Should schools teach children to do good things?

Author: Best.Korea

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#1
Best.Korea
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Most schools teach:
1) Knowledge
2) Rules, that are followed correctly by the lack of a certain bad action

What schools dont teach is doing good things, that is, doing the actions that are good.

Children are told to be quiet, to not cause problems. But children are not told "You must donate to charity today".

So why is following rules more important than doing good things?

If children were forced to do good things, wouldnt it be more likely that they will do more good things as adults?
#2
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@Best.Korea
While I agree that schools teach "rules", I disagree with the notion that they teach "knowledge"

They teach facts, and then ask them to be repeated back.

Teaching children to "do good things" is the responsibility of the family / extended family. 
#3
oromagi
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What schools dont teach is doing good things, that is, doing the actions that are good.

Children are told to be quiet, to not cause problems. But children are not told "You must donate to charity today".
  • Fortunately, that's not true in American Public Schools.  In US K-12 I learned:
    • Equality
    • Civil Rights
    • Freedom of Speech and Expression
    • Hard Work and Competition
    • Democracy and the RIghts of Man
    • Civic Engagement
    • Personal Responsibility and Accountability
    • Literature and Morality
    • History and Respect for our Multi--cultural Inheritance
    • Environmentalism and Respect for our Biological Inheritance
    • Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
    • Collaboration and Teamwork
    • Integrity and Ethical Behavior
    • Health, Wellness, and Exercise

#4
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@oromagi
  • Fortunately, that's not true in American Public Schools.  In US K-12 I learned:
    • Equality
    • Civil Rights
    • Freedom of Speech and Expression
    • Hard Work and Competition
    • Democracy and the RIghts of Man
    • Civic Engagement
    • Personal Responsibility and Accountability
    • Literature and Morality
    • History and Respect for our Multi--cultural Inheritance
    • Environmentalism and Respect for our Biological Inheritance
    • Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
    • Collaboration and Teamwork
    • Integrity and Ethical Behavior
    • Health, Wellness, and Exercise


Perhaps these are things you learned, but based on current events perhaps you were the only one who was listening.
#5
oromagi
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@prefix
Sure, but the claim was that those values should be taught.  In US schools, those values are taught whatever the degree of impact/acceptance in learners.
#6
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@Best.Korea
Yep, I learned to be cunning and not piss off popular people. The subjects taught me only minimal useful stuff. Was superficial bullcrap for a grade more than anything.

I feel bad for the teachers, they came to teach useful and passionate subject content but end up just regurgitating robots chained to a ridiculously rigid and mostly useless curriculum.
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@oromagi
How many decades ago were you in K-12? Barely any off that list has been taught in public education as of the last two to three decades. 
#8
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If you and I wanted to agree that public schools waste a lot of time on posturing values rather than living them, I would not make a fuss.  But it was from my current experience with public school that I compiled the list above. 
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#9
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@RationalMadman
The subjects taught me only minimal useful stuff.
Schools usually teach a lot of useless stuff. For example, I was never interested in biology. Yet I had to learn it. Hundreds of pages of it. I never used that knowledge anywhere in my life. I forgot almost all of it.

I can say the same for almost all subjects.

So naturally, one must wonder whats the point of teaching so many subjects. Parents force kids to learn useless knowledge to get good grades. So its just the parent's desire for approval.
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@oromagi
If subjects are being "taught" but students aren't learning, then they are not being taught at all. See  https://www.newsweek.com/when-we-fail-teach-our-kids-basics-about-civics-we-risk-losing-our-democracy-opinion-1748475 (note that this article seems to be biased, but of course you can recognize that ).
#11
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An international study in the 1990s tested 13 year old's in mathematics in 15 countries. The United States placed next to last, above Jordan.
#12
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@Best.Korea
I would suggest that in most societies the acquisition of what might variously be regarded as good and bad comes from a variety of sources, and begins pre-school.

North Korea perhaps being a rare example of State enforced conformity.


Education generally provides a narrowing  structure of knowledge transfer, whereby the student hopefully acquires some sort of specialism by the time they leave full time education.

So even though you might not need to utilise a lot of what you were once taught, the "useless" stuff probably wasn't as useless as you think it was.