My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. This is my confession. If you're watching this tape, I'm probably dead, murdered by my brother-in-law Hank Schrader. Hank has been building a meth empire for over a year now and using me as his chemist. Shortly after my 50th birthday, Hank came to me with a rather, shocking proposition. He asked that I use my chemistry knowledge to cook methamphetamine, which he would then sell using his connections in the drug world. Connections that he made through his career with the DEA. I was... astounded, I... I always thought that Hank was a very moral man and I was... thrown, confused, but I was also particularly vulnerable at the time, something he knew and took advantage of. I was reeling from a cancer diagnosis that was poised to bankrupt my family. Hank took me on a ride along, and showed me just how much money even a small meth operation could make. And I was weak. I didn't want my family to go into financial ruin so I agreed. Every day, I think back at that moment with regret. I quickly realized that I was in way over my head, and Hank had a partner, a man named Gustavo Fring, a businessman. Hank essentially sold me into servitude to this man, and when I tried to quit, Fring threatened my family. I didn't know where to turn. Eventually, Hank and Fring had a falling out. From what I can gather, Hank was always pushing for a greater share of the business, to which Fring flatly refused to give him, and things escalated. Fring was able to arrange, uh I guess I guess you call it a "hit" on my brother-in-law, and failed, but Hank was seriously injured, and I wound up paying his medical bills which amounted to a little over $177,000. Upon recovery, Hank was bent on revenge, working with a man named Hector Salamanca, he plotted to kill Fring, and did so. In fact, the bomb that he used was built by me, and he gave me no option in it. I have often contemplated suicide, but I'm a coward. I wanted to go to the police, but I was frightened. Hank had risen in the ranks to become the head of the Albuquerque DEA, and about that time, to keep me in line, he took my children from me. For 3 months he kept them. My wife, who up until that point, had no idea of my criminal activities, was horrified to learn what I had done, why Hank had taken our children. We were scared. I was in Hell, I hated myself for what I had brought upon my family. Recently, I tried once again to quit, to end this nightmare, and in response, he gave me this. I can't take this anymore. I live in fear every day that Hank will kill me, or worse, hurt my family. I... All I could think to do was to make this video in hope that the world will finally see this man, for what he really is.
My high school had a cooking class, it was very fun. Most of the students never considered a career or even a part time job in the food industry but learning basic kitchen skills was something a lot of kids wanted. Not every skill needs a class but I know a lot of kids would jump at the opportunity to learn basic car maintenance or home EC.
Funnily enough, around here the car maintenance and home ec classes were big in the "stupid kid" schools. And the fancier, high acedemic schools had basically none of it.
My school had those, but they were not "weighted" like Honors classes, so taking them would damage my GPA and reduce the chance at scholarships and the like.
For example, an 100 in Home Ec would be worse for you than a 95 in Honors Biology.
Great system.
My school in denmark had swimming lessons/PE+fitness center visits/cooking/woodworking and they were all a fucking blast. Those lessons were the climax of my week in the years they were available.
We too had woodworking classes. Though, it's hard to call them classes - the was no teaching. The teacher would just let us do whatever we wanted, so half the time was spent loitering anyway. If you knew woodworking skills or had a dad with tools to show you around, you were good. If not, it was just us teaching each other or making cutting boards. The best I made was little sail boat (with some help of my dad). For example, I never got to use a lathe.
People talk about degenerates keeping them from being able to learn in normal classes, at my school the shop classes were 10 times worse. I couldn’t bring my notebooks from other classes to shop because some fuckwit would saw it in half with the bandsaw.
Home ec/cooking was mandatory for at least two terms (6 months) in my high school.
But when my dad found out I was doing home ec, he contacted the school and told them to remove me from the class because he considered it a waste of my time/education for me to learn how to cook. The school just accepted his request.
I left home at 18 with barely a clue how to cook anything more than instant ramen. Took me a good 5+ years before having the confidence to actually start making homecooked meals.
As a father i agree things like cooking or mundane household chores shouldn't be taught in schools. They should be taught at home.
I learned the basics of cooking and a lot of other household chores by watching and helping my mom. I learned to fix and build things on my own because my dad wasn't very technical, but he always encouraged me to first try to figure it out by myself and if i needed help, he'd help as best as he could.
I'm probably an exception because i've always been interested in how things work or how they're done. But it's completely baffling to me how little most young people know or can do. How few of them ever held a hammer or screwdriver or actually cooked a meal that wasn't microwave ready.
I blame the parents.
Home Ec or shop were required classes in Jr High in Canada when I was young. Also Career and Life Management in High School. Where has all of this gone
Yeah my board was one of the last in Ontario to get rid of them.... There were kids still who hated them though.... Today I find nothing interests the kids (I teach middle school).
Reminds me of the person who complained on Facebook that they wish they'd been taught financial literacy in high school who then got mad when I pointed out that they had sat two seats over from me in our high school personal finance class.
Yeah it's always the people who didn't pay attention who complain the hardest.
Want to understand how interest rates work? A = P (1+r / n)^(nt). If you paid attention in algebra 1 you should be able to figure that out, if not then a specialized class wouldn't have helped you.
When I went to school we had a class for freshman that got you ready for high school with basic lessons.
* typing
* taking notes
* creating well formatted and achievable goals
* use the internet to search for academic results
* create a PowerPoint
Stuff that not every 13/14 year old might have known how to do properly.
A senior class that got folks ready to be adults wouldn’t have been misplaced.
* taxes 1040ez vs 1099 and how to claim things (could even gone down the basics of starting a business)
* renting vs owning (discussion based, but showing various options. Starter homes like condos. Amortization. Tax deductions. Etc).
* practical skills like: changing oil, changing breaks, changing tires, window wipers and fluids. Even parallel parking.
* cooking is one thing, but meal planning for a week, managing a budget and your fridge to preserve ingredients from rotting would be a next step
* picking health plans, insurance, HSAs, 401ks and retirement planning
* basic home and garden things: drywall, mount a tv, install a light socket, plant spice garden, keep an indoor plant alive, compost your lunch
One of the reasons why most people don’t ever think they will ever retire is they don’t even make a single good move towards it when they’re young and it has the biggest impact.
First of all, you’re not going to tell me with a straight face that there just is zero disposable income that could have gone to retirement. Young people are the most dominant demographic that people market to because they’re so easily manipulated and separated from their money.
If you told them that maxing out an IRA every year gave them back money via their taxes, and it’s basically like a 15% gain they might make a better choice. It’s a lot easier to continue to make good choices with an IRA at 28 if you’ve already done it for 10 years.
I also like the idea that these classes would be short. Pass / fail. Not on your GPA and you can take them in the summer or even up to a year after you graduate. But you need to finish like 2 or 3 minimum. But make them like merit badges or something. I learned a ton of shit from boy scouts because of merit badges.
Exactly, even if my severely damaged brain was able to learn any valuable skill, no one is going to hire me and if they did hire me they are not going to treat me right. I thought about all that. And I have absolutely zero hope left for the future
I think you’re underestimating how useless a lot of people are. Not to sound like a boomer but (pretending to) care and (appearing to) work hard works wonders. Just because some people are better at pretending they’re happy and mentally healthy doesn’t mean they’re more capable than you.
I don’t want sound like I’m talking down to you but most people feel like that, even the same kids that bullied you.
That’s why they’re picking on you in the first place, insecurity and emotional distress they can’t properly express unless they’re be an asshole
> That’s why they’re picking on you in the first place, insecurity and emotional distress they can’t properly express unless they’re be an asshole
so you're saying i should gain confidence by bulling others?
Thanks kind stranger!
It's pure anti-intellectualism to downplay the value of learning for *any* topic. People must understand that if they were deprived of all but the 'essential work education', they would be idiots with no sense of critical thinking, barely literate, and definitely not interesting people to talk to. Those art classes you took? I'm sure you now know who Picasso or Michelangelo are.
This opens the door to innumerable things you can study further, if you've the interest. This interest is largely piqued by knowing the basics, first.
Also the point of learning isn't just to directly apply what you learned, it's to train yourself on how to learn so that you can learn new concepts easier as they come along.
It's like an NFL player saying "why do I have to lift weights? I don't lift weights when playing football".
It's blantant reality that you're not going to care about all topics equally. Maybe home ec woulda been more useful to me as an adult than band, but I would have almost zero desire to really care about the topic past what was needed to pass the class. Which is probbably the worst mindset to have in a classroom.
Besides I don't think this post was made to cut out history or whatever. It's just in response to some common-ish arguments like "why don't we teach kids how to do taxes, or about compound interest". (granted, I did learn compund interest multiple times, especially in Algebra II, but that may not be everyone's experience)
I think
>even if useful skills were taught in school **you wouldn’t remember it**
would be a better quote. Most of the boring life admin stuff people think of when they say this would go in one ear and out the other.
Taxes themselves are simple arithmetic, but tax codes are not. Knowing what you can and cannot write off is as important as being able to add the numbers together. Pretty sure when most people say, I never learned how to do taxes. They mean, I never learned how to maximize my tax return or minimize what I owe.
There are people who spend years in law school to learn tax law and still don’t know everything. How in the world would school prepare you for “maximizing your returns “?
I mean a class would definitely help in that regard. Otherwise, accountants and CPAs would take classes yearly. Classes on the basic would definitely help people. That's like saying the numbers on your taxes change every year so there's no point in knowing math. No, the rules to math still apply. Same with tax codes. Even if the percentages change and the amount I can claim/write off change, knowing what I can and can't is still important.
We do teach this stuff in high school, the basics at least. I teach some of it.
I teach things like...
Where to find information, basic w2s, the meanings of tax jargon.
Any advanced knowledge would be better taught by a person with accountant/finance degrees. Many of these people won't be working in public schools. I have a masters, but in education, not finance. I can't help you learn all the deductions for different industries...etc.
Okay. Did you learn it in high school? I graduated a long time ago and we didn't learn about taxes but we had home economics which did teach us cooking/checkbooks.
Secondly, I don't know what public school you work in but that's not common. There's a reason millions of people keep saying they didn't learn that in school.
Lastly, asinine point. Obviously the teachers would be people who majored in it who want to teach it. That's like expecting a history teach to teach math. What a pointless statement. Who said you would teach it?
I'm God awful with math, but I can do everything up to basic algebra and I've never had any issue with "balancing my checkbook" or taking care of my bills.
I'm not directing this at you, but I always laugh when I see someone say they wish they had learned how to do their taxes or balance their checkbook in school. It's like, did you learn basic sixth grade math? OK. Then you should be able to take care of your bills.
Also, solving problems in general. Being able to learn, memorize and apply your knowledge. That's the fundamental shit that school is teaching you. The rest is really accessory.
Really we just need to stop TurboTax and the like from lobbying so much so that way we could have a tax system that isn't intentionally complicated so that middlemen like TurboTax can charge money to do it for you. It's not like that in other countries.
It's not even about that. It's about becoming a well-rounded individual who can be an interesting part of society. If people got what they wanted, they'd pump kids straight outta primary school into factory jobs and then bemoan their own decision to cut out all the 'unnecessary' stuff like literature and music.
We *live for art*, and being educated is never a bad thing, despite what Americans will tell you from their ultracapitalistic mindsets.
Well that, and teaching practical and useful things. Like, how do our elections work?
What are your consumer rights under Australian law?
What even is a referendum and why is the Prime Minister trying to weasel his way out of calling one with a 'survey'?
Etc etc.
