(10-02-2023, 08:02 AM)TomK Wrote: Just curious, TC, as I didn't experience the US educational system, but did those "health" classes involve exams or just something the kids had to attend? My impression for UK schools is that in recent times schools are funded based on the exam results they produce, so I believe there is less incentive to teach life skills but concentrate more on the subjects that are examined. UK schools have moved toward the US system over the years, for better or worse, but am just interested to learn how things used to be.
On the other hand, I just looked at my old school's curriculum. There are many more subjects now that people of my generation never studied:
https://brakenhale.co.uk/learning/curriculum
Back in the day it was humanities, maths and science with a sprinkling of other subjects (PE [2 hrs per week], religious education [1 hr a week], and ad-hoc social education [1 hr a week by age thirteen).
I remember being graded on quizzes, exams, essays, and presentations (each student or sometimes a group of students was assigned a topic to research and present their findings to the rest of the students in the class). There were basic competencies every student had to complete in order to graduate and "communication" was one of them. The presentations counted towards "oral communication", assuming a student got a passing grade on enough of them over the course of 4 years.
Of course we had shop classes too. The grade would be based on completing X amount of required projects and Y amount of elective ones. Like in metals class one of the projects required welding something specific, and the second part was supposed to enhance creativity so each student could design what they wanted and the instructor would make the grade on the quality of the welds etc. I remember in woods class a lot of the kids made "tobacco" pipes.