Do you agree? School makes a huge mistake in that it attempts to teach all that one needs to know when it needs to teach how to find what one needs to know and how to process what is found.
1. Ethics
2. Reading
3. Logic
4. Research
5. Civics
These subjects would give children the tools they need to develop and discover the tools they need, period.
This course would not take more then two years total. But would be spread out over k12 time frame to give children time to absorb, discover on their own, and most importantly, learn from their parents.
Ethics first for what should be obvious reasons. Being benevolent should be the highest priority.
Reading because it is what connects us to each other and the past and allows us to grow as a species.
Logic so we can process what we read critically and properly incorporate it into what we know.
Research so we can find the answers if we have questions or share the answers we ourselves created, or verify the answers we are given.
Civics so we know how to incorporate ourselves into our society in a way that is mutually beneficial and so that we can understand the purpose of the laws we are subject to and how those laws came about.
Each subject also provides defense against manipulation and exploitation, which will make our children strong, safe, wise, and perhaps most importantly, happy.
A secondary set should be as follows.
6. Psychology
7. Neurology
8. Sociology
9. Economics
10. Philosophy
Psychology so that we can know how we think, and avoid our cognitive blind spots, impact bias, and other inherent mental issues we all can have.
Neurology so we can understand that reality comes to us through the lens of our brain, awareness of the nature of that lens will give us a better actual understanding of the reality outside it.
Sociology so we can understand the societies we choose to live in and or were born in.
Economics so we can understand the nature of resources and how to best distribute them for the common and individual good.
And philosophy so that we can explore the context and meaning of our existence.
In addition I feel that all children should be taught one martial art (minus the philosophy, just the skill) and one artistic technical skill of their choice. So they can be safe, confident, and express themselves fully.
No Math?:
Nope, no 18th century French literature, or quantum mechanics either, math is not fundamental to learning how to learn.
( Update: This would be an acceptable form of math education: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/1007 )
Forcing everyone to learn math is like forcing everyone to learn magic the gathering. Basic math like what is +-*/, would be covered by reading, but anything past long division is a specialty and thus not included.
Addendum:
The only thing we have the right to unilaterally insert or remove are cures and pathogens. And even then only with extremely careful consideration of the cost.
We literally steal childhoods. We conflate the indoctrination process with childhood itself to a repulsive disgusting degree.
Children should be treated EXACTLY like adults recovering from a brain injury and determining when they are to be given freedom and rights should be a clinical objectively driven process approached from that perspective.
When someone wakes up from a coma and has to learn to read and speak again do we presume to decide for them all the shit we decide for children? No, because we recognize an adult as a human.
Conversation about education in 99.99% of cases assumes children are not humans without even being aware of that prejudice.
Children are pets and property in our culture and our “education” is inextricably bound to that loathsome truth.