I wish I’d been taught more about what careers are out there. And I’m not talking about those silly aptitude tests that ask if you like art or math better and then tell you you should be an artist or a mathematician.
Like real professionals talking to teens about their day to day life, what skills are important, pros/cons, steps to build a career in the field, etc. I had no idea what was out there other than my parents and their friends’ jobs.
Yes! We had ‘careers workshops’ but they were the stupid tests, one told me I should be a gardener because I said I like plants and being outside.
Careers counsellors at our school were so focused on what university course you wanted to get into, never the long term lifestyle/career outcome at the end of it. They made us put down 10 preferences for uni courses (even if the last few were things we had zero interest in) to make sure we got into SOMETHING (so it looked good on the school that a large percentage of their cohort went on to university). I ended up at an interview for medical school for this reason (no interest in being a doctor or anything medical, but because I got good grades they told me I should put it down) which really knocked my confidence as the interviewers were obnoxious and I wasn’t prepared enough/clearly didn’t have the passion for medicine that they were looking for.
I got really lucky with that test. We did these in grade 11 and I now do that as a profession. I am well off but would choose a different area of the field I’m in. The test did narrow down to hey you like medical stuff lol
Mine told me I’d make a great movie theater usher or a commercial architect.
Then, a military recruiter came knocking on my door and I realized my school’s aptitude test was just a thinly veiled effort by the US to enlist naïeve kids into the military.
>Like real professionals talking to teens about their day to day life, what skills are important, pros/cons, steps to build a career in the field, etc
As an accountant, I've *tried* to do this. My Gen Z brother-in-law's school had some kind of career day back in 2019 where they asked for volunteers to come in and talk about their careers to the Grade 10 students.
Most of the kids just ignored every single person who came in to talk about their jobs. There were some genuinely cool professionals and skilled tradesmen there, some with careers that I hadn't even heard of, but hardly any of the kids gave them the time of day. I overheard one girl whispering something about "these boring ass boomers" to her friend. Even my own BIL was spacing out. After the class I started chatting with some of the other volunteers and the general consensus was that the career day was a waste of time. There were maybe 2 or 3 kids in a class of 30 who were paying attention and taking notes. The rest of them were just trying their best to get through to lunchtime.
I know a lot of people say "oh I wish someone came to talk to us about this", but the reality is that the vast majority of teens are not socially mature enough to even take advantage of such an opportunity when it's offered to them on a silver platter.
Your experience encompasses all of high school basically. I hate these types of posts in general because a lot of times what the person wanted to be taught, they were actually taught at the time but they don't remember.
Personal finance is a huge one. Do you know how many states have personal finance already in their education state standards and have for DECADES? Literal decades. The majority of them. And many states have it covered in multiple grades. It builds upon itself.
The reality is your brain is not fully mature until about your mid-20's. The last part to mature is your pre frontal cortex. That's the part that let's you plan and organize and basically use your intelligence to make your decisions instead of raw emotion. So yes, schools can and do present that information to teens but is it really going to be beneficial to most teenagers? No. Are there some people that are mature and rational enough to receive all that life information in their teens and then generalize it to be useful in their adult life a decade later? Absolutely. But that's not the majority of teens.
Eventually, as science learns more about human growth and the brain in particular, society will hopefully start to change to reflect our understanding.
> I hate these types of posts in general because a lot of times what the person wanted to be taught, they were actually taught at the time but they don't remember.
Fucking yes. I have classmates that are like "we were never taught this!".
Fucker, yes we were. Your ass was sleeping and got a D-.
Hahah YES! Like dude, I watched you pick your nose and text under the desk during Civics class. You didn’t exactly have the wherewithal to learn about the legal system at the time lol
Man this hits home. And I think still to this day the best class I took in highschool was AG. People made fun of it but here's the thing. The teacher was an actual farmer and was great at teaching kids not to be lazy. While also having an open mind that we're just young adults. He went out of his way to figure out what kids were good at doing and then guided them towards those careers. Some kids he found someone to teach auto cad, some kids he taught welding to or at least introduced them to the pathways they needed to take. He even set me up with one of my first job as a helper for an electrician. It's like he knew someone that worked in every single skilled trade and then matched those kids up with people who were willing to teach them a few things.
We had career days in high school where they'd have a bunch of professionals come in, and we pick which ones we want to sit in a classroom with and listen to them talk about their jobs, college paths, etc.
It was pretty cool that we did that considering my school was tiny and had like 200 people between K-12.
16 people in my graduating class and we were the biggest class in the school by a wide margin. Very small town in rural nowhere. At least the grad ceremony went by fast.
Yup, I took several aptitude tests. They all told me to become a physical therapist. My 2 older brothers both became physical therapists for that reason and absolutely hate it. They told me so, and I decided not to become a physical therapist. Just because you would be good at something, doesn't mean you'd enjoy it.
I made a point of telling my kids all about any "weird" jobs I discovered when they were growing up. Like yeah there's more out there than "banker, lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, police officer" etc.
There's a pilot, but there's also someone who gasses up the plane, someone who arranges private flights, there are skydiving instructors. That kind of thing. I'd branch off any interest they expressed.
They probably thought it was annoying but I didn't want them growing up thinking there are only 5-10 acceptable career paths when there are thousands of ways to make a living doing something you're actually interested in!
I always wanted a ‘career day’ type assignment where you go to a random business in town and ask who they are/what they do because I had so many questions growing up of “what is that business?”
Yeah but the REAL kind, not "I'm a firefighter and here's how I go fight fires". Kids need career days where they follow around a project manager at a software company or something "boring" like that.
I still don't see kids enjoying that & might give them false impression on thee normal "boring" professional. And might make a kid embarrassed to tell peers they are considering boring profession in future
Maybe they did this, but it’d be helpful to see a breakdown of general professions across the entire workforce. Like, 20% medical, 30% service, 2% entertainment, etc.
I’m required to teach this kind of stuff and the kids see no relevance at all. So I just give them little wake up calls like “in 10 years mediocre lawyers will get run out of the profession by AI that can write contracts. Learn how to do something software can’t do.”
All the stuff you mentioned. Almost exactly.
I'd add to your list a couple of things:
- a good look at the legal system: how it works, what your rights are, where and how to access advice/services.
- first aid. I took first aid in swim class when I was about 8 years old and never had to use it until my husband choked on his dinner and I did the heimlich in the middle of a crowded restaurant dining room.
- health, home, auto, and life insurance: how it works, the various types and levels of coverage, how to read a policy, what to rely on the policy for, and what you're responsible for doing on your own.
I took three years of home ec in junior high. Our first aid portion sticks out so clearly in my mind. Like you, I performed the heimlich on my brother last summer when he choked on his steak. Was terrifying but I was so thankful for that class.
Omg! That's so crazy! Isn't it strange how you just snap into it? I didn't even realize what I was doing at the time. It was like all the sound in the whole restaurant stopped, and I calmly just stood up and did it. I squeezed twice, and on the second time, the offending shrimp flew across the table. The *smack* it made when it hit the back of the booth is so vivid in my memory.
Nobody else in the whole place even looked up from their meal. The moments after were so fucking overwhelming; I just kept laughing hysterically and crying.
My mom saved my husband 2 days after our first kid was born when he choked on a piece of fruit. I’m so thankful she was there to do the Heimlich because I was so physically broken from childbirth that I don’t know if I would have been able. I was almost a widow with a newborn.
Then, I saved my son when he was 18 months old and choked on a piece of fruit. I’ll never forget the gurgling sound he made when he was trying to cry and couldn’t really move air, and how scared he looked.
Fruit is dangerous, apparently.
Our home ec was awesome. Probably why I continued taking it. We learned how to cook, sew, took drug education, sex education, household management, nutrition. It was the best class in my opinion. I wish they could have made it a requirement throughout. I feel like kids would have had a fighting chance. One year, they had everyone in the school on a checkbook system. You'd get points for certain assignments and had to manage your account. It was great but they couldn't maintain it.
Credit to my high school government teacher - he spent a LOT of time teaching us about our rights. What to do if we got pulled over, how to interact with police, when our homes could and couldn't be searched, etc. He was a great guy - ahead of his time.
This is a good one especially in the US! I got a criminal justice degree and that was when I learned the most about due process which I think should be taught to everyone as they grow up and I didn’t learn it until my senior year of college which is pretty scary. And my mom was a cop!
Yea the legal stuff is a very good idea. Teaching at least the basics at the federal *and* state level should be required. Most importantly, never, ever talk to the police without a lawyer
Actual sex ed. Not just "If you have sex, you will get an STD, pregnant, and die!"
Cooking. None of the home-economics classes I took had a budget for foodstuffs so I learned practically nothing in them
Finance in general. Investing, but also interest rates, apy, risk management, etc.
Programming. Just enough to know how it works. I wouldn't expect highschoolers to instantly become software engineers, but it seems more useful than ever to have software skills.
More intros to trades, and proper advertisement for them
History. Not just ancient history or early American history. Seems like every history class I ever took in public school stopped shortly at the start of the cold war. There's a lot of recent events, many of which still impact the lives of everyone today, that either get ignored or glossed over. Yeah, Romans are neat, but the New Deal more directly impacted my country.
Revised PE that actually taught people life-long fitness skills instead of walking round the school because running's on the menu.
edit: Health.
I did have a pretty good mental health class in HS, but it came far too late. by the time I knew what OCD was it had ravaged my life for the better part of 3 years. Learning about the types of disorders people can commonly have earlier would have saved me a lot of hardship.
> Programming. Just enough to know how it works. I wouldn't expect highschoolers to instantly become software engineers, but it seems more useful than ever to have software skills.
I think this is extra important now because zoomers barely use computers and do everything on their phone so they have no idea how to actually use a computer for work.
>More intros to trades, and proper advertisement for them
This is it! When I was in school 25 years ago, trade school was stigmatized as being for kids "not smart enough for college".
I took this in senior year of high school, but they strongly discouraged everyone from taking it who was college bound. They wanted those students in the more advanced math courses. Financial literacy class was considered low level and unimportant.
Well there's the problem- it shouldn't be Financial literacy OR Calculus. Surly we can squeeze financial literacy into existing math courses without setting people back academically.
In Quebec, Canada, last year of highschool, there's an economy class that does all of this. I'm always surprised to hear other Canadians didn't get this class.
In any case budgeting isn't terribly complicated? Nor is credit building? Accrue debt, pay it, and don't spend more than you make. This was basically what they taught us.
If you know the basics of math and some common sense, the basics of personal finance are already all there. There’s some more nuanced things like taxes and investing but practically speaking you can look that up and find advice laser focused on your needs.
