Looking back at my high school years, there are things I wish I had been taught back then because they definitely would have helped me as a human being.
That’s not to say that I went to a bad high school in Canada. On the contrary, I had some really great teachers. Instead, my thoughts are about the structure of the curriculum instead of the schools or teachers themselves.
So what are the things I wish I had been taught?
1. The wild environment around us
I took a lot of science courses in school, but what none of them covered was the fundamental act of going outside and being able to identify animals and plants. It wasn’t until later that I learned how to appreciate the natural world all around us — a world that is rapidly diminishing.
How is it possible that I could not even name one of the most common birds in my own city? © Image Jason Polak
I feel like science as it is taught in schools really reflects the way we use it: as a body of knowledge to gain things, rather than a fundamental appreciation for the ecosystem that sustains us without asking anything in return.
By helping students develop a healthy relationship with the environment, we will be helping shape their minds to have a better relationship with our planet.
2. The basic functioning of society
I took a civics course where we learned about the basic structure of the govnernment. But I think it would have been much better to learn about the basic functioning of society.
By this I mean things like: where does the garbage go? Where does our water come from in our city? Where does our food come from? Why in the name of Zeus are we doing so much unsustainable importing?
Looking back, I realize that school was a lot more about how to fit in as a cog in modern society rather than learning how to change what was wrong with it.
Of course, it’s important to learn the basics and teenagers may not be ready for certain topics, but we should have learned how things work at a basic level so that later in life, we can understand the true disaster of humanity.
3. Climate change
We absolutely should have been taught the fundamentals of climate change and how we are increasing CO2 levels. There should be a whole class devoted to it, because it is the most fundamental and serious problem of our age.
If there was time for business class and French class, there should have been twice as much time for climate change class. Business and all the other skills we were taught are about fitting in; just about propelling society further down the path of more climate destruction.
What we are doing should be taught to every child. Source: nasa.gov
Why were hours not devoted to telling us at our most impressionable age that the very society that we were being taught to live in was precisely what was responsible for the human massacre of our precious ecosystem. Unbelievable!
4. How to be human
High school and university are really rather deceptive. High school prepares you for university and university prepares you for more university. But, university does not really prepare you for real life.
What schools definitely do not tell you is that academia and studying, while important, are really only a small fragment of knowledge required to function in the real world. Schools encourage students to become good academics but academics alone won’t do too much except give you a stamp to put on your resumé.
Schools really do give the impression that people are pieces that will fit neatly into society, right down to the use of career counselors that attempt to find the best career for you. This type of machine-like thinking is damaging to young minds.
Instead, students should learn a bit more about how to be human independet of the striving to get a career and fit in with society. There should be classes in ethics and philosophy that explore questions that are far more important than simply existing within western dogma.
I’m not talking about debating typical questions like free will, whether it is better to divert a train to kill one person instead of five, or the like. I’d rather see something more along the lines of exploring the very nature of existence through practical questions that relate to living in modern society.
Examples of such questions would be: does it really even make sense to try and fit in with a typical job, or does it even make sense to have children? Is modern technology a good thing? Why are we even alive and how can we make the world a better place? This would be much more interested than studying Descartes.
Conclusion
There is no doubt I had a good education. I went all the way and got a PhD, and yes, all this helped me fit into society.
Yet, I feel some fundamental things were missing from my education. These are things I discovered only later in life, things that would have been hard for me to discover on my own when I was younger.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have understood a lot of them either, but I think that some of the basic things I listed here would have made my life far easier.
Although some of these things are taught in some schools, they are presented at a minimal level. Instead, they should be taught with vigour in every school, especially since things like climate change and knowing how to name the animals around you are far more important than pretty much any other class you could ever take.