2007-02-08 08:16:36 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Education & Reference ➔ Teaching
Statistics!
I think that every person who plans to have an opinion, and especially anyone who plans to act upon that opinion to, say, vote, or make a decision about their health, or spend money, should have a basic background in probability and statistics. Which is pretty much everybody.
So much of what students study in high school is, by it's nature, "This is right. That is wrong."
Statistics encourages students to learn to ask questions themselves:
What is the source of that information?
Has the information been analyzed properly?
Is there another way to look at this situation?
Is this information meaningful?
How likely is that to happen?
A statistics class also gives students an opportunity to practice making judgments in uncertain situations, another skill that unfortunately gets little attention in high school.
Understanding statistics and probability helps people to make sense of the wealth of information available to them.
(Yeah, I taught AP Statistics as well as "straight" math classes. Both are great. But, we already have plenty of the certainty of math in our schools. What we need is more of the uncertainty of statistics.)
2007-02-10 20:21:24 · answer #1 · answered by infinityorzero 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Parenting. Not all students at the high school where I am an educational assistant take it but I think it should be mandatory. It helps for students to know how to take care of children. I see a lot of pregnant teenagers around where I live. They are having a tough time at home because they think their parents are mean and they cannot stay out as late as they want and do whatever they want so they think that if they have a child, they can get their own place, go on welfare and then they can do whatever they please. Only this decision not only hurts them as they have to be a parent for the next 18 years, but they are hurting the child they bring into this world as they have no idea how to care for them.
Parenting teaches them these things and after a lesson, I hear that some don't want to have children as they find out it is really hard.
2007-02-11 07:37:37 · answer #2 · answered by jkasaboski 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
not all schools but should have this as a requirement in order to graduate....driver's ed. my school made it a requirement, but the city next to us did not. will it help prevent teen car accidents? if they watch red asphalt over and over again...maybe...
2007-02-08 08:24:49 · answer #3 · answered by mymymissmai 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I believe they should teach a personal finance and credit course.
2007-02-08 08:24:46 · answer #4 · answered by aZoomm 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