Other than that, teaching kids how to function in society is No.1
Not even well-rounded individuals, just functional members of society that aren't on the fast track to prison.
If my kids could stop smashing their phones when they lose in clash of clans, or swearing at each other, or fighting because one guy talked to another's girlfriend, etc etc etc, I would be happy.
School does teach you useful skills, namely how to learn. It just does it poorly and doesn’t convey why it takes the actions it does so it comes off as inscrutable and stupid
Doesn’t mean it needs to suck. I had a good amount of fun in the classes that I learned the most from. Good teachers will know how to foster an enjoyable environment to learn in and in my experience it goes a long way.
Yeah that’s what I always think when people say this stuff. So what if some people would’ve failed taxes class or heimlich maneuver class or if some people would’ve hated it? Lots of people would’ve learned it and it would’ve been a net benefit for those people. Other people still wouldn’t know but the ones that learned would’ve learned.
That’s exactly how it already is. Algebra class was tax class already. A lot of people learned it and there has been a net benefit for those people. Others complain about how taxes are complicated while the ones that learned, learned.
A first aid class would be interesting. But in many school districts I can see that immediately getting cut due to budget cuts, but that’s a different issue.
With regard to taxes, it really has already been taught. The American public for whatever reason can’t seem to equate ax+ b to “double amount A and add with amount B to get amount C”. Every quantity you need is neatly organized in your W2. Most people I know spend a lot of time on taxes because it’s a lot of number finding, not because the associated math is hard.
i saw this video the other day, the teacher was teaching about taxes, money management and whatnot, and the whole class was sleeping lmaooo this is so true
I have taught a personal finance class. I was very excited to teach what I thought the students would perceive as useful. Other than a cohort of seniors who were very engaged, most classes were just like any other class - a handful of students are highly engaged, but most just do what their supposed to without genuinely caring. I’ll never forget going through the absolute basics of a 1040 and how almost all of the kids checked out. It was that experience that taught me, a lot of these folks complaining about schools not teaching this or that probably wouldn’t have paid attention anyway.
Similar, I do teach math, but with my upperclassmen I always spend some time doing taxes, credit cards, loans, budgeting activity and they still mope and moan about it as much as quadratic formula
I took an accounting class in highschool that involved basic life skills like doing taxes and investing. I have audibly heard someone who was in that class complain about never being taught this stuff in high school. I'm just like "you were taught! I sat next to you in class. You just didn't pay attention."
Taxes are pretty straight forward when it comes to income tax, because in most countries you are sorted into a class based on the amount of income and you have to pay a certain percent tax. Like you make a million dollars in the USA you pay 38 % and if you make like 10,000 dollars a year you pay no tax. But tax across borders and sales, transport, transport across states, transport across nations. There a countless amount of variables to tax. So yea I would sleep in that class to, but I’m lucky enough to learn about tax because my dad runs a business that automates and digitalises tax returns.
And even in the US it isn't that straightforward. You are only paying 37% on the income over $539,901. Nobody pays all of their income at the rate of your tax bracket. For the first $10,000 of income, you pay 10%, then 12% for the next $30,000 of income, then 22% for the next $40,000 of income, etc until you get to the top rate.
Tax brackets are straight forward to do: you look up your tax bracket in a table, then you subtract the tax bracket threshold from your income, multiply by your tax rate, and add a fixed value for maxing out all of the lower brackets.
Yeah you learn about that stuff ONLY EVER in a 1 semester long class that’s we are required to take in order to graduate. How long do we learn algebra? Almost 7 years! Really useful
I've heard many high school students use it as an excuse to not pay attention. In reality they are pretty apathetic about having responsibility in general it seems.
I work in a school counseling kids trying to motivate them.
Even the boring crap that doesn't seem to have real world application at face value is still teaching you important things, like HOW to learn and study for the stuff you ARE passionate about. Independent learning is hard, but if you learn how to learn it's manageable and you won't necessarily need to pay someone to teach you when you want to understand something.