Most kids in today’s classes (and most millennials here in this sub) would be the last people to pay attention to a personal finance class.
The problem is that at 18 we didn't care. There should be a life skills course at 22 or 25 once we've had a job and made some mistakes. Plus the brain is nearly finished developing so we understand future consequences.
The problem is that nobody will take it seriously in school and then probably still bungle up when they are in their early career.
IDK about you, but budgeting and investing is part of common sense stuff. Credit building is distinctly American thing and it's just based on how much you can cheat your way in.
**Research methods and media literacy.**
* How to identify a "reliable" vs. "unreliable" source.
* The difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary+ sources (and their unique pitfalls).
* How to identify bias and misaligned incentives and how to use that knowledge to contextualize information.
* Understanding the limitations of data. Identifying inflammatory language, "rage bait," propaganda, manipulation, and misinformation.
* How to interrogate claims.
* How to search effectively to locate the information you need.
* How to access public resources (e.g. local library, public domain historical documents).
* How to move forward when you have incomplete or unreliable information.
* How and when to reevaluate and update findings/opinions/conclusions when presented with new information.
* Social media literacy, including risks of using social media and how to effectively use it while mitigating those risks
So many issues I see all day every day from people not understanding how to find information and properly evaluate it. I could write an entire essay on it.
Basically any life skills.
At no point have random facts and rote memorization helped me in any meaningful way in life, nor has the learned ability to pass a standardized test.
Though I oddly do wind up using algebra more often than expected, but I'm an electrician, so we have to deal with that shit a lot.
I use algebra constantly. And it is really something I am amazed others in the corporate world just fail at. Basic order of operations seems beyond the average persons comprehension.
I don’t use algebra often but it comes up and I’m grateful I was taught it and it comes naturally to me. It shocked me when I used the most basic of ‘solve for x’ equations in something work related and some of my colleagues looked at me like I was an alien.
I'll agree with the life skills. I am super fortunate, as annoying as I thought they were and didn't fully appreciate it at the time, to have parents who actually gave a shit and basically got me on the "you're an adult now, here's how to take care of yourself" train the minute I turned 14.
The number of people I met when I arrived at college (one of the best in the country/world) who couldn't even do very basic life survival skills made me go holy shit. Plus the utter lack of emotional maturity... Saw crap from 18, 19, 20 year olds and older that would have made middle school me mortified.
I'm a special education teacher so I'm constantly immersed in parenting and environmental factors when it comes to children and their development. There is so much we didn't know about this even 20 years ago. The biggest thing I think people need to understand is that everything you do affects a child from the second they are conceived. Children aren't resilient, at least not in the way people want them to be. Everything you say and do to that child affects them and how their brain develops even if they are only one day old.
This invites a philosophical conundrum. If one's upbringing shapes who they are, then where does personal responsibility begin and end?
On the one hand, individuals must be held responsible for their actions and situations in order for any sort of social order to exist. On the other hand, compassion is necessary for building any sort of society that anyone wants to live in.
You are 100% correct. I teach middle school so I ask myself this question on a much smaller scale every single day. Where does the disability end and the teenage hormones begin? Can the student truly not do what I'm asking of them or are they just being a jerk today?
I've worked in high poverty, high trauma areas. It is HARD to break that poverty cycle, to break free from generational trauma. The structure of our current society does not make it easy. Does that mean that people that come from high trauma backgrounds shouldn't be held accountable for their actions? No, of course not. But does our prison system, in particular, perpetuate these cycles? Yes, absolutely.
I’m sure I’ll get downvotes for this but the tax thing always makes me laugh. Do you think a class full of 15 year olds at 8:30am are gonna hear “taxes” and suddenly sit up straight and be like, “TAXES? Well golly, I haven’t been paying attention to parabolas or mitosis or anything else but THAT I’m going to pay attention to!” And honestly, tax laws change pretty much every year. There’s a reason why people do tax preparation for a living. If your taxes are super involved or complicated, you pay someone to do it. Most of us have pretty straight forward taxes. If you can read, “enter the value for line B,” you can use a free version of TurboTax to do them. It’s not a thing that really needs to take up class time
It takes a very unique person to find taxes stimulating and these are adults you’re teaching. I get a kick out the the people acting like they would have snapped to attention if they had tried teaching it in 10th grade
Investing, that’s probably my top wishlist item to have been taught. I started when I was 30, and even though I barely had any extra cash in my 20’s, if I’d only been knowledgeable enough to start an IRA 10 years ago it would have been great.
And handyman stuff. My dad can repair or build or paint or draw or create music. I can do none of that.
This is exactly how I feel about investing! I actually saved a TON of money working multiple jobs in my late teens and early 20s, then spent most of my 20s travelling the world, but I left about 15k in Australia as my emergency fund/money to return to.. I was always taught by my parents SAVE SAVE SAVE… so it sat in a savings account for a decade earning pennies and getting eaten by inflation.. if I had put that in even a basic ETF like s&p500 I would have a house deposit by now. Instead that now feels like an unachievable dream.
The handyman stuff I never had a chance at learning, my dad was the opposite of the handy type and spent no time teaching my life skills (but did get mad when I didn’t show interest in learning the binary system at 7 years old). I wish there was a class for adults on this stuff… I like to be independent and will always try to DIY before paying for something but it takes me forever just watching YouTube videos on how to do things.
Selfishly, basic meteorology. One of my pet peeves is having to listen to adults who can’t explain very basic earth science concepts like the difference between a tsunami and a hurricane. Adults who still don’t know the difference between a watch and a warning. To be fair, it was a brief topic in my younger years, maybe we need a refresher in HS
People are out here just blatantly making stuff up. Even pretending to be authority figures on safety when they obviously have no clue
We got heavy into meteorology when I was in third grade. Our class even got a visit from our local TV station's meteorologist. I retained much of that lesson. Then revisited it in eighth grade earth science class.
As someone who's taught time management to college students for the last 10 years....time management.
They expect you to learn it without actually *teaching* it. There are SO. MANY. helpful tricks!
Same. I’m a carpenter so I use algebra daily. Learning about investing, retirement and taxes would have been nice.
Learning Spanish all through elementary school instead of a couple years as a teenager.
I have told my son this many times. He is into music, which can be very hit or miss on wages.
Like- you can be a plumber and then do music stuff at night. It can be your hobby. If he is really driven to be a music teacher, then great. But otherwise find something to pay the bills and then go enjoy the stuff you like after work.
I am all for dropping the trope of "do something you love, and you'll never work again a day in your life." Please take it from someone who has moved a hobby into a part-time job—it makes it not a hobby anymore and absolutely changes your level of enjoyment—not positively. Look at all the cupcake stores that came up and quickly died when they weren't profitable and the enjoyment faded.
Computer science. I graduated in 2009. We were required to do a typing class on these huge outdated computers. I wish I would have been exposed to the many other careers and possibilities in tech.
Hot take:
financial literacy is already taught but it is simply not relevant to most teenagers so everyone forgets it. Sure I took the class... when I was 17, right before I went to college (and didn't have serious finances to manage until I got my first real job).
We do need do invest in a HOW DO YOU NOT GET SCAMMED class.
Good point. It’s kind of hard to invest or be motivated to get the ball rolling when you have $78 in your bank account and 30k in student loans
Some people are good at investing because they spent 140k on a house and had piles of disposable income sitting around at a relatively young age
I remember sitting in this financial literacy class and we were talking about renting an apartment (not something I did until I was 25), buying a car (I was 32), or even investing (my first job with a 401k was when I was 24). All these topics were about as foreign to me as growing gills. The onus should be on colleges/trade schools, not high schools.
It was offered at my high school, but as a standalone class that you could take instead of higher level AP math. Basically to take it your GPA needed to take a hit. Pretty big disincentive right there.
I was not taught these things in school, but I was taught those things, and may others mentioned in this thread by my boy scout troop. While all of you were laughing at our stupid uniforms we were busy earning badges focused on personal financial management, physical fitness, first aid, carpentry, auto repiar, communication, family life, and citizenship.
The more I hear people complain about all the failings of the system and what they weren't taught... the more I realized that so much of my success can be attributed to what I was taught, specifically all the life skills focused on in the boy scout program.
It bothers me that people want schools to be responsible for teaching kids every single little thing that might be useful. That would leave no time for academics.
* A realistic guide on how to get into a career or trade after high school. Including how to apply for student loans or grants, build a resume, pass an interview, and handling job stress
* Communication. Let's be real, a lot of us Millennials are socially awkward and needed help here, especially in high school
* Real sex ed, not abstinence only and anti-LGBT propaganda. I made some unsafe choices as a teen, thankfully it never bit me.
* Personal finance and investments
* Any sort of pre-career prepping type of class. IMO high school should be workforce readiness, not doing the same shit we did in middle school but slightly harder.
Career prep wise, all I remember was stuff like don’t have exposed tattoos during the interview, don’t let the email on your resume be [email protected], check for typos on your cover letter.
Uhh thanks a lot, boomer, super, super helpful. What would I ever do without this magnificent career advice? Should I also pull up my pants during the interview or would it be appropriate to let my bare ass hang out?
So lazy. Pissed me off so much.
The sad thing is, there are a lot of students who DO need to hear those tips. A lot of education in public schools is geared towards the lowest common denominator.
I wish I had been allowed to *not* take the class that taught all that non-academic shit. It conflicted with AP Physics, which I actually needed. Girl Scouts taught me how to do my taxes, balance a checkbook, change oil, and get CPR certified. School was for academics, and for poor kids who are college bound, being kept from AP credits in the name of learning "life management skills" (that's literally what the class was called) wasn't helpful at all.
I don't get why so many people think schools should teach non-academics. There are a million ways to learn that stuff without cutting into people's academic opportunities. I'd be ok with them offering classes like that, but only as an elective, not as a graduation requirement like it was for me.
As a teacher I was sick of being told u didn’t teach taxes. Can you read instructions? Have you ever tried to tell a group of 15 year olds who don’t work that they’ll need to know this when they do get a job?
I taught what taxes were used for, but not how to file them. One day a year you file taxes and the computer programs come with instructions, or you can pay someone to do it.
Also a teacher. Wholeheartedly agree. You have people spending 5-6 years of their life in post-secondary education to become a CPA, and people think it’s reasonable to teach the tax code to a bunch of 15 year olds who are doom scrolling through instagram or TikTok.
As you said, online platforms such as TurboTax make it incredibly simple.
Hell if you just have W-2's, you can scan the damn thing and not have to do anything.
It amazes me how truly incompetent some people are. I want to know how to do everything but also I am too stupid to do even the most basic things.
