There are many complaints as to what our kids are being taught in public schools. Sadly, much of the curriculum being taught, is useless in the real world.
When you think about it, once you master reading, writing and basic math skills, you could most certainly make it through life. However, social skills and ‘real world’ simple like skills are not taught, or at the least, taught to the degree that they should be. These skills can have a huge impact on our kid’s lives.
Now, we are not saying it is a school’s job to teach these things as parents should be teaching their children life and social skills. However, we sadly live in a world where not all parents are able to or want to teach these things and leave it up to the public school system.
In one case, a mathematics professor claimed that many of the students had no idea that after owning a property, they would also have to pay property taxes for as long as they own them.
We live in a world where we have students who can easily compose a sonnet of Shakespearean caliber but lack the skills to prepare their own taxes or handle their basic finances.
There is a very unbalanced approach to teaching in the public school system. Children know about ten different war generals throughout history, but don’t realize that taxes get taken out of work paychecks, or understand how insurance works — the list goes on.
Bringing back a home economics styled class would do wonders for our children. Even a class called ‘Life Skills’ would work! With a class like this, children will learn the essential and necessary tools in order to be prepared for when they go out into the world on their own.
The classes should include cooking, time management, budgeting, and even shopping. Through these classes, the students would learn how to better use their strengths and resolve their weaknesses, and get better outcomes from their hard work.
In addition, they would learn social skills, how to speak to people with confidence, how to be self confident, how to fill out a job application and how to approach a job interview.
Imagine how nice it would be if your teenage child understood shopping on a budget, or just how to budget their money in general.
Basic economics knowledge should go a long way in helping people become more independent.
It’s clear that children need academics, but skills like money management, cooking, life costs and other essentials that we all need to live in the real world — would also go a long way to help our kids have more successful lives.
