What has changed since you were in school (i.e. number of planets, number of continents, cursive, etc.)?

My kids are still taught there are 7 continents, but yeah, Pluto isn't a planet anymore. However, they are still taught about Pluto being a planetoid. My kids learn cursive in third grade, but like someone else said, they aren't required to ever really use it for assignments, so it will easily be forgotten. As far as math goes, they don't push memorizing math facts, but they should. My fourth grader is SO SLOW at the higher math he's doing now because he still has to count and do it on his fingers because he was never forced to memorize them. He'll get a problem that contains 9 + 7 and it will take him a good minute to figure just that sum out, which is something he should know in a split second.

I don't have kids, but I've noticed some things. I went to school when Pluto was still a planet, and as a Canadian, I was taught that we had 2 territories instead of the 3 we have now.

I learned both cursive and typing. Cursive is still taught here (I think...) but some of my teachers required us to use it. They might not now.

Calculators were banned until I went to high school.

Speaking of high school, I recently visited mine. There was one thing that really stood out: the phones. Everyone had one and they were constantly in use. There were signs on classroom windows that said "No phones allowed."

When I read news articles that mention smartboards, flipped classrooms, and homework assigned via text messages, I wonder if they're more effective than good old chalkboards and whiteboards. The schools where I live are still pretty traditional.

Overhead projectors with rolls of clear cellophane are slowly being replaced with computers. I've had several professors who hooked their tablets up to a projector, then used a stylus to write notes.

Many things were cut from the math curriculum, like conics and statistics in grade 12. Once in a while I hear about math reform in the US. This video blew my mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI

When I learned to read, I learned that letters had sounds. I learned phonics. Now I hear some places in the US teach using a "whole word" method, where kids memorize the "look" of a word. This also blew my mind. It's controversial stuff. I'm probably biased, but I don't think the whole word method makes sense. Are kids supposed to memorize thousands of words? What do you do when you see a new word and can't sound it out?

I wonder if ten-finger typing will become endangered like cursive. Lots of kids are learning to type on touchscreens and some of them use the same 2-finger method on keyboards - well, if they even touch physical keyboards. Unlike handwriting, no one can tell how you type by the quality of your work.

In the future kids will probably ask me why the save icon looks like a square (floppy disk) or why the phone icon is curved like a semi-circle (because phones are black rectangles now).

Number of planets has changed.

Also computing, which when I was at school was a seriously nerdy subject.

Of course I learned to write in cursive at school. My kids are required to write in cursive. My son was told when he was taking a school entrance exam that printing would be considered a sign that he was way too unintelligent to get a place. He was eight. He's now a whole 13.

Seriously, do these people think they'll never have to take notes faster than they can print?

Edit: oh, and my daughter had to do calculus for GCSE maths. We didn't start it until A level.

My kids are still taught that there are 7 continents, but I found this article interesting... http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/q...

I learned cursive in 2nd grade as did my oldest. However, they aren't required to actually write any of their assignments in cursive, so I know it won't stick with them like it did with previous generations. My guess is that they'll be able to read it and sign their names. Anything else is a bonus.

One thing I've found is that my kids seem to be doing word problems and some harder math concepts earlier than we did. In the early grades, the focus was on basic arithmetic and drilling those facts over and over without applying them as much. I see a lot more application now.

children in 3rd grade are doing math with variables and exponents, which was high school algebra for me and the times tables are no longer memorized (that's what calculators are for I was told)...