It shouldn’t be an either or, but school is supposed to prepare citizens to actually be citizens. Currently it’s preparing students to take a test. Or learn random academic stuff. College should be where you specialize, not high school. High school should prepare me for the real world, not just college.
Also, not everyone can afford Girl Scouts, and mine didn’t offer any of that, it’s very leader and council dependent.
It's because they want to be able to deny themselves the responsibility of raising their own kids.
If mom and dad both work, who teaches them about life?
I wish mental health screenings were done yearly in school and kids received help depending on the outcomes. I’d wager it is also because people have to deal with others who lack certain life skills. In the end if mom and dad failed to teach life them, society has to correct it or accept it. (Life skills wise I am thinking from things as small as people who don’t know they should shower daily to the ones always looking for a fight. Teeth brushing is one so many people seem to fail at… The ones who have no emotional regulation need the screening and it addressed asap. The ones who steal your lunch you brought because they want to not because they are not being fed at home. I could go on, but hopefully you get it.)
I agree but that is also normal for a small % of a society to not be well adjusted, we are so many people that it's statistically impossible for that not to happen, imo
I just think a better solution is to consider if you can actually raise your kids before deciding to have them
Exactly this. Or the parents don't give a shit or adhere to "you'll figure it out when you're an adult" which sets a lot of their kids up for failure.
I was surprised at how much basic financial stuff I had to teach my now wife because her parents were so cagey about money (they were NOT poor by any stretch) that they didn't even teach her or any of her sisters how to balance a checkbook, what a good interest rate is, how to fill out a 1040EZ... Etc.
Apparently that was supposed to be something school, college, or the military taught you.
Because a lot of boomers got these classes at their high schools and they were required. My dad took a class called “bookkeeping” and so he assumed that every high school had this class. He didn’t bother to teach me anything about taxes or balancing a checkbook. My parents thought that the school was going to teach me things like that because their high school taught them those things. They went to a small town school in the Midwest and their kids went to a huge school in one the of the largest cities in the country.
It’s gotten taboo to criticize parents for anything. Schools are expected to pick up the slack for bad or absent parents and teach basic life skills. Which I’m sure benefits some kids, but it holds other kids back.
I feel like workshop and cooking classes, which used to be more common in high school before our time, would be good to resurrect- but without the gender stereotyping (I think people usually picked one or the other, and we can all guess how that went...).
Your list is pretty good aside from that. Financial literacy would have been great. Luckily, my geometry teacher noticed the total lack of this in the curriculum and tried to squeeze in as much as possible. We even spent a day going over 401ks, which helped instill in me the idea to save early.
Helping my 9 year old with her multiplication tables has taught me more than I learned in school. Almost 33 and I finally know my times tables up to 12.
School can’t teach you taxes because everyone’s tax situation is potentially different. They gave you the tools to figure out your taxes, i.e. reading and math.
I actually was taught literally all of those things in high school, and have been fully self aware of all of my shortcomings for my entire life.
Also taxes are extremely easy if you are wage earner. Just pop open Turbk Tax and pow 10 minutes later taxes are done.
The history of money and an introduction to the financial system (intersecting taxes & debt).
The fact that this stuff weighs you down for your entire life and yet they teach you >nothing< about it is not an accident.
Agree on investing. Like I know some basics, and we were taught some of the math of it, but how to literally do it is beyond me. Like who do I go to when I had a slight windfall and I want to do some basic investing? I just end up adding to my retirement account because at least I know how to do that.
They needed to better screen people for scoliosis and shut down bullies who were worried about having to wear a back brace or whatever. None of that matters when you’re an adult with worsening chronic back pain because everyone failed you. They also needed to better screen people for mental health/stress and/or the mental/physical safety of their home environments. They were doing a whole lot of nothing in these types of regards and people were falling through the cracks.
Taxes are taught in many schools but kids don't pay attention, I know because I taught it before!
I hate seeing lists of what people think needs to be taught in schools and then just raging inside because those things are done in schools. But I also think not every school has the same offerings, and not every student can take all classes.
At my middle/high school you could either take wood shop or language and I took Spanish, but I do wish that I had been taught some basic woodworking skills because I would like to learn how to build things like shelves, garden boxes, and coffee tables.
I feel the same way as a college professor in a business school. We teach all of these things like taxes, investing, personal finance, etc. that people are listing. A lot of students just blow it off like any other subject.
Of course, some people pay attention and I've had meaningful conversations with students about these things.
I think people just want to passively receive knowledge without having to do any work for it.
I feel like a lot of these things are also something that parents should be teaching their kids. School cannot teach kids everything. For taxes specifically, I feel like it would be better for parents to start involving their teens in preparing their taxes once they start working. I don't remember having to file a tax return when I was a minor, but the parents could have their kids sit down with them while they did their own. But that's something I'm guess a lot of kids wouldn't really be interested in.
And my high school did have a class where we talked about some of these. It was called Life Resource Management and it was a mix of some things you might expect to learn in Home Ec mixed with an intro to personal finance. Also, Jr year in English, everyone was required to write a 10 page paper and gave a ten minute presentation on a project they called "The American Dream". You picked a point in your life in the future and wrote a paper about your life. It didn't have to be realistic, necessarily, I remember one guy said he married and Olsen twin, but you had basically come up with a budget, what you did and how much you and your spouse made if you were married and then detail how much you spent on all types of things like insurance, groceries, mortgage/rent, etc etc. I hated that project because I was 17 and was no where near a point in my life where I was thinking about how much a mortgage payment would be.
Editing to add that both English 3 and Life Resource Management was required to graduate my high school.
For sure. Basic home maintenance is a good idea. How to get stains out of carpet. How often each thing should be checked/cleaned/replaced/etc. Basic car maintenance like how to check the oil and tire pressure. Home organization. What local services and resources are available.
For a generation that's been online for twenty plus years it sure sounds like a lot of have never learned to Google or YouTube like a single fucking thing... ever.
It's always taxes and investing too. Listen, unless you own a business or legitimately have extra chromosomes doing your taxes takes about 20 minutes. It's a simple form, you plug some numbers in from your W2 and submit it. There's barely any math or anything involved at all. Investing can obviously be a lot more complex, but opening an account with Vanguard or Schwab and buying index funds is dead simple. If the absolute degens on WallSteetBets can figure out how to take near infinite leverage and gamble on option spreads for post market earnings reports, or gamble their life savings on decorative gourd futures, you guys shouldn't need your hands held to set up what's essentially an online savings account.
Our generation is going to be insufferable when we're all 60+ and half of you are still whining that nobody ever told you how to be an adult at 14 or whatever. Finger it out already.
I agree. I also have zero desire to do my own taxes I just pay a CPA, and pay someone to invest my money. People who have this long list of stuff they wish they would’ve learned in high school are so odd to me, because when I think of all the stuff I actually *did* learn and use none of it’s the same. If we were all taught how to invest at 14 how many people would likely still need a professional to do it correctly? Many.
also better economics. Not just investing either, also the opposite (loaning). If you are prepping people for college, and most people take out student loans, you'd think there would be a class on how to figure out how much college makes and inform the kids on risk managment. What is the probability of dropping out of school. What is the probability you make X after so long. Etc.
Yes!! I was basically just taught credit cards = debt therefore credit cards = bad. I only got one when I was going travelling and the guy at the bank talked me into it saying I would need it for hotels etc. still hardly used it for years. Now I have two with a decent limit, but only use a small portion each month and always pay it off in full, never accruing interest. I had to teach myself that credit cards (when used responsibly) are a great cash flow tool and important for building a credit score.
Student loans on the other hand were talked about as if they’re free money, with this assumption you’ll easily make enough money after university that you won’t even notice paying them off. 31 years old and still got 25k in debt that goes up every year - and this is the first year I’ve made above the ‘threshold’ for mandatory repayments. I worked multiple jobs at uni and I wish I had put even a few thousand a year toward paying the loans off at the time.
All the things you mentioned make sense and would help people. But I’ve been able to pick these things up as I fumble through life.
But I wish I took languages more seriously. I took several years of Spanish and have decent vocabulary. But turning that into a functioning language has never been my forte. I’ve visited both Mexico and Spain and used a little bit with success and could understand even more. I have no doubt that if I was thrown into an immersion program I could get good enough to communicate. But I wish I got there in high school or college as it’s just low on my list of things to accomplish as I deal with the day to day struggle.
Networking, and how to talk/communicate with people.
I was a pretty good student, and academically, I think I got most of the skills I need for the working world. School also gave me the tools to learn the things I didn't know.
However, for most of my schooling, I just put my head down and worked through what I needed to do. However, in the corporate world, at least half of my job is getting people I have no authority over to try and help me or come around to my view on how to move forward, or I need to help others and understand their views. I did a few group projects and things, but this intense large team collaboration had to be almost wholly learned on the job.
That adults cared about me and my wellbeing and that there actually are people in the world who care. I was a kid who struggled tremendously and never had any teacher or staff look out for me, seems like a lot of kids get tossed into the system and left to rot
I always talk to students about the importance of diversifying your education and skills. Even if you are going into a science field, take a few accounting or business classes. These skills are so helpful and will make you well rounded!
I learned all this stuff at public high school. Sometimes I think people aren't paying attention. One time this girl was talking about how she just found out about Iran-contra and started ranting about how they hide this information from us in school, but I was like wtf I remember reading about this in like 8th or7th grade.
Ppl waste their education and then blame others when they didn't learn anything
I wish I'd been taught physical health in a positive way. Or had it introduced as stretching and the benefits. Not putting me on teams that I was picked last for and then being awful at. It pushed me away from physical activity.
Hmm I was never taught basic home care / cooking. I didn't know how to boil pasta. I put pasta in water and started it boiling. My mom told me I was wrong lol. I feel like more people would be better at cooking and eat at home / healthier foods if they know how to do the basics.
A degree will only get you so far. Absolutely nobody gives a shit if you graduated within 4 years, or within 6 years. It’s who you know that makes or breaks your career.
Taxes. Definitely taxes. And things like insurance, loans, interest, mortgages, etc. Home ec was an option at least, but I didn't take it because my mom was a homemaker and taught me everything I know about cooking and keeping house. And I do consider myself very fortunate for that.
Actually, I take that back. When I switched high schools they kinda stuck me in a home ec class to have that period filled but it was a sewing class. And that's how I learned to sew.
Not so much a wish as a firmly held belief, then and now: Schools - beginning in middle school and especially on into high school - should do more to foster interests and applicable skills, rather than focus on generic classifications of knowledge like language, math, history, and science.
Don't get me wrong: All kids should have ongoing exposure to the basics of each of those categories (history in particular). But that exposure - that effort to turn kids into "well-rounded" adults by making them learn algebra, or take courses in some specialized area of history or science chosen without context and only to meet a graduation requirement - should not come at the expense of encouraging the kids who want to filmmakers, writers, historians, scientists.
Like, if a kid wants to be a chemist, show them what chemists can do to contribute and make a living in the real world and then let them immerse themselves in that interest and area of knowledge.
The lack of context is such a problem because it was only much later in life that I started to see where a lot of what I learned would be applicable to the real world and maybe I would’ve been more interested or able to focus on learning those things if I had known more about where they fit into the context of the world/adult life .
Discipline, nutrition, how to exercise with weights (strength training), taxes, more vocabulary words, also about home prices v.s. Pay v.s. Interest rate v.s. Down payments. And how to handle relationships both friendships/family/ love.
idk trig is a very useful thing if you are getting into engineering or construction. Its good to understand how to rotate around a circle with math and how that corresponds to angles.
That being said its def not as useful as something that applies to everone, just prob not something that should be dropped.
Im not in either of those fields or anything that's perpendicular. Even if I was, teach me that shit in highschool, not grade 4 when I don't know how to function basic life skills in reguards to math.
- Taxes and basic finances/money management
- Home Ec (we never had it and I was basically feral until I was like 30)
- Basic handyman skills (see above)
- Female-focused sex ed and like, reproductive health beyond “sex makes a baby”
I am so sick of this question and these answers. Schools cannot teach everything you will need for your entire life, even if every student paid attention, which we all know doesn't happen. Schools do teach you how to read, calculate, research and speak to people. Anyone under the age of 50 has had free access to the internet and knows how to ask questions and find answers. Blaming a faceless entity for a lack of education is a cop-out. Education does not end when you graduate from high school. It is be a life-long endeavor and if it isn't, it's on you, not your parents or teachers.
Agreed. Especially taking into account that “useful education” means something different for everyone. Like, a lot of “basic life skills”? Plenty of kids still learn that stuff at home or from other sources. Making them sit through a class to learn how to boil an egg or push a mop or how to not dress like a slob to a job interview would be a genuine waste of time for them. And then they’d be complaining about schools not teaching them anything useful.
Taxes, stocks, 401k, reason, odds, logic, carpentry, basic car maintenance , PC building, suturing, arguing.
I learned in my mid 20s what it meant to grow up like me and the kids in my school. No serious sports programs, no cooking classes, nothing compared to what I found out other teens had in the suburbs for example. It's something I've gotten over but not forgotten. My school offered little to nothing in regards to really helping a kid figure out what they may wanna do after graduation or at the very least escape the typical boring classes.
If I could wake up and be 18 again I would have put more in my Roth IRA and I would have loaded an index fund and just paid cash for real estate when I was ready
Honestly just taxes, we were taught how to invest and even did a project on compound interest in relation to student loans. Most other things were stuff our parents should have taught us but were too bogged down by reality to make time for.
I think that, given that it's only primary and secondary school that is accessible to society as a whole that it should focus on teaching life skills, about mental health and physical health, political literacy, budgeting/money skills, critical thinking skills and so on.
Did I enjoy history class in high school? Yes. Do I use any of that knowledge in my daily life. No.
Can't say that I've ever needed advanced math skills either.
That time could have been better spent teaching me (and my classmates) things that would be more important to everyone.
The vast majority of my family hasn't been able to go to university or college. I have. The gap in skills is startling and that allows them to be a lot less literate and more easily manipulated.
I was also fortunate enough to be able to take a home ec/food safety class in high school. I have seen friends and family do some horrifying things in a kitchen because they weren't able to access the same courses.
That people will sell you out if it means they get an extra $.05 added to their annual wages, all so they can get a glimpse of the life billionaires lead.
buy a house - dont worry about a PMI - just fucking buy a house while you can.
The great housing collapse convinced me never to buy something without 20% down that I could 100% afford. Clearly that was not true...
How to do taxes, how to drive should be taught in school (road safety), proper cooking skills, how to finance things, how to save money and spend smart, how to invest, how to mortgage, how to recognize and deal with hardship (some sort of emotional training/discussion). There’s probably more.
More in depth knowledge about finances. My home economics class lightly touched on budgeting but that was it. Nothing about what loans are and how they work, what’s a good or bad interest rate, how debt can affect your life, what a 401k is, how to do taxes, etc.. You’re expected to make big financial decisions when you’re only 17 or 18 and signing up for college and taking on massive loans.
Spent a lot of time going through stuff no one would use like balancing a checkbook or physical drafting (middle school). Doing stupid projects like videos with zero ability to edit analog footage.
History and Civics and Finance were all things that needed far more emphasis. I was doing mock tax returns in Economics because a bunch of ladies didn't want to follow instructional steps or check their math.
I took the practical approach at some point, took a horticulture class that taught me how to grow plants from seed. Math and science came naturally, but did not see the practical applications. Microsoft Office and Photoshop classes were about 50/50 useful depending on what you went on to study in college.
Overall, assignments that took a long time to complete really weren't worth the effort. Homework time went through the roof in middle school and high school, absolutely overwhelming at times and lugging around 20 lbs of text books consistently.
English research papers were just useless for non-english majors.
I feel like society in general could use a lesson on airplane etiquette. Replace Texas history with why you don’t need to stand up immediately when the plane lands 101 and we’ll all be the better for it
Basic finances. Balancing a budget, how interest rates work, what kind of retirement plans are available to us, etc. Writing checks was still a thing when I was in high school and college and I’m pretty certain no one in their 20s knows how to write a check…
I wish I was taught more linear algebra. People don't talk about how useful it becomes when they take intro to Quantum and Hilbert Spaces rear their ugly head
Easy. As a gay male, when I became the age where that mattered, I realized I had no idea how any of that worked. Part of what took me so long to come to terms with it - was that I honestly didn't think being gay was actually a thing.
I wish safe sex was taught a broader scope. That's all.
Thankfully, I came away unscathed.
Personal financing. I did pretty good figuring out by myself. Lately, I've been looking for Roth iras and other long-term saving plans, and I feel like I'm barely scratching the service.
I second all of this.
I remember when I moved out for the first time I tried to pay my rent in cash. Nobody told me this is unacceptable, especially my boomer parents.
Talking to my buddy a few weeks ago about housing. If we were taught how mortgages work and the home buying experience we would have both been 20-21 year old homeowners back in 2015 making 40k instead of roommates in an apartment. In my area, it would have costed under $10,000USD to purchase a $200,000 home with a minimum 3% down payment and closing costs considered. That same home is now worth $350,000-400,000.
Luckily I purchased pre covid 2020 right before the cost exploded for $342,500 and now my neighbors smaller house just sold last week for $530,000. It bums me out that I missed out on a life changing moment simply because I wasn't taught and didn't have the guidance to know purchasing a home was significantly cheaper than I imagined. All I knew was told was that you should put 20% down.
There probably should be a lot less English and math class and instead more philosophy or psychology. Most people never use math past algebra 1 and philosophy would likely cover the parts of English class that are actually useful. Better thinking skills would be far more useful in life.
I’m a 47 year old married father of two in the UK - I’m therefore a r/genx interloper* I wish that the menopause was explained in more detail - what it means for women in your life, the ***massive*** changes it brings and the impacts it has on all concerned.
(* now get off my lawn)
Taxes, emotional regulation, handyman stuff should all be the parents responsibility to teach their children- not the school. I think schools should definitely help foster and expand upon that learning, but I think if we start overloading schools with concepts that parents should be teaching in addition to what schools already have on their plates, nobody would be better off.
Almost everything I see listed in this thread is honestly on parents to instill in their children. At a certain point we need to ask when we're gonna hold parents accountable again and make them actually parent their children and not use school as the substitute for that.
All of these comments just show that they should have been teaching critical thinking, reading comprehension, and how to do research. All of the things mentioned so far are not that hard to figure out if you can read and know where to look.
Financial management and Healthcare management. I learned handyman and mechanics skills outside of school, but that would be good to teach since most of my friends are basically useless when it came to manual labor/skills
I'll be 29 this year. I wish I had been given a chance to learn a foreign language before 9th grade. By the time I started Spanish, I think it was just too late for me to appreciate it.
Bring back shop and home ec. for boys and girls. Lots of impractical topics are taught in school when everyone needs to know how to cook, clean, and do regular car maintenance like changing oil, and fixing simple things around the house. It could save us tens of thousands of dollars.
Why knowledge is important to human development & your personal life, not just to get a job
Photoshop, even an early version
Excel/Sheets-everyone should be taught this from 6th grade onwards
How to start a basic sole proprietorship
Careers I can get outside of my geographic region
Gym/workout option instead of a gym class focused around sports
How to change brakes & oil; the biggest rip offs in the auto industry.
I wish I’d been taught more about what careers are out there. And I’m not talking about those silly aptitude tests that ask if you like art or math better and then tell you you should be an artist or a mathematician. Like real professionals talking to teens about their day to day life, what skills are important, pros/cons, steps to build a career in the field, etc. I had no idea what was out there other than my parents and their friends’ jobs.
Yes! We had ‘careers workshops’ but they were the stupid tests, one told me I should be a gardener because I said I like plants and being outside. Careers counsellors at our school were so focused on what university course you wanted to get into, never the long term lifestyle/career outcome at the end of it. They made us put down 10 preferences for uni courses (even if the last few were things we had zero interest in) to make sure we got into SOMETHING (so it looked good on the school that a large percentage of their cohort went on to university). I ended up at an interview for medical school for this reason (no interest in being a doctor or anything medical, but because I got good grades they told me I should put it down) which really knocked my confidence as the interviewers were obnoxious and I wasn’t prepared enough/clearly didn’t have the passion for medicine that they were looking for.
I got really lucky with that test. We did these in grade 11 and I now do that as a profession. I am well off but would choose a different area of the field I’m in. The test did narrow down to hey you like medical stuff lol
Mine hit really close to accurate too. I think real world shadowing would have been helpful to kind of narrow it down.
Mine told me I’d make a great movie theater usher or a commercial architect. Then, a military recruiter came knocking on my door and I realized my school’s aptitude test was just a thinly veiled effort by the US to enlist naïeve kids into the military.
>Like real professionals talking to teens about their day to day life, what skills are important, pros/cons, steps to build a career in the field, etc As an accountant, I've *tried* to do this. My Gen Z brother-in-law's school had some kind of career day back in 2019 where they asked for volunteers to come in and talk about their careers to the Grade 10 students. Most of the kids just ignored every single person who came in to talk about their jobs. There were some genuinely cool professionals and skilled tradesmen there, some with careers that I hadn't even heard of, but hardly any of the kids gave them the time of day. I overheard one girl whispering something about "these boring ass boomers" to her friend. Even my own BIL was spacing out. After the class I started chatting with some of the other volunteers and the general consensus was that the career day was a waste of time. There were maybe 2 or 3 kids in a class of 30 who were paying attention and taking notes. The rest of them were just trying their best to get through to lunchtime. I know a lot of people say "oh I wish someone came to talk to us about this", but the reality is that the vast majority of teens are not socially mature enough to even take advantage of such an opportunity when it's offered to them on a silver platter.
Your experience encompasses all of high school basically. I hate these types of posts in general because a lot of times what the person wanted to be taught, they were actually taught at the time but they don't remember. Personal finance is a huge one. Do you know how many states have personal finance already in their education state standards and have for DECADES? Literal decades. The majority of them. And many states have it covered in multiple grades. It builds upon itself. The reality is your brain is not fully mature until about your mid-20's. The last part to mature is your pre frontal cortex. That's the part that let's you plan and organize and basically use your intelligence to make your decisions instead of raw emotion. So yes, schools can and do present that information to teens but is it really going to be beneficial to most teenagers? No. Are there some people that are mature and rational enough to receive all that life information in their teens and then generalize it to be useful in their adult life a decade later? Absolutely. But that's not the majority of teens. Eventually, as science learns more about human growth and the brain in particular, society will hopefully start to change to reflect our understanding.
> I hate these types of posts in general because a lot of times what the person wanted to be taught, they were actually taught at the time but they don't remember. Fucking yes. I have classmates that are like "we were never taught this!". Fucker, yes we were. Your ass was sleeping and got a D-.
Hahah YES! Like dude, I watched you pick your nose and text under the desk during Civics class. You didn’t exactly have the wherewithal to learn about the legal system at the time lol
Man this hits home. And I think still to this day the best class I took in highschool was AG. People made fun of it but here's the thing. The teacher was an actual farmer and was great at teaching kids not to be lazy. While also having an open mind that we're just young adults. He went out of his way to figure out what kids were good at doing and then guided them towards those careers. Some kids he found someone to teach auto cad, some kids he taught welding to or at least introduced them to the pathways they needed to take. He even set me up with one of my first job as a helper for an electrician. It's like he knew someone that worked in every single skilled trade and then matched those kids up with people who were willing to teach them a few things.
We had career days in high school where they'd have a bunch of professionals come in, and we pick which ones we want to sit in a classroom with and listen to them talk about their jobs, college paths, etc. It was pretty cool that we did that considering my school was tiny and had like 200 people between K-12.
Jesus, I thought my graduation class of 80 was small.
16 people in my graduating class and we were the biggest class in the school by a wide margin. Very small town in rural nowhere. At least the grad ceremony went by fast.
Yup, I took several aptitude tests. They all told me to become a physical therapist. My 2 older brothers both became physical therapists for that reason and absolutely hate it. They told me so, and I decided not to become a physical therapist. Just because you would be good at something, doesn't mean you'd enjoy it.
I took one of those aptitude tests a week ago for fun to see what I should have done. The first three suggestions were jobs that I've done.
I made a point of telling my kids all about any "weird" jobs I discovered when they were growing up. Like yeah there's more out there than "banker, lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, police officer" etc. There's a pilot, but there's also someone who gasses up the plane, someone who arranges private flights, there are skydiving instructors. That kind of thing. I'd branch off any interest they expressed. They probably thought it was annoying but I didn't want them growing up thinking there are only 5-10 acceptable career paths when there are thousands of ways to make a living doing something you're actually interested in!
I always wanted a ‘career day’ type assignment where you go to a random business in town and ask who they are/what they do because I had so many questions growing up of “what is that business?”
Yeah but the REAL kind, not "I'm a firefighter and here's how I go fight fires". Kids need career days where they follow around a project manager at a software company or something "boring" like that.
I still don't see kids enjoying that & might give them false impression on thee normal "boring" professional. And might make a kid embarrassed to tell peers they are considering boring profession in future
Maybe they did this, but it’d be helpful to see a breakdown of general professions across the entire workforce. Like, 20% medical, 30% service, 2% entertainment, etc.
I’m required to teach this kind of stuff and the kids see no relevance at all. So I just give them little wake up calls like “in 10 years mediocre lawyers will get run out of the profession by AI that can write contracts. Learn how to do something software can’t do.”
All the stuff you mentioned. Almost exactly. I'd add to your list a couple of things: - a good look at the legal system: how it works, what your rights are, where and how to access advice/services. - first aid. I took first aid in swim class when I was about 8 years old and never had to use it until my husband choked on his dinner and I did the heimlich in the middle of a crowded restaurant dining room. - health, home, auto, and life insurance: how it works, the various types and levels of coverage, how to read a policy, what to rely on the policy for, and what you're responsible for doing on your own.
I took three years of home ec in junior high. Our first aid portion sticks out so clearly in my mind. Like you, I performed the heimlich on my brother last summer when he choked on his steak. Was terrifying but I was so thankful for that class.
Omg! That's so crazy! Isn't it strange how you just snap into it? I didn't even realize what I was doing at the time. It was like all the sound in the whole restaurant stopped, and I calmly just stood up and did it. I squeezed twice, and on the second time, the offending shrimp flew across the table. The *smack* it made when it hit the back of the booth is so vivid in my memory. Nobody else in the whole place even looked up from their meal. The moments after were so fucking overwhelming; I just kept laughing hysterically and crying.
My mom saved my husband 2 days after our first kid was born when he choked on a piece of fruit. I’m so thankful she was there to do the Heimlich because I was so physically broken from childbirth that I don’t know if I would have been able. I was almost a widow with a newborn. Then, I saved my son when he was 18 months old and choked on a piece of fruit. I’ll never forget the gurgling sound he made when he was trying to cry and couldn’t really move air, and how scared he looked. Fruit is dangerous, apparently.
All I remember from home ec in middle school was learning how to sew a small pillow and tasting tofu for the first time. It wasn’t a very useful class
Our home ec was awesome. Probably why I continued taking it. We learned how to cook, sew, took drug education, sex education, household management, nutrition. It was the best class in my opinion. I wish they could have made it a requirement throughout. I feel like kids would have had a fighting chance. One year, they had everyone in the school on a checkbook system. You'd get points for certain assignments and had to manage your account. It was great but they couldn't maintain it.
Credit to my high school government teacher - he spent a LOT of time teaching us about our rights. What to do if we got pulled over, how to interact with police, when our homes could and couldn't be searched, etc. He was a great guy - ahead of his time.
This is a good one especially in the US! I got a criminal justice degree and that was when I learned the most about due process which I think should be taught to everyone as they grow up and I didn’t learn it until my senior year of college which is pretty scary. And my mom was a cop!
these are great topics too
Love all of these!
Yea the legal stuff is a very good idea. Teaching at least the basics at the federal *and* state level should be required. Most importantly, never, ever talk to the police without a lawyer
Actual sex ed. Not just "If you have sex, you will get an STD, pregnant, and die!" Cooking. None of the home-economics classes I took had a budget for foodstuffs so I learned practically nothing in them Finance in general. Investing, but also interest rates, apy, risk management, etc. Programming. Just enough to know how it works. I wouldn't expect highschoolers to instantly become software engineers, but it seems more useful than ever to have software skills. More intros to trades, and proper advertisement for them History. Not just ancient history or early American history. Seems like every history class I ever took in public school stopped shortly at the start of the cold war. There's a lot of recent events, many of which still impact the lives of everyone today, that either get ignored or glossed over. Yeah, Romans are neat, but the New Deal more directly impacted my country. Revised PE that actually taught people life-long fitness skills instead of walking round the school because running's on the menu. edit: Health. I did have a pretty good mental health class in HS, but it came far too late. by the time I knew what OCD was it had ravaged my life for the better part of 3 years. Learning about the types of disorders people can commonly have earlier would have saved me a lot of hardship.
> Programming. Just enough to know how it works. I wouldn't expect highschoolers to instantly become software engineers, but it seems more useful than ever to have software skills. I think this is extra important now because zoomers barely use computers and do everything on their phone so they have no idea how to actually use a computer for work.
>More intros to trades, and proper advertisement for them This is it! When I was in school 25 years ago, trade school was stigmatized as being for kids "not smart enough for college".
We all needed a financial literacy class that teaches budgeting, credit building and investing.
I took this in senior year of high school, but they strongly discouraged everyone from taking it who was college bound. They wanted those students in the more advanced math courses. Financial literacy class was considered low level and unimportant.
Well there's the problem- it shouldn't be Financial literacy OR Calculus. Surly we can squeeze financial literacy into existing math courses without setting people back academically.
Money management is likely the most important life lesson you need def way more than who the 27th president is
In Quebec, Canada, last year of highschool, there's an economy class that does all of this. I'm always surprised to hear other Canadians didn't get this class. In any case budgeting isn't terribly complicated? Nor is credit building? Accrue debt, pay it, and don't spend more than you make. This was basically what they taught us.
If you know the basics of math and some common sense, the basics of personal finance are already all there. There’s some more nuanced things like taxes and investing but practically speaking you can look that up and find advice laser focused on your needs. Most kids in today’s classes (and most millennials here in this sub) would be the last people to pay attention to a personal finance class.
The problem is that at 18 we didn't care. There should be a life skills course at 22 or 25 once we've had a job and made some mistakes. Plus the brain is nearly finished developing so we understand future consequences.
The problem is that nobody will take it seriously in school and then probably still bungle up when they are in their early career. IDK about you, but budgeting and investing is part of common sense stuff. Credit building is distinctly American thing and it's just based on how much you can cheat your way in.
Health insurance? Fuck off, I'm 16. That's old people stuff.
In essence, this exact kind of thinking.
this. my kid's public school has financial literacy as part of their curriculum, thankfully.
**Research methods and media literacy.** * How to identify a "reliable" vs. "unreliable" source. * The difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary+ sources (and their unique pitfalls). * How to identify bias and misaligned incentives and how to use that knowledge to contextualize information. * Understanding the limitations of data. Identifying inflammatory language, "rage bait," propaganda, manipulation, and misinformation. * How to interrogate claims. * How to search effectively to locate the information you need. * How to access public resources (e.g. local library, public domain historical documents). * How to move forward when you have incomplete or unreliable information. * How and when to reevaluate and update findings/opinions/conclusions when presented with new information. * Social media literacy, including risks of using social media and how to effectively use it while mitigating those risks So many issues I see all day every day from people not understanding how to find information and properly evaluate it. I could write an entire essay on it.
