Ask HN: What subjects should be removed/replaced in school? With what?

Do you remember the order of the planets from the sun? You were surely taught it right? Why'd you forget? Because you don't have a spaceship and will never miss your left turn at Mars. Hackernewsians probably break this example. The things they’ve forgotten are far more exciting. Why not teach things things with more utility instead? You still get all the side benefits of learning. For instance, how to be a good friend, how to give a good apology, how not to get scammed, how to invest in your future. Heck, if you're going to force kids to be bad versions of wikipedia, and remember stupid lists of trivial knowledge, like the capitals of states, perhaps teach them mnemonic technique first.

Software is eating the world, teach it. Why/How to not max out your credit cards, so very many useful things are taught far too late or never at all. The concept that the parents are supposed to be the source of some of this information relies on parents being good at parenting…

Anyone can justify any education about anything. Which is why progress in this field is so slow. No one can actually win an argument with anyone about any taking any topic they care about off a curriculum, because every topic is passionate and useful to someone. So in a world where everything is super important to someone, you have to use a more advanced system of comparison. Like eliciting someone’s values on a psychological evaluation.

Not exactly, but something like, would you rather lose your index finger or your big toe? Ok, would you rather lose your index finger or 3 toes? Ok, how about one eye or one hand. If you ask enough of these rather odd questions, you can actually result in a value in dollars per a body part. Like this: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/workers-compensation-benefits-by-limb

It is the tragedy of the commons that no educator wants to pay the price of seeing their curriculum reduced or replaced with something better. For them better doesn’t exist.

The schools system most definitely has its issues as far as curriculum is concerned. However I think the problem is more in the way schools are structured than what they teach. Salman Khan has a great book about it.

Curriculum organization is one of his main points. An alternative to periods and subjects is a sort of freeform classroom with unpaced curriculum with several teachers circulating to help. This is supposed to avoid classes moving too quickly or too slowly and continually engage students.

Improving tactics towards the wrong strategy is better, but not best. Full stop replacement of some subjects with other subjects would make more "useful" people. If the goal isn't utility, any subject can be defended as being as valuable as any other subject, because they all have side benefits which they leach value from. Like the defense that video games improve hand eye coordination.

I would like to see History taught in reverse as they never seemed to reach modern day history.

A course on technology and ethics would be an interesting course to add.

> It is the tragedy of the commons that no educator wants to pay the price of seeing their curriculum reduced or replaced with something better. For them better doesn’t exist.

I don't think this is correct. The issue is much more complicated. First, education is not really a tragedy of the commons, more like a tragedy of the anticommons [1].

I agree there's a time constraint to a curriculum. But that little hiccup is trumped by education's private-public problem: the US compulsory education space involves the private interests of parents/students overlapping with the public interests of their state, overlapping the big interests of the federal government. Education doesn't operate like an under-regulated scarce resource being depleted, much worse than that, it's an over-regulated scarce resource where nothing useful can get accomplished or make real changes - a dark hole of the anticommons.

I also agree schools seriously need to add more practical subjects as well as life skills classes. With that said, every educator I see is not happy with the current curriculum and they usually have opinions on what to change first. Plus small shifts in curriculum have happened and are slowly spreading. There are states and public schools with software classes, health ed, workplace training etc... But fuck some states and school districts don't even want to teach science and want to keep teaching the Bible, to everyone, by law. The federal government had to step in a few times, but there are limits to what the fed can and should do.

I'm not exactly sure how the workers comp values you brought up tie in with your very good education question, but I do see how workers comp in each state deals with similar problem: Why is an index finger valued at different amounts in different states? And then why is an index finger valued the same for different people? Surely some people are going to lose much more in life earnings due to such an injury vs others people, so how can it be standardized or fair?

This is America. We have a Constitution. And have a social contract. And we have a population of all shapes, colors and sizes. A good education curriculum and system, determined by the government seems very difficult to implement and be compatible with the other structures here.

If I had to answer I would say students should be given much more freedom, at a much earlier age to focus on a subject they want plus more freedom to learn on their own and get credit. Besides that, add philosophy and computer science. Cut pure math after algebra, offer math in the context of the other sciences like physics and computers. Cut some of the pure literature, no more old English and Beowulf taught for weeks, maybe a single class, teach more literary non-fiction in English classes. Pray for the best ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons