High-school should prepare you for the basic requirements of life. When you graduate, you should be equipped to enter society as a productive individual. Unfortunately, our current educational system seems to focus only on getting good marks on standardized tests, not on preparing our children for real life.
You should be able to do the following things (in no particular order):
- buy a car
- purchase a home
- read and interpret a contract
- open a bank account
- balance a bank statement
- fill out your taxes
- read and understand a credit card agreement
- read and understand a loan application and agreement
- understand how to communicate with their elected officials
- understand the role of each elected official they have to vote for and what qualifications a candidate for that post should have
- understand their obligations to our society – like why voting and jury duty matter
- How to avoid getting pregnant
- The basics of child rearing
How many of our schools are actually preparing our kids for these critically important tasks, and what excuse can they offer for not doing so?
It is also important, critically important, to prepare students to go on to college, but not everyone will go to college. Most high-school students will enter the work-force and try their best to make a decent life with the education they have when they leave high-school.
I know that some of the items on the above list are covered by various courses, and some are available as electives. I don’t know how many may have been added since I was in high-school, but I suspect most are still absent from most school curriculum, especially with the advent of so much standardized testing and a “teach to the test” attitude.
I’m also sure that some will question several of my line items. I’ll explain a few.
- Birth Control – While many conservatives think that ‘Just Say No’ is the answer, it’s not. Statistics show that kids who are taught only about abstinence are far more likely to get pregnant. There’s no reason you can’t teach birth control and also teach about the problems associated with promiscuity, such as STDs. – While I understand most schools have some education in this area, it needs to be comprehensive, not tailored to appease everyone’s religious beliefs. Unwed teenage mothers frequently wind up living and raising their child in poverty. We all suffer when poverty increases, since it means fewer productive workers and puts demands on resources. The best way to prevent those problems is to prevent poverty wherever possible.
- Child Rearing – Most of our children are brought up in two child homes now. They don’t spend a lot of time around babies. A hundred years ago, families were much larger, and most children wound up watching how their parents reared the younger siblings. The older children often wound up learning child rearing by taking over some of the duties from their parents. That doesn’t happen nearly as much in our smaller families.
- Understanding Credit Card Agreements – Credit card agreements have turned into traps set for the poor and unwary. Almost all of them have clauses that stipulate that any late payment on ANY account (even those completely unrelated to the credit card) will cause the default rate to go into effect. That default rate is an unconscionable 25-30%, sometimes even higher. To make things worse, the banks often levy random charges that they’ll drop if challenged. But how many kids will challenge them? Finally, the banks never tell you how long it would take to pay off your credit card debt if you make the minimum payment. That time period is often 20 years or more.
Some of these items are covered in civics, but how many civics courses are tailored to the local government, the one that will have the greatest impact on these kids?
How many of you have thought about teaching your teen-age son or daughter how to change a diaper, take a baby’s temperature, or other basic child rearing skills?
Summary
Basics are just that, the fundamental building blocks which we use as the foundation of our knowledge. Learning how to take those basics – reading, writing, math, science – and apply them to our daily lives, is just as important. If you teach about consumer loans and credit cards, the students suddenly have a much greater understanding of why learning percentages is important. If you teach them about deceptive business practices, they might understand they are not alone when faced with such problems and demand more of their elected officials. If you teach them that they need to understand what is going on in their community in order to make decisions on how to vote, more of them might find the time to read the local paper.
It’s time our educational system went back to the most basic of missions: preparing our children for life in our world.