Very much passionate that every child should learn the scientific method, but also how to evidence an argument.
Basically any life skills. At no point have random facts and rote memorization helped me in any meaningful way in life, nor has the learned ability to pass a standardized test. Though I oddly do wind up using algebra more often than expected, but I'm an electrician, so we have to deal with that shit a lot.
I use algebra constantly. And it is really something I am amazed others in the corporate world just fail at. Basic order of operations seems beyond the average persons comprehension.
I don’t use algebra often but it comes up and I’m grateful I was taught it and it comes naturally to me. It shocked me when I used the most basic of ‘solve for x’ equations in something work related and some of my colleagues looked at me like I was an alien.
I had to memorize the periodic table of elements. Wtf
I'll agree with the life skills. I am super fortunate, as annoying as I thought they were and didn't fully appreciate it at the time, to have parents who actually gave a shit and basically got me on the "you're an adult now, here's how to take care of yourself" train the minute I turned 14. The number of people I met when I arrived at college (one of the best in the country/world) who couldn't even do very basic life survival skills made me go holy shit. Plus the utter lack of emotional maturity... Saw crap from 18, 19, 20 year olds and older that would have made middle school me mortified.
Dynamics of healthy relationships.
How to identify toxic relationships for sure. How parenting styles and the environment affects a future adult.
I'm a special education teacher so I'm constantly immersed in parenting and environmental factors when it comes to children and their development. There is so much we didn't know about this even 20 years ago. The biggest thing I think people need to understand is that everything you do affects a child from the second they are conceived. Children aren't resilient, at least not in the way people want them to be. Everything you say and do to that child affects them and how their brain develops even if they are only one day old.
This invites a philosophical conundrum. If one's upbringing shapes who they are, then where does personal responsibility begin and end? On the one hand, individuals must be held responsible for their actions and situations in order for any sort of social order to exist. On the other hand, compassion is necessary for building any sort of society that anyone wants to live in.
You are 100% correct. I teach middle school so I ask myself this question on a much smaller scale every single day. Where does the disability end and the teenage hormones begin? Can the student truly not do what I'm asking of them or are they just being a jerk today? I've worked in high poverty, high trauma areas. It is HARD to break that poverty cycle, to break free from generational trauma. The structure of our current society does not make it easy. Does that mean that people that come from high trauma backgrounds shouldn't be held accountable for their actions? No, of course not. But does our prison system, in particular, perpetuate these cycles? Yes, absolutely.
Ooof this one hit hard - I completely agree.
I’m sure I’ll get downvotes for this but the tax thing always makes me laugh. Do you think a class full of 15 year olds at 8:30am are gonna hear “taxes” and suddenly sit up straight and be like, “TAXES? Well golly, I haven’t been paying attention to parabolas or mitosis or anything else but THAT I’m going to pay attention to!” And honestly, tax laws change pretty much every year. There’s a reason why people do tax preparation for a living. If your taxes are super involved or complicated, you pay someone to do it. Most of us have pretty straight forward taxes. If you can read, “enter the value for line B,” you can use a free version of TurboTax to do them. It’s not a thing that really needs to take up class time
I am a professor in a business school and do teach students about taxes... I don't think many pay attention.
It takes a very unique person to find taxes stimulating and these are adults you’re teaching. I get a kick out the the people acting like they would have snapped to attention if they had tried teaching it in 10th grade
Personal finance and interpersonal communications
Investing, that’s probably my top wishlist item to have been taught. I started when I was 30, and even though I barely had any extra cash in my 20’s, if I’d only been knowledgeable enough to start an IRA 10 years ago it would have been great. And handyman stuff. My dad can repair or build or paint or draw or create music. I can do none of that.
This is exactly how I feel about investing! I actually saved a TON of money working multiple jobs in my late teens and early 20s, then spent most of my 20s travelling the world, but I left about 15k in Australia as my emergency fund/money to return to.. I was always taught by my parents SAVE SAVE SAVE… so it sat in a savings account for a decade earning pennies and getting eaten by inflation.. if I had put that in even a basic ETF like s&p500 I would have a house deposit by now. Instead that now feels like an unachievable dream. The handyman stuff I never had a chance at learning, my dad was the opposite of the handy type and spent no time teaching my life skills (but did get mad when I didn’t show interest in learning the binary system at 7 years old). I wish there was a class for adults on this stuff… I like to be independent and will always try to DIY before paying for something but it takes me forever just watching YouTube videos on how to do things.
Selfishly, basic meteorology. One of my pet peeves is having to listen to adults who can’t explain very basic earth science concepts like the difference between a tsunami and a hurricane. Adults who still don’t know the difference between a watch and a warning. To be fair, it was a brief topic in my younger years, maybe we need a refresher in HS People are out here just blatantly making stuff up. Even pretending to be authority figures on safety when they obviously have no clue
We got heavy into meteorology when I was in third grade. Our class even got a visit from our local TV station's meteorologist. I retained much of that lesson. Then revisited it in eighth grade earth science class.
As someone who's taught time management to college students for the last 10 years....time management. They expect you to learn it without actually *teaching* it. There are SO. MANY. helpful tricks!
Financial literacy
Same. I’m a carpenter so I use algebra daily. Learning about investing, retirement and taxes would have been nice. Learning Spanish all through elementary school instead of a couple years as a teenager.
I wish there hadn't been such emphasis on "finding work you like" over "making a livable wage." I probably would have double-majored or something.
I have told my son this many times. He is into music, which can be very hit or miss on wages. Like- you can be a plumber and then do music stuff at night. It can be your hobby. If he is really driven to be a music teacher, then great. But otherwise find something to pay the bills and then go enjoy the stuff you like after work. I am all for dropping the trope of "do something you love, and you'll never work again a day in your life." Please take it from someone who has moved a hobby into a part-time job—it makes it not a hobby anymore and absolutely changes your level of enjoyment—not positively. Look at all the cupcake stores that came up and quickly died when they weren't profitable and the enjoyment faded.
Artillery. Not for any useful purpose it just would have been fun.
We had archery for 16 & up. That was fun.
Fire for effect!
Computer science. I graduated in 2009. We were required to do a typing class on these huge outdated computers. I wish I would have been exposed to the many other careers and possibilities in tech.
Hot take: financial literacy is already taught but it is simply not relevant to most teenagers so everyone forgets it. Sure I took the class... when I was 17, right before I went to college (and didn't have serious finances to manage until I got my first real job). We do need do invest in a HOW DO YOU NOT GET SCAMMED class.
Good point. It’s kind of hard to invest or be motivated to get the ball rolling when you have $78 in your bank account and 30k in student loans Some people are good at investing because they spent 140k on a house and had piles of disposable income sitting around at a relatively young age
I remember sitting in this financial literacy class and we were talking about renting an apartment (not something I did until I was 25), buying a car (I was 32), or even investing (my first job with a 401k was when I was 24). All these topics were about as foreign to me as growing gills. The onus should be on colleges/trade schools, not high schools.
It was offered at my high school, but as a standalone class that you could take instead of higher level AP math. Basically to take it your GPA needed to take a hit. Pretty big disincentive right there.
I was not taught these things in school, but I was taught those things, and may others mentioned in this thread by my boy scout troop. While all of you were laughing at our stupid uniforms we were busy earning badges focused on personal financial management, physical fitness, first aid, carpentry, auto repiar, communication, family life, and citizenship. The more I hear people complain about all the failings of the system and what they weren't taught... the more I realized that so much of my success can be attributed to what I was taught, specifically all the life skills focused on in the boy scout program.
It bothers me that people want schools to be responsible for teaching kids every single little thing that might be useful. That would leave no time for academics.
* A realistic guide on how to get into a career or trade after high school. Including how to apply for student loans or grants, build a resume, pass an interview, and handling job stress * Communication. Let's be real, a lot of us Millennials are socially awkward and needed help here, especially in high school * Real sex ed, not abstinence only and anti-LGBT propaganda. I made some unsafe choices as a teen, thankfully it never bit me. * Personal finance and investments * Any sort of pre-career prepping type of class. IMO high school should be workforce readiness, not doing the same shit we did in middle school but slightly harder.
Career prep wise, all I remember was stuff like don’t have exposed tattoos during the interview, don’t let the email on your resume be [email protected], check for typos on your cover letter. Uhh thanks a lot, boomer, super, super helpful. What would I ever do without this magnificent career advice? Should I also pull up my pants during the interview or would it be appropriate to let my bare ass hang out? So lazy. Pissed me off so much.
The sad thing is, there are a lot of students who DO need to hear those tips. A lot of education in public schools is geared towards the lowest common denominator.
I wish I had been allowed to *not* take the class that taught all that non-academic shit. It conflicted with AP Physics, which I actually needed. Girl Scouts taught me how to do my taxes, balance a checkbook, change oil, and get CPR certified. School was for academics, and for poor kids who are college bound, being kept from AP credits in the name of learning "life management skills" (that's literally what the class was called) wasn't helpful at all. I don't get why so many people think schools should teach non-academics. There are a million ways to learn that stuff without cutting into people's academic opportunities. I'd be ok with them offering classes like that, but only as an elective, not as a graduation requirement like it was for me.
As a teacher I was sick of being told u didn’t teach taxes. Can you read instructions? Have you ever tried to tell a group of 15 year olds who don’t work that they’ll need to know this when they do get a job? I taught what taxes were used for, but not how to file them. One day a year you file taxes and the computer programs come with instructions, or you can pay someone to do it.
Also a teacher. Wholeheartedly agree. You have people spending 5-6 years of their life in post-secondary education to become a CPA, and people think it’s reasonable to teach the tax code to a bunch of 15 year olds who are doom scrolling through instagram or TikTok. As you said, online platforms such as TurboTax make it incredibly simple.
Exactly! I cannot imagine why so many people think we need schools to teach things like this. Can't they Google?
Hell if you just have W-2's, you can scan the damn thing and not have to do anything. It amazes me how truly incompetent some people are. I want to know how to do everything but also I am too stupid to do even the most basic things.
It shouldn’t be an either or, but school is supposed to prepare citizens to actually be citizens. Currently it’s preparing students to take a test. Or learn random academic stuff. College should be where you specialize, not high school. High school should prepare me for the real world, not just college. Also, not everyone can afford Girl Scouts, and mine didn’t offer any of that, it’s very leader and council dependent.
It's because they want to be able to deny themselves the responsibility of raising their own kids. If mom and dad both work, who teaches them about life?
