Decision Making and Questionnaire

Project Direction

At the moment I am thinking of producing a creative workshop pack  for schools to encourage the teaching of subjects that aren't focused on enough. School teaches children almost everything under the sun, yet it still seems to skim over, or completely miss out some crucial areas. 

These include:

• Sex education; more about relationships in general
• Money management e.g. how mortgages work
• Politics and how the country is run
• Mental health
• Cultural diversity
• and many more...

Some of these topics are touched on, but students don't be seeming to be gaining a full understanding of things they may have to face in the future. Being taught out of a textbook about real situations and issues such as these will not be as memorable therefore practiced as much as if there were a more fun and interactive option available.

Questionnaire

I asked for peoples opinions on what topics they thought should be more heavily emphasised in schools, or be an essential part of the curriculum.

The results were quite diverse, but seemed to fall under categories relating to personal development and awareness. Some of the things that people mentioned were:

• Finances, how to do taxes
• How to cook balanced meals
• Self defence
• How to vote
• Proper understanding of mental illness
• The meat and dairy industry

Chat with Matt

I asked tutor Matt about what he thought should be taught more in the curriculum, and his answer was so interesting. He said that they should replace fine art qualifications at secondary school with 'Visual Literacy', which would be solving problems through visual means as opposed to painting and drawing with no constructed purpose (no offence aimed at fine art degree because that is a lot different to GCSE and A-Level!)

I thought Matt's opinion was fascinating, and really relevant to my topic especially as it could be possible to intertwine some of the subject areas mentioned above within a creative problem solving subject.

However, I have found that this exercise has somewhat broadened the horizon in terms of this project rather than narrow down the ideas and the direction of where I am going to go with it, so naturally I feel pretty stuck. I think over the next few days I am going to let all of this information mull over and try and find a positive solution to take forward. Also, I will take one of the subject areas listed above and start jotting some ideas down for lesson plans and relevant learning activities.