Imagine if schools for even just a month taught practical skills. What if kids learned things that were actually useful, not in a broad way but specific things they could do? Fill out a tax form, cook a turkey, run a register, set up a basic website, put up a dry wall, common car maintenance (change an air filter) set up a CD at a bank etc etc these things take about 20mins each, you could fill a whole 7hr days with common useful skills.
I think they wouldn't be board and would be motivated for a day of school because they'd actually learn things they could use right away and the rest of their life. As it is now they learn abstract often fictional stories in school, and then have to learn everything else starting at zero in the real world. All of us understood even at an early age that after the basic skills taught in the first couple years of school, from about 4th grade through all of Jr High and most of High School, you really aren't learning anything.
The subjects are staggered oddly. Why is English a staple course while Health is an elective? Economics and Philosophy usually don't even appear until college. Shop and Home Eco are reduced to the lowest rung of electives usually with pass or fail grades and watered down to the lowest common denominator. Do you know what is a better measure than grades? "Can you do X?" If you can, then you learned how to do it and if you can't then you didn't learn how to do it. How much you learned is very clear as the skill can be preformed. The goal should be to teach everyone how to do it and the test just a way to check it.
The time spent in schools is being wasted. Why not have a course called, "pragmatic skills for daily life" where they could learn sets of skills that were hands on and useful? Think of all the things you had to teach yourself outside or after school. Just an idea.