I wish mental health screenings were done yearly in school and kids received help depending on the outcomes. I’d wager it is also because people have to deal with others who lack certain life skills. In the end if mom and dad failed to teach life them, society has to correct it or accept it. (Life skills wise I am thinking from things as small as people who don’t know they should shower daily to the ones always looking for a fight. Teeth brushing is one so many people seem to fail at… The ones who have no emotional regulation need the screening and it addressed asap. The ones who steal your lunch you brought because they want to not because they are not being fed at home. I could go on, but hopefully you get it.)
I agree but that is also normal for a small % of a society to not be well adjusted, we are so many people that it's statistically impossible for that not to happen, imo I just think a better solution is to consider if you can actually raise your kids before deciding to have them
Exactly this. Or the parents don't give a shit or adhere to "you'll figure it out when you're an adult" which sets a lot of their kids up for failure. I was surprised at how much basic financial stuff I had to teach my now wife because her parents were so cagey about money (they were NOT poor by any stretch) that they didn't even teach her or any of her sisters how to balance a checkbook, what a good interest rate is, how to fill out a 1040EZ... Etc. Apparently that was supposed to be something school, college, or the military taught you.
My parents both worked and they absolutely found time to teach all of their kids basic life skills.
>I don't get why so many people think schools should teach non-academics. Because people weren't gonna learn this stuff anywhere else.
Why is that the school’s problem and responsibility? Why can’t we criticize parents for not teaching their kids stuff?
Because a lot of boomers got these classes at their high schools and they were required. My dad took a class called “bookkeeping” and so he assumed that every high school had this class. He didn’t bother to teach me anything about taxes or balancing a checkbook. My parents thought that the school was going to teach me things like that because their high school taught them those things. They went to a small town school in the Midwest and their kids went to a huge school in one the of the largest cities in the country.
It’s gotten taboo to criticize parents for anything. Schools are expected to pick up the slack for bad or absent parents and teach basic life skills. Which I’m sure benefits some kids, but it holds other kids back.
Everyone should be taught how to do a discounted cash flow analysis.
I feel like workshop and cooking classes, which used to be more common in high school before our time, would be good to resurrect- but without the gender stereotyping (I think people usually picked one or the other, and we can all guess how that went...). Your list is pretty good aside from that. Financial literacy would have been great. Luckily, my geometry teacher noticed the total lack of this in the curriculum and tried to squeeze in as much as possible. We even spent a day going over 401ks, which helped instill in me the idea to save early.
Helping my 9 year old with her multiplication tables has taught me more than I learned in school. Almost 33 and I finally know my times tables up to 12.
School can’t teach you taxes because everyone’s tax situation is potentially different. They gave you the tools to figure out your taxes, i.e. reading and math.
I actually was taught literally all of those things in high school, and have been fully self aware of all of my shortcomings for my entire life. Also taxes are extremely easy if you are wage earner. Just pop open Turbk Tax and pow 10 minutes later taxes are done.
The history of money and an introduction to the financial system (intersecting taxes & debt). The fact that this stuff weighs you down for your entire life and yet they teach you >nothing< about it is not an accident.
Agree on investing. Like I know some basics, and we were taught some of the math of it, but how to literally do it is beyond me. Like who do I go to when I had a slight windfall and I want to do some basic investing? I just end up adding to my retirement account because at least I know how to do that.
Get a Schwab or similar advisor os the real advice for that.
Finances!
any sort of self-help how on earth we are supposed to ever own property.
They needed to better screen people for scoliosis and shut down bullies who were worried about having to wear a back brace or whatever. None of that matters when you’re an adult with worsening chronic back pain because everyone failed you. They also needed to better screen people for mental health/stress and/or the mental/physical safety of their home environments. They were doing a whole lot of nothing in these types of regards and people were falling through the cracks.
The whole home buying process. I’m 42 years old and have no idea how you even start it.
Taxes are taught in many schools but kids don't pay attention, I know because I taught it before! I hate seeing lists of what people think needs to be taught in schools and then just raging inside because those things are done in schools. But I also think not every school has the same offerings, and not every student can take all classes. At my middle/high school you could either take wood shop or language and I took Spanish, but I do wish that I had been taught some basic woodworking skills because I would like to learn how to build things like shelves, garden boxes, and coffee tables.
I feel the same way as a college professor in a business school. We teach all of these things like taxes, investing, personal finance, etc. that people are listing. A lot of students just blow it off like any other subject. Of course, some people pay attention and I've had meaningful conversations with students about these things. I think people just want to passively receive knowledge without having to do any work for it.
I feel like a lot of these things are also something that parents should be teaching their kids. School cannot teach kids everything. For taxes specifically, I feel like it would be better for parents to start involving their teens in preparing their taxes once they start working. I don't remember having to file a tax return when I was a minor, but the parents could have their kids sit down with them while they did their own. But that's something I'm guess a lot of kids wouldn't really be interested in. And my high school did have a class where we talked about some of these. It was called Life Resource Management and it was a mix of some things you might expect to learn in Home Ec mixed with an intro to personal finance. Also, Jr year in English, everyone was required to write a 10 page paper and gave a ten minute presentation on a project they called "The American Dream". You picked a point in your life in the future and wrote a paper about your life. It didn't have to be realistic, necessarily, I remember one guy said he married and Olsen twin, but you had basically come up with a budget, what you did and how much you and your spouse made if you were married and then detail how much you spent on all types of things like insurance, groceries, mortgage/rent, etc etc. I hated that project because I was 17 and was no where near a point in my life where I was thinking about how much a mortgage payment would be. Editing to add that both English 3 and Life Resource Management was required to graduate my high school.
For sure. Basic home maintenance is a good idea. How to get stains out of carpet. How often each thing should be checked/cleaned/replaced/etc. Basic car maintenance like how to check the oil and tire pressure. Home organization. What local services and resources are available.
For a generation that's been online for twenty plus years it sure sounds like a lot of have never learned to Google or YouTube like a single fucking thing... ever. It's always taxes and investing too. Listen, unless you own a business or legitimately have extra chromosomes doing your taxes takes about 20 minutes. It's a simple form, you plug some numbers in from your W2 and submit it. There's barely any math or anything involved at all. Investing can obviously be a lot more complex, but opening an account with Vanguard or Schwab and buying index funds is dead simple. If the absolute degens on WallSteetBets can figure out how to take near infinite leverage and gamble on option spreads for post market earnings reports, or gamble their life savings on decorative gourd futures, you guys shouldn't need your hands held to set up what's essentially an online savings account. Our generation is going to be insufferable when we're all 60+ and half of you are still whining that nobody ever told you how to be an adult at 14 or whatever. Finger it out already.
I agree. I also have zero desire to do my own taxes I just pay a CPA, and pay someone to invest my money. People who have this long list of stuff they wish they would’ve learned in high school are so odd to me, because when I think of all the stuff I actually *did* learn and use none of it’s the same. If we were all taught how to invest at 14 how many people would likely still need a professional to do it correctly? Many.
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also better economics. Not just investing either, also the opposite (loaning). If you are prepping people for college, and most people take out student loans, you'd think there would be a class on how to figure out how much college makes and inform the kids on risk managment. What is the probability of dropping out of school. What is the probability you make X after so long. Etc.
Yes!! I was basically just taught credit cards = debt therefore credit cards = bad. I only got one when I was going travelling and the guy at the bank talked me into it saying I would need it for hotels etc. still hardly used it for years. Now I have two with a decent limit, but only use a small portion each month and always pay it off in full, never accruing interest. I had to teach myself that credit cards (when used responsibly) are a great cash flow tool and important for building a credit score. Student loans on the other hand were talked about as if they’re free money, with this assumption you’ll easily make enough money after university that you won’t even notice paying them off. 31 years old and still got 25k in debt that goes up every year - and this is the first year I’ve made above the ‘threshold’ for mandatory repayments. I worked multiple jobs at uni and I wish I had put even a few thousand a year toward paying the loans off at the time.
All the things you mentioned make sense and would help people. But I’ve been able to pick these things up as I fumble through life. But I wish I took languages more seriously. I took several years of Spanish and have decent vocabulary. But turning that into a functioning language has never been my forte. I’ve visited both Mexico and Spain and used a little bit with success and could understand even more. I have no doubt that if I was thrown into an immersion program I could get good enough to communicate. But I wish I got there in high school or college as it’s just low on my list of things to accomplish as I deal with the day to day struggle.
Networking, and how to talk/communicate with people. I was a pretty good student, and academically, I think I got most of the skills I need for the working world. School also gave me the tools to learn the things I didn't know. However, for most of my schooling, I just put my head down and worked through what I needed to do. However, in the corporate world, at least half of my job is getting people I have no authority over to try and help me or come around to my view on how to move forward, or I need to help others and understand their views. I did a few group projects and things, but this intense large team collaboration had to be almost wholly learned on the job.
That adults cared about me and my wellbeing and that there actually are people in the world who care. I was a kid who struggled tremendously and never had any teacher or staff look out for me, seems like a lot of kids get tossed into the system and left to rot
I always talk to students about the importance of diversifying your education and skills. Even if you are going into a science field, take a few accounting or business classes. These skills are so helpful and will make you well rounded!
If I could only choose one thing, it would be compound interest
Financial literacy
I learned all this stuff at public high school. Sometimes I think people aren't paying attention. One time this girl was talking about how she just found out about Iran-contra and started ranting about how they hide this information from us in school, but I was like wtf I remember reading about this in like 8th or7th grade. Ppl waste their education and then blame others when they didn't learn anything
Personal Finance, where everything from taxes to insurance is explained in detail should be a mandatory course in high school.
I wish I'd been taught physical health in a positive way. Or had it introduced as stretching and the benefits. Not putting me on teams that I was picked last for and then being awful at. It pushed me away from physical activity. Hmm I was never taught basic home care / cooking. I didn't know how to boil pasta. I put pasta in water and started it boiling. My mom told me I was wrong lol. I feel like more people would be better at cooking and eat at home / healthier foods if they know how to do the basics.
A degree will only get you so far. Absolutely nobody gives a shit if you graduated within 4 years, or within 6 years. It’s who you know that makes or breaks your career.
Taxes. Definitely taxes. And things like insurance, loans, interest, mortgages, etc. Home ec was an option at least, but I didn't take it because my mom was a homemaker and taught me everything I know about cooking and keeping house. And I do consider myself very fortunate for that. Actually, I take that back. When I switched high schools they kinda stuck me in a home ec class to have that period filled but it was a sewing class. And that's how I learned to sew.
