High School Education: Preparing for Adulthood? | Julie Saint-Hilaire | TEDxYouth@OCSA

throughout my years in school up to this point my favorite subjects have always been the classes that teach either different forms of art or history both classes whose curriculum i will use later my least favorite being math where i found myself thinking when will we use this in the future now i'm not talking about adding subtracting learning about percentages etc i'm talking about the things that almost no adult remembers for example in math when we learn the quadratic formula or the pythagorean theorem or maybe when we learn chemical formulas or must remember the periodic table

of elements in chemistry basic jobs don't require us to use this which leads to a loss of information this means that what we're learning isn't applied in future situations which raises the question why aren't we learning the things that are essential in preparing us for our life in adulthood maybe that isn't the goal of education to figure out what the goal is we can look into the mission statements of schools schools across the nation include things in their mission statements such as wanting to inspire students for lifelong learning helping them reach their fullest potential and

gaining the knowledge and creativity to help them succeed in the world yet standardized testing leads to schools simply teaching us to pass the end of year exams that claim to evaluate our understanding on a subject how are we inspiring lifelong learning if we're just teaching what's on the test at this moment for the state of florida the high school graduation requirements that relate to testing are as follows we must pass the biology geometry us and u.s history eocs these are just to graduate and don't include the math science and reading standardized tests we must take

each year as we all know these tests are taken at the end of our course our classes are based off of standards that are used as a guideline for student learning these standards are made for us to follow so that if we master most of them we will pass the end of your exams this leads the focus to turn to passing the test and not to inspire lifelong learning as an elaboration from the beginning of the year students understand that the final test is the determining factor in what lets us pass the grade what impact

does this have on students simply the thought of such an important test is a stressor added to students shoulders according to the national center for biotechnology information stress levels in university students peak during the final exam period not only are students excessively stressed but since the teaching focuses solely on testing abilities they are also bored throughout their classes so how can we expect great test results boredom in class goes hand in hand with a lack of motivation according to lori hugh from harvard when speaking on information we learn in school with professor david perkins too

often we tend to focus on short-term successes scoring well in a quiz acing a spelling test students especially today focus on these small successes getting through the year just acing assignment by assignment students simply wants to pass the class whether that means learning and doing the work or easily using the technology at hand to cheat so why are students bored in their classes quite often i've heard teachers tell us to practice what we learn in school at home because if you don't use it you lose it that is exactly what's happening after students leave school

there's no connection between some of the things that we learn in school and a student's life they don't see how it could benefit them in the real world and with a good reason this is exhibited when students come back to school from summer break according to brookings institution when stating findings on the summer learning loss on average students achievement scores declined over summer vacation by one month's worth of school year learning and the extent of loss was larger at higher grade levels this is important because it shows that the only instance in which we are

using certain information is in school higher grade level students are maturing and beginning to learn about adult responsibilities and as we get older and start realizing this lack of relevance their disinterest starts increasing so due to schools focusing student learning on what's going to be on the test there's a lack of relevance because they aren't teaching students to think creatively like they claim this leads to bored and unenthusiastic students getting through the year without learning subjects that could better prepare them for adulthood at this point we understand that the supposed goal of education is taking

the back seat to test performance what we need to know next is regardless of purpose whether or not the knowledge gained is actually retained and used in adulthood to find out i created a microsoft form with 10 questions including things that adults now should have learned in high school i also added a few extra questions asking if they guessed or did not remember what i was asking which question was the most difficult what they had to figure out on their own what they wish they learned in school that could have better prepared them and what

year they graduated there were 25 people who completed the form and they all graduated between 1984 and 2013. here's the breakdown of the questions and the amount of people who got each one right the first question asks for the length of a segment using the pythagorean theorem and eight percent or two people answered correctly question two asked what the charge of an atom is typically and 48 or 12 people answered correctly for the third question i asked for the formula for density and 68 or 17 people chose the correct answer question 4 asked participants to

find both zeros or solutions to the quadratic equation provided and no one knew what the answer was the fifth question asked which of the provided answers the fifth question asked which of the provided answers was the fourth stage of mitosis and cell division and twenty percent or five people got this right question six asked what was the ph of blood and 88 percent or 22 people answered correctly the next question asked for the slope intercept form formula and 24 or six people answered correctly question 8 asked how the periodic table of elements was organized and

