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English Should not be Compulsory in High School

Robin

Penultimate Amazing
Robin
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Apr 29, 2004
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In Australian high schools, mathematics is not compulsory in the last two years of high school, but English is.

This has always struck me as a highly discriminatory practice as some of us will never be able to get a decent result in this subject, while at the same time we are capable of getting top marks in subjects such as mathematics or languages.

I have no objection to English being compulsory in the lower years of high school, but our marks in the final year of high school have a strong influence in what we will be able to do in life.

I am pretty sure that those of us who will never be able to write an essay on what TS Eliot meant by his poems have a great deal to contribute to society and should not have this built in disadvantage at the most important year of our schooling.

I would be interested in hearing other perspectives on this.
 
Given the amysmal grasp of the English language of so man Australians, I have absolutely no problem with compulsory English to year 12.
 
arthwollipot said:
I have no idea what is being taught as "English" these days. When I was in school, it was 100% literature.
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Mine was split "English language" and "English literature" and we had separate exams for both. The language section was about comprehension and structure of language and the lit was critical analysis of novels, stories, plays, poetry (yes they really did force us to deal with such obscenities) and so on.

Very surprised that maths isn't required in the last two years, that seems very strange.
 
Robin said:
I would be interested in hearing other perspectives on this.
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We have no compulsory subjects this side of the ditch for years 12 & 13.

English stops being a useful subject at ~year 10 and I'd much rather see my kids learning a subject that will provide them with work skills than Shakespeare and poetry. My daughter chose to do English, while my son couldn't get away from it fast enough - he's doing multiple maths subjects instead.

I loved English myself, but that's mostly because I was madly in love with my English teacher. Never learned anything worthwhile, although we did get to watch Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth, which was pretty cool and featured Francesca Annis' tits, which caused a bit of an uproar at an all-boys school.
 
Darat said:
What are years 12 & 13? 12 year old and 13 year olds?
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In NZ, Year 1 is Kindergarten. So Year 12 is the equivalent of Fifth form. Mind you, being in the southern hemisphere, the years here are half as long. So who knows if they ever learn to use a knife and fork let alone Unglush.
 
Norman Alexander said:
In NZ, Year 1 is Kindergarten. So Year 12 is the equivalent of Fifth form. Mind you, being in the southern hemisphere, the years here are half as long. So who knows if they ever learn to use a knife and fork let alone Unglush.
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In Australia year 12 is the equivalent of 6th form. Your last year of high school.

There are so, so many elective subjects in year 12 that an English requirement is not an onerous burden.

I’d like to see maths and science as mandatory as well, as it was for me back in the 1960s, but if you can only have one, English for me.
 
It is a most necessary skill.

English majors may not make top salaries right out of college, but after 20 years they do indeed catch up.

Say you and another engineer are in competition for a promotion, the other one has a minor in English, but you are the better engineer. I would bet against you getting the job.

If you can't get there, their, and they're right nor can you get your, you're and yore right, better go back to school.
 
Ah I see. - Up to 16, English and Maths are compulsory in all UK nations, 16 to 18 all subjects become elective.
 
Robin said:
In Australian high schools, mathematics is not compulsory in the last two years of high school, but English is.

This has always struck me as a highly discriminatory practice as some of us will never be able to get a decent result in this subject, while at the same time we are capable of getting top marks in subjects such as mathematics or languages.

I have no objection to English being compulsory in the lower years of high school, but our marks in the final year of high school have a strong influence in what we will be able to do in life.

I am pretty sure that those of us who will never be able to write an essay on what TS Eliot meant by his poems have a great deal to contribute to society and should not have this built in disadvantage at the most important year of our schooling.


I would be interested in hearing other perspectives on this.
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I see your post more as an argument for requiring math courses in the last two years of high school than eliminating a requirement for English. Personally I consider both very important. But I think that the ability to read, understand, think about broad ideas, and communicate, has even more widespread importance in one’s life than math, so if only one is mandated it should be English. Presumably one can always take extra math courses as electives.
 
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It's probably beneficial to expose the student and challenge them to fields they do not naturally excel in, if for no other reason, just to be conversant in matters beyond their job. School is not strictly job training; it seeks to make you roundly educated and stuff. We all picked up far more than we realized. Remember the kids saying 'oh why do we have to learn math, we have calculators now'?

eta: your grades in school should show how well-rounded a person you are, not how much of a specialist. Everyone has a specialty where they excel. Should your primary education be throttled down to your Greatest Hits?
 
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Thermal said:
It's probably beneficial to expose the student and challenge them to fields they do not naturally excel in, if for no other reason, just to be conversant in matters beyond their job. School is not strictly job training; it seeks to make you roundly educated and stuff. We all picked up far more than we realized. Remember the kids saying 'oh why do we have to learn math, we have calculators now'?

eta: your grades in school should show how well-rounded a person you are, not how much of a specialist. Everyone has a specialty where they excel. Should your primary education be throttled down to your Greatest Hits?
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In the USofA to graduate high school I had to take two years of physical education and two years of a foreign language. Also math up to at least geometry. I don't use any of those in my current profession, so I could say there was no reason I should have been forced to take them to graduate.

Thing is, I enjoyed them all, especially the languages (French and German for one and two years respectively). The applicability to any given career has no direct bearing on which courses should be required prior to college.
 
Joe Random said:
In the USofA to graduate high school I had to take two years of physical education and two years of a foreign language. Also math up to at least geometry. I don't use any of those in my current profession, so I could say there was no reason I should have been forced to take them to graduate.

Thing is, I enjoyed them all, especially the languages (French and German for one and two years respectively). The applicability to any given career has no direct bearing on which courses should be required prior to college.
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And students, being so young, switch majors in college. It's good to have the introductory exposure and background, both academically and for your later side explorations. A hard-core mathematician may find that they like tennis that they tried in gym class, or remember a poem that struck them and they pursued later, even if they didn't do well in a course overall.
 
arthwollipot said:
I have no idea what is being taught as "English" these days. When I was in school, it was 100% literature.
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Same here. Maybe in freshman year high school English they spent a bit of time on grammar and vocabulary, but after that it's just reading books and taking tests about what you read.


My vocabulary was pretty basic until I prepared for the GRE. The only preparation I did was study vocabulary, and in particular the subtle distinctions between words with similar meanings. Based on practice tests, I brought my GRE verbal score up from a probable high-400s to an actual 720 with six weeks of studying maybe four hours per day. There is no reason high school English classes shouldn't have provided me with that vocabulary. Sure, it's great that I read "Lord of the Flies" and "To Kill a Mockingbird", but some of that time could have been better spent learning the language more directly.
 
Thermal said:
And students, being so young, switch majors in college. It's good to have the introductory exposure and background, both academically and for your later side explorations. A hard-core mathematician may find that they like tennis that they tried in gym class, or remember a poem that struck them and they pursued later, even if they didn't do well in a course overall.
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When I first started high school I wanted to be a lawyer. Toward the end I drop-shifted into wanting to be a film composer. Where I'm at now is not even close to either, and not because I had to fall back on something else after trying and failing a first choice. Tastes change, and as you say one might not even know they had a knack or passion for something until they had to be exposed to it.
 
Mathematicians need to be able to communicate well outside of mathematics. Non-mathematicians don't need to be able to communicate well inside of mathematics.

Improving fluency in at least one primary language should be part of any compulsory general education program, in my opinion. That, history, and civics.
 
I feel like every engineer should have a very good understanding of at least one poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes: The One-Hoss Shay.

I can't count the times I have used this poem with engineers.
 
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