Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System (Series)
Number Seven — Lack of life training
This article follows on from an article I published last week titled “Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System: Number Six — Lack of social/emotional learning,” where I discussed the sixth of twelve indictments. Here is the seventh.
Education in the United States requires you to be in school until you are eighteen years old, but does not give you the skills and training needed to live in the world as an adult. We are so focused on teaching our kids the Pythagorean Theorem that we forget to teach them about taxes. We seem to have no problems standardizing everything else in our children’s lives, but when it comes to the things they need to be a functioning part of society, we tap out.
This is so common that we’ve all just accepted it. It’s socially agreed that kids’ life training is handed out in a crash course setting with zero to no professional oversight. For the ones we send off to college to learn how to live on their own, we are crippling our universities by asking them to play life coach for our children, and it is unfair to them. Our higher education system is meant to be academic in nature, not teach our kids how to be adults. We should be preparing them for that as they learn everything else, not after.
What we need to be teaching —
We should be teaching them about taxes and how to file them practically. Not just a one and done “on paper” situation either, but a whole class on it because it’s complicated. We should teach them cooking basics. How to make eggs, pancakes, spaghetti, steak, burgers, etc. There are so many meals that would be beneficial to teach. On top of that, general rules about working in a kitchen, from “don’t put metal in the microwave” to “how to properly and safely use a knife while cooking”.
Another major component of adult life is our finances: how to budget, the basics of doing your own accounting, what loans to apply for, and what ones to avoid, how to refinance, the pros and cons of that decision, and how to manage your credit. Finance is a complex world, and we really shouldn’t be making everyone stumble through figuring it out. Off of that, most employers judge applicants pretty harshly on how their resumes are put together, so why not teach kids how to make those so they can get the jobs they are one hundred percent qualified for and could be really amazing at? And while we are at it, why don’t we teach them how to apply for those jobs?
This isn’t just about food, money, or work. We should be teaching them how to sew and get stains out of their clothes or even just how to do laundry properly. Additionally, we should be showing everyone the basics of how to take care of cars: how to change a tire, the oil, the battery, etc. also how to jump-start a car if your battery dies. And how to do work around the house, like how to properly and efficiently hang objects on the walls, and how to fix the sink or change outlets or light switches, to name a few examples.
We should go one step further with our children’s education. Teach them the skills that will benefit them in their adult lives in a practical way, such as how to maintain healthy relationships and how to advocate for yourself. Give them the tools and the space to learn and practice these skills so that way when they are twenty-two, buying their first car, they can handle that pushy salesman. Or when they are in their first serious relationship, they already know what is considered healthy and considered harmful. They already know how to communicate with their partner in a healthy way that provides growth without judgment. At our core, we are a social society, and we should be giving everyone the skills to thrive in that environment.
How to go about teaching it —
A common cop-out I hear is: that’s what the parents are for, to teach them life skills. Except, not everyone has parents that will teach them these things — and if they do, do their parents even know how to do it? Because we never showed them either. Some schools do have these courses, but there isn’t a broader curriculum to cover all of the skills needed to be on your own. They just have a class or two as an option in high school. We need something more consistent and extensive. Life skills should be the most important requirement there is, and YouTube should not be our teacher.