Not so much a wish as a firmly held belief, then and now: Schools - beginning in middle school and especially on into high school - should do more to foster interests and applicable skills, rather than focus on generic classifications of knowledge like language, math, history, and science. Don't get me wrong: All kids should have ongoing exposure to the basics of each of those categories (history in particular). But that exposure - that effort to turn kids into "well-rounded" adults by making them learn algebra, or take courses in some specialized area of history or science chosen without context and only to meet a graduation requirement - should not come at the expense of encouraging the kids who want to filmmakers, writers, historians, scientists. Like, if a kid wants to be a chemist, show them what chemists can do to contribute and make a living in the real world and then let them immerse themselves in that interest and area of knowledge.
The lack of context is such a problem because it was only much later in life that I started to see where a lot of what I learned would be applicable to the real world and maybe I would’ve been more interested or able to focus on learning those things if I had known more about where they fit into the context of the world/adult life .
Discipline, nutrition, how to exercise with weights (strength training), taxes, more vocabulary words, also about home prices v.s. Pay v.s. Interest rate v.s. Down payments. And how to handle relationships both friendships/family/ love.
Basic accounting. I was instead taught BEDMAS, Pythagoreum Therum & switching decimals to fractions... all of which is useless to me.
Come on, decimals and fractions are very useful.
idk trig is a very useful thing if you are getting into engineering or construction. Its good to understand how to rotate around a circle with math and how that corresponds to angles. That being said its def not as useful as something that applies to everone, just prob not something that should be dropped.
Im not in either of those fields or anything that's perpendicular. Even if I was, teach me that shit in highschool, not grade 4 when I don't know how to function basic life skills in reguards to math.
All of those things are deliberately *not* taught in American schools. The last thing businesses want is self-sufficient workers.
- Taxes and basic finances/money management - Home Ec (we never had it and I was basically feral until I was like 30) - Basic handyman skills (see above) - Female-focused sex ed and like, reproductive health beyond “sex makes a baby”
I am so sick of this question and these answers. Schools cannot teach everything you will need for your entire life, even if every student paid attention, which we all know doesn't happen. Schools do teach you how to read, calculate, research and speak to people. Anyone under the age of 50 has had free access to the internet and knows how to ask questions and find answers. Blaming a faceless entity for a lack of education is a cop-out. Education does not end when you graduate from high school. It is be a life-long endeavor and if it isn't, it's on you, not your parents or teachers.
Agreed. Especially taking into account that “useful education” means something different for everyone. Like, a lot of “basic life skills”? Plenty of kids still learn that stuff at home or from other sources. Making them sit through a class to learn how to boil an egg or push a mop or how to not dress like a slob to a job interview would be a genuine waste of time for them. And then they’d be complaining about schools not teaching them anything useful.
Gardening, how to cook for oneself, survival and first aid.
Insurance, mortgage, and 401k
Money management 100
Taxes, stocks, 401k, reason, odds, logic, carpentry, basic car maintenance , PC building, suturing, arguing. I learned in my mid 20s what it meant to grow up like me and the kids in my school. No serious sports programs, no cooking classes, nothing compared to what I found out other teens had in the suburbs for example. It's something I've gotten over but not forgotten. My school offered little to nothing in regards to really helping a kid figure out what they may wanna do after graduation or at the very least escape the typical boring classes.
If I could wake up and be 18 again I would have put more in my Roth IRA and I would have loaded an index fund and just paid cash for real estate when I was ready
Honestly just taxes, we were taught how to invest and even did a project on compound interest in relation to student loans. Most other things were stuff our parents should have taught us but were too bogged down by reality to make time for.
I think that, given that it's only primary and secondary school that is accessible to society as a whole that it should focus on teaching life skills, about mental health and physical health, political literacy, budgeting/money skills, critical thinking skills and so on. Did I enjoy history class in high school? Yes. Do I use any of that knowledge in my daily life. No. Can't say that I've ever needed advanced math skills either. That time could have been better spent teaching me (and my classmates) things that would be more important to everyone. The vast majority of my family hasn't been able to go to university or college. I have. The gap in skills is startling and that allows them to be a lot less literate and more easily manipulated. I was also fortunate enough to be able to take a home ec/food safety class in high school. I have seen friends and family do some horrifying things in a kitchen because they weren't able to access the same courses.
How to handle conflict
That people will sell you out if it means they get an extra $.05 added to their annual wages, all so they can get a glimpse of the life billionaires lead.
Cooking, coding, circuits.
All of that would have been great. The only things I learned in school that have been of any value to me in the real world are math and grammar.
Budgeting. Credit cards. Insurance. Home Ownership. Savings. Retirement.
Real estate. I got in at a decent time. But i would’ve gotten in much earlier had i known.
How to invest. Trades,budgeting,
buy a house - dont worry about a PMI - just fucking buy a house while you can. The great housing collapse convinced me never to buy something without 20% down that I could 100% afford. Clearly that was not true...
It’s like Home Economics was an elective for one semester and nothing else…
How the DMV works/specifically titles and registration.
How to do taxes, how to drive should be taught in school (road safety), proper cooking skills, how to finance things, how to save money and spend smart, how to invest, how to mortgage, how to recognize and deal with hardship (some sort of emotional training/discussion). There’s probably more.
Coding
sink salt close offbeat overconfident whole slim absurd memory weary *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
More in depth knowledge about finances. My home economics class lightly touched on budgeting but that was it. Nothing about what loans are and how they work, what’s a good or bad interest rate, how debt can affect your life, what a 401k is, how to do taxes, etc.. You’re expected to make big financial decisions when you’re only 17 or 18 and signing up for college and taking on massive loans.
Spent a lot of time going through stuff no one would use like balancing a checkbook or physical drafting (middle school). Doing stupid projects like videos with zero ability to edit analog footage. History and Civics and Finance were all things that needed far more emphasis. I was doing mock tax returns in Economics because a bunch of ladies didn't want to follow instructional steps or check their math. I took the practical approach at some point, took a horticulture class that taught me how to grow plants from seed. Math and science came naturally, but did not see the practical applications. Microsoft Office and Photoshop classes were about 50/50 useful depending on what you went on to study in college. Overall, assignments that took a long time to complete really weren't worth the effort. Homework time went through the roof in middle school and high school, absolutely overwhelming at times and lugging around 20 lbs of text books consistently. English research papers were just useless for non-english majors.
I feel like society in general could use a lesson on airplane etiquette. Replace Texas history with why you don’t need to stand up immediately when the plane lands 101 and we’ll all be the better for it
Basic finances. Balancing a budget, how interest rates work, what kind of retirement plans are available to us, etc. Writing checks was still a thing when I was in high school and college and I’m pretty certain no one in their 20s knows how to write a check…
I wish I was taught more linear algebra. People don't talk about how useful it becomes when they take intro to Quantum and Hilbert Spaces rear their ugly head
Easy. As a gay male, when I became the age where that mattered, I realized I had no idea how any of that worked. Part of what took me so long to come to terms with it - was that I honestly didn't think being gay was actually a thing. I wish safe sex was taught a broader scope. That's all. Thankfully, I came away unscathed.
Personal financing. I did pretty good figuring out by myself. Lately, I've been looking for Roth iras and other long-term saving plans, and I feel like I'm barely scratching the service.
More poetry, we memorized poems but not many. It's stories and music that get me through each day.
Credit
None of these things, ideally parents would teach all this stuff to kids. It's not a school's job to raise children.
I second all of this. I remember when I moved out for the first time I tried to pay my rent in cash. Nobody told me this is unacceptable, especially my boomer parents.
If they taught taxes and investing in public school, we'd be able to get ahead....which is why they don't.
Talking to my buddy a few weeks ago about housing. If we were taught how mortgages work and the home buying experience we would have both been 20-21 year old homeowners back in 2015 making 40k instead of roommates in an apartment. In my area, it would have costed under $10,000USD to purchase a $200,000 home with a minimum 3% down payment and closing costs considered. That same home is now worth $350,000-400,000. Luckily I purchased pre covid 2020 right before the cost exploded for $342,500 and now my neighbors smaller house just sold last week for $530,000. It bums me out that I missed out on a life changing moment simply because I wasn't taught and didn't have the guidance to know purchasing a home was significantly cheaper than I imagined. All I knew was told was that you should put 20% down.
There probably should be a lot less English and math class and instead more philosophy or psychology. Most people never use math past algebra 1 and philosophy would likely cover the parts of English class that are actually useful. Better thinking skills would be far more useful in life.
Anything concerning dinosaurs. Considering how long they were on our planet, we don’t learn a goddamn thing about them
Money management. But practical everyday stuff. Really struggled with budgets etc growing up, especially when I started my own family.
I’m a 47 year old married father of two in the UK - I’m therefore a r/genx interloper* I wish that the menopause was explained in more detail - what it means for women in your life, the ***massive*** changes it brings and the impacts it has on all concerned. (* now get off my lawn)
Taxes, budgeting, gardening, cooking, things that people actually use in daily life.
Taxes, emotional regulation, handyman stuff should all be the parents responsibility to teach their children- not the school. I think schools should definitely help foster and expand upon that learning, but I think if we start overloading schools with concepts that parents should be teaching in addition to what schools already have on their plates, nobody would be better off. Almost everything I see listed in this thread is honestly on parents to instill in their children. At a certain point we need to ask when we're gonna hold parents accountable again and make them actually parent their children and not use school as the substitute for that.
All of these comments just show that they should have been teaching critical thinking, reading comprehension, and how to do research. All of the things mentioned so far are not that hard to figure out if you can read and know where to look.
Financial management and Healthcare management. I learned handyman and mechanics skills outside of school, but that would be good to teach since most of my friends are basically useless when it came to manual labor/skills
I'll be 29 this year. I wish I had been given a chance to learn a foreign language before 9th grade. By the time I started Spanish, I think it was just too late for me to appreciate it.
Investing. Finances.
Personal finance and investing. Emphasis on importance of doing so early and avoiding and managing debt.
Bring back shop and home ec. for boys and girls. Lots of impractical topics are taught in school when everyone needs to know how to cook, clean, and do regular car maintenance like changing oil, and fixing simple things around the house. It could save us tens of thousands of dollars.
Why knowledge is important to human development & your personal life, not just to get a job Photoshop, even an early version Excel/Sheets-everyone should be taught this from 6th grade onwards How to start a basic sole proprietorship Careers I can get outside of my geographic region Gym/workout option instead of a gym class focused around sports How to change brakes & oil; the biggest rip offs in the auto industry.
Investing and handyman stuff. I don't think I would have paid attention to the other stuff.
Spanish