests and reading, I was a real bookworm, outside school as I learnt in the classroom. I can still remember that my university interview discussed the reading and interests I had pursued outside school rather than anything I had studied officially.

I remember my mother horrifying my form mistress by telling her that the problem with school was that it left me so little time to learn about the things I wanted to know. I doubt if it's changed much in the last 55 years. Currently my grandson is spending a lot of time on phonics tests when he could be reading real books, which would be more interesting and might teach him something.
One of my daughter's friends got into trouble because she wanted to take her child on holiday for the last week of term. In the end she gave up the idea but was not impressed when the school sent out letters asking children to bring in board games to fill in the last week. Are we the only people to think that sight seeing and keeping a holiday diary might have been a more productive way of spending the week?

An interesting post as I was discussing something akin to this with a friend of mine today. She was saying that her DD, who is in secondary school, is up to her eyeballs in "eco" stuff - it is part of French, German, English, Maths, RE, music - just about everything. She was saying that teh pupils are beginning to find it tedious and to switch off.

I remember when my youngest DD was at secondary school, the emphasis was on marketing and how things might be presented for selling to the public - spin etc.

There is a fad for every generation of children.

What is needed is an encouragement of a joy in learning. A lot of this testing does not help.

Crossed post Bags.

Education and schooling are, to my mind, two different things. Education is a lifelong process whereas schooling is generally for a fixed period of time. I think that schooling is part of the education process, but can never offer a fully rounded education of itself, no matter how good the school or teachers. I think that parents and other educators need to share responsibility for providing children with the tools for learning and then providing children with opportunities to learn. So often schools are blamed for failing children, but actually I believe that it's the job of a parent to see that their child receives a 'well rounded' education.

Do you know many young people, gangy5? I only ask because the young people I know do seem to have received a rounded education – from their parents as well as from their schools, as it should be.

DD3 is still at school and from what she says about it, the roundedness of what she is taught sounds reasonable to me. DH and I try to teach her a good deal too.

Sorry if that sounded snappy.

It's all targets and 'watch out for Ofsted' these days. And don't upset the little darlings or the parents might complain. The teachers do do what they can, but there are only so many hours in a day.

How about from their parents?