68 or 17 people chose the correct answer the ninth question asked which formula best represented photosynthesis and 40 percent or 10 people chose the correct formula and finally the 10th academic question provided information about two pairs of parallel lines gave the measurement for one angle and asked for the measurement of a second angle based off the information i provided 44 or 11 people answered this correctly the six questions that followed asked for thoughts 96 or 24 out of 25 people said they guessed on some of the questions or did not remember what i was asking

when i asked which questions this applied to the most common questions they named were all of the math questions and for science the most common was the organization of the periodic table the p the ph of blood and the formula for density more people guessed on the math questions over the science ones and 32 said that they guessed on both when i asked which was the most difficult the pythagorean theorem quadratic equation mitosis slope intercept form photosynthesis and angles questions all had the highest number of votes again with 32 saying that they were all difficult

to answer and finally i asked what they had to learn on their own and what they wish they learned in school that could have better prepared them for their life in adulthood almost every person answered something about financial literacy retirement or insurance these include credit bills managing money budgeting investing banking taxes interest life insurance and individual retirement plans these are the things that we should be learning in school instead of the pythagorean theorem or the quadratic equation making it a requirement for every student to learn financial literacy is a huge step in the right direction

it creates better understanding and preparation for our future as adults citizens would be more productive for themselves along with for their careers students may leave high school knowing how the periodic table is organized but will struggle with understanding on how credit works or how to pay their taxes these are things that affect your daily life for example to buy a car your credit is checked and depending on the score they determine the amount of interest you pay you could end up paying a lot more for that car with the lower score compared to someone with

a higher one this number represents credit and it's determined by the financial decisions you make throughout your adult life credit isn't only used to buy a car it's also used for buying houses getting credit cards receiving student loans etc understanding all of this is essential in being knowledgeable and productive citizens although florida includes financial literacy within their economics course the allocation of time is a single quarter of a school year further not every state requires it to be taught at all if we fully taught financial literacy in schools more people would have the wisdom to

start and maintain a business or would be making more with the money management skills they learned in school imagine all the people that had great business ideas but were too afraid to jump into the vast pool of everything financial you would have to take classes on your own which means spending extra money on something that you could have learned in school according to champlain college those who are financially illiterate are less likely to have a checking account rainy day emergency fund or retirement plan or to own stocks they are also more likely to use payday

loans pay only the minimum amount owed on their credit cards have high cost mortgages and have higher debt and credit delinquency levels this is also an effective way to reduce the number of people especially in ethnic and marginalized communities who are financially uneducated when i asked what they learned on their own a participant in the form i created mentioned that they learned higher income families place their children in better schools so that they can essentially learn all of these subjects all the things that regular public schools could be teaching us with money management skills low-income

families would be able to have a higher understanding on how to save money which would help them in the long run to finish off the education system needs reform schools want us to go to college but fail to realize that without these classes many will drown in student loan debt and won't know how to pay it off completely because they're financially illiterate according to the marketplace.org today roughly 70 percent of american students end up taking out loans to go to college the average graduate leaves school with around thirty thousand dollars in debt and all told

some 45 million americans owe 1.6 trillion dollars in student loans and counting this number is even higher for others based off of their career choice and it shows that the education system is hypocritical they are teaching us to become good test takers not independent and financially stable adults who are engaged by learning by teaching us subjects that we can apply in the future they can hold students attention in classes which leads to added motivation and promotes lifelong learning if someone wants to be a teacher mathematician scientist engineer they should learn these things when they're in

their specific field of study or in higher education where students select a major to gain specialized skills and content knowledge what is prioritized in schools ought to be the tools and information to help every student be successful in adulthood millennials would be making much better decisions with their money if they had been if they had been exposed to life skills instead of specialized math and science content it is quite clear that when we enter adulthood we won't have the knowledge necessary to make smart and informed decisions instead we will have a vague memory of abstract

mathematical and scientific concepts we won't be able to recall them and frankly we won't be asked to the time we have in school is both scarce and urgently important it could no it must be put to better use thank you you