Geez … a lot of stuff in this thread I would put under the heading of “Parenting.” If this many people need instruction on this many things, parenting ain’t what it used to be. I certainly intend to teach any child I have most of this stuff myself. Teaching about sex might be embarrassing, but I’d rather be embarrassed than have my kid AND her kid bth living under my roof at once.
I would have loved something like this in place of the wood and metal shop classes we had to take in middle school.
I think this is the winner here. Nobody in my generation besides the dirt-bike-riding vocational guys knows anything about handyman type work. I’m the only one among all my friends who even owns a tool set. It seems to me that not a lot of mechanical knowledge is getting passed down to the current 18-25 generation, and this is a shame, because it’s not only more practical to fix your own problems, it’s also more satisfying.
I think there is a lot of unstated pressure not to teach kids about personal finance in high school. Not only is it something of a taboo subject in public, but a lot of businesses (and not just big banks) benefit from the liberal use of credit.
Table manners.
From what I’ve seen very few children are learning them at home.
OK I admit it, I’m a grumpy old fart.
The classes I’ve always said should be required:
Basic logic (learn the fallacies, how to use/spot them)
Basic statistics (enough to understand how statistics are used and mis-used)
Rhetoric/Semantics (how language and symbology are used to influence people)
Competitive Debate - put all those into practice, and learn quick that people lie, cheat, quote out of context, make up statistics, etc.
I think that would do a great deal to proof kids against political BS, commercials, etc.
I also like the idea of a Finances class, but I’d take it beyond basic bookkeeping and into investing. I was never taught any of that stuff, and I’m still screwed on that. It’s fine to say “save for retirement”, but that doesn’t mean anything if you haven’t the foggiest idea what to do with the money. And I have known a number of people who had no idea how loans worked, how to balance a checkbook, etc.
Perhaps parents should be teaching that, but many of them don’t know it either. It’s a fairly recent development that more than the upper and upper-middle classes had the money to/needed to do their own investments for retirement. Other folks either farmed and expected their kids to take care of them, or worked for companies that provided pensions. In my part of the country, there are many people who run their lives on a cash-only basis - how are those parents supposed to teach their kids about checking accounts and loans, much less retirement accounts and investments?
Extended home-ec including basic repairs and first aid would be good, but I’m not sure I’d make it required. I would have taken a basic auto-mechanics class, if one had been available. My dad would have taught me, but he died before I was old enough.
ETA: add clarification
Just jumping in…
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The world isn’t fair. It’s not graded on a curve. Hell, it’s not even graded on merit all the time. Sometimes you get f***ed up the wazoo no matter what. Deal with it.
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Multiplication and division. 1x1=1, 1x2=2… repeat to the 12 times table. And learn long division, on paper. And learn how to make frickin change too!
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Nobody “owes” you a thing, until you do something that is worth someone else having.
Typing typing typing. Young people today do not know how to type. Some have never even seen a typewriter.
I cannot believe in this computer age that people are not being taught how to type.
Marriage. How to maintain a healthy marriage, and how to prepare yourself for a marriage so that you won’t be caught off-guard when you meet “The One.”
One problem is that the details of some of these things change a great deal over time. And the devil really is in the details.
I recently updated my resume, and did some online searching for tips on writing a resume. The rules have changed a bit since I last did this (in 2001)- it’s no longer so taboo to have a resume run to more than one page, for example. How to get a job is another example of something that has changed a great deal- anything I had learned in high school (graduated 1993) would probably be useless by now.
How to use a computer has changed since I was in high school, too. I do think high school students need a course on using computers and the internet, but not so much the technical details of how to use a particular browser or word processor (those will change). I think a more useful class would be on how things posted online can be seen by all kinds of people- your parents, the police, and future college admissions people or bosses can see your MySpace account and other things you’ve posted on the internet, as well as your friends being able to see those things.
Not all parents know this stuff.
My parents grew up in the 50s and had jobs where they didn’t have to use computers very much. They didn’t know much about computers when I was in high school. They certainly don’t know much about the internet. Dad had the same job for the entire time since I was born until he retired, and Mom was a stay-at-home mom. Their knowledge of resumes or job hunting would have been from the 70s.
My dad, and a lot of parents of that generation, didn’t have a 401(k) or an IRA- he gets a pension from the school district where he taught. Home financing has changed a bit since they last bought a house in the 80s, as well. And there are lots of parents who aren’t necessarily making the best financial decisions. Having a kid doesn’t automatically make you willing or able to make good financial choices, even simple ones like “don’t buy stuff you can’t afford” or “spend less than you earn”.
I do think typing should be a required class, either in high school or (preferably) earlier.
Typing was taught at my high school, although as an elective. Without a doubt it’s the most useful class I ever took. Also one of the easiest 
Why we should not junk up our already overburdened and underfunded public schools with pointless “life skills”.
Seriously. By high school age, someone who’s interested or needs to know something will figure it out on their own. If you’re not interested, then you’re going to sit there in class and your teacher’s lectures are going to bounce right off you. The majority of stuff mentioned here can’t be taught.
Also, balancing a checkbook is an irrelevant skill to the current generation. I’ve written one check in my life and that was in something of an emergency. I don’t even bother with paper statements anymore; if I need to know how much money I have or see a breakdown of what I’m spending on or anything like that, I just look at my account online.
My kids started learning to use computers in preschool. They were too young to learn to touch type using all of their little fingers then, but they eventually memorized the keyboard and got pretty fast at hunt and peck. Now they are just fast enough that getting them to slow down to learn to do it the right way even faster is tough.
I suggest we “mandate” good teachers–if my kids were getting 6 hours of passionate inspired instruction in macrame, sanskrit and penmanship, I think that would be okay.
You mean Chicago Math isn’t teaching everything the kids need? :rolleyes:
I’m surprised by this one. Due to computers, typing has become a mainstream skill among all ages. When I was in school, typing was a class you got in high school. About ten years ago, one of my nephews was telling me he was learning typing in elementary school. Nowadays, I would imagine many pre-schoolers know how to type.
If you specifically meant that we should be teaching students how to use a typewriter as opposed to a word processor, then I would disagree. Technology’s moved on and typewriters have joined slide rules, abacuses, and telegraphs - they might be interesting things to learn to use, but they’re not necessary.
-Basic first aid, including CPR, Heimlich etc.
-Basic self-defense, as in enough to get away from an attacker.
-Basic firearm safety (how to clear & safe the most common types of actions)
I wholeheartedly second the basic car knowledge, personal finance, and basic home repairs fields that have been mentioned already.
I also completely agree that all the skills mentioned in this thread should be taught by parents, but this seems to not be happening.
You’re absolutely right, but some folks either don’t care or don’t have the time or energy for all of this. When parents can’t afford not to work, it’s pretty difficult managing having a job and being a parent.
Basically this thread is “stuff you should know” based on our collective experience with clueless graduates. Why the heck shouldn’t that be taught alongside academics in school?
My daughter learned both of these in 3rd and 4th grade. My son is learning how to make change in 2nd grade. Where are they not being taught?
I took higher math, algebra, trig, geometry, etc.
I really wished someone taught me how to balance my checkbook. I was well into my 20s before I figured that one out.
It astounds me every time I see it. I learned to type in the third grade. About 3 years ago, I worked briefly at a department store. The fellow I worked with, maybe 16, took (seriously) 10 minutes to enter in a customer’s information for a credit card application. He hunted and pecked the whole thing in. I don’t know how common it was, as I only worked there a couple weeks, but it sure was pitiful.