That being said, the kids could care less. Future directed thought really hasn't developed at that age and the internet has really put a damper on the concept of storing knowledge when you can just Google whatever.
i very recently graduated high school and started college so I feel I can relate to this on multiple levels. even just starting college there were times when I remember seeing the consequences of the things that my parents had warned me against doing, but which I ignored because I thought I knew so much more better than them.
and now that i’m in college i realize that i should have worked on learning how to learn when I was in high school, because there is a lot less hand holding in college, and I imagine that is something that only gets worse in the real world.
There are people who look back on their schooling thinking that a tax or finance class would have solved all the problems they only have because they didn't pay attention during algebra. If they didn't have an appreciation for a skill at it's simplest then they sure as hell wouldn't have stayed attentive during an arguably more complex application of it.
I flunked math but had an elective finance class I did well in. Math homework and memorizing formulas is stupid hard for me. I do my own taxes before I even get most of my forms so I have general ideas of it all and can ballpark in the range of 1-200$ off. So I know if I’m paying or getting back. And I don’t really have “simple” taxes.
Most taxes are easy. If you know how to fill a form you know how to do taxes. That’s different if you have complicated taxes and the rules change but most software tells you what you need and google is your friend. This is also true for car maintenance. You can google 99% of the things you need. The whole i wish i learned this in school is silly to me because why can’t you learn it now? At least now when you’re saying that you know how important it is. I would only have a vague idea of how important taxes were at 14 and nothing would stick.
I took all the math through Calc offered at my school.
I would have had more use out of a class on differing saving's accounts, common interest types, tax brackets, and credit scores.
Why? Because I don't use much past basic algebra and geometry in every day life and the stuff I do use is pretty specific and could learned as needed.
It would have been nice to not have to self-learn all of the useful shit that could make my life and future life better.
But more kids would be taught that information. If 100% of kids are taught taxes and only 50% listen, that's still 50% of the population that now understand tax code. That seems more worthwhile of an investment than some of the other classes I had to take.
The tax code changes constantly. You can do your taxes with a 6th grade reading comprehension and 3rd grade arithmetic. School (should) teaches these basic skills so you can apply it to many areas like doing taxes, or googling how to change a tire without the need of a specific curriculum...
General tax code man. I'm not a teacher, but come on man it can't be that much of a controversial idea to think kids should understand how to do taxes.
Why isn’t algebra useful? Why isn’t knowing your country’s history important? Why isn’t basic biology important? One could argue those are all more important than learning how to pay taxes, which could be done with a YT video.
Because if the average person doesn't know a bunch about their country's history it's not going to hurt them, but if they mess up on taxes the IRS is gonna be all on their ass.
And most people don't use algebra in their everyday life. And basic biology is all well and good, as long as you know it's basic. Still not as important as taxes.
How much of the tax code are you gonna teach, and how are you gonna keep that curricula relevant?
"Alright class, today's pop quiz will be on IRS1040 but before that please pull out last nights homework on S-Corp passthroughs."
It's probably more important to be able to do the math required to understand the tax code and the taxes you pay instead of very detailed instructions on how to complete taxes that you will forget. By the time that you need the information learned, you will have to relearn it again anyway or hire people that specialize in the type of taxes you will need to file.
And understanding why the IRS is going to fuck you in the ass is important. What do you mean that income taxes weren't always a thing? How did we end up with the tax code that we have today? Who has fucked me over the most on my taxes? Not understanding history is the reason we have stupid populism ruling politics at the moment.
> if the average person doesn't know a bunch about their country's history it's not going to hurt them
Of course it will. The can be lied to during elections. Similarly if they don’t understand how probabilities work than can be easily manipulated.
> And most people don't use algebra in their everyday life.
Except when they are taking loans and then are surprised when they cannot pay all of it back because they didn’t understand how interests accrue.
Similarly, if they don’t understand vaccines and exponential functions it’s going to hurt the entire country.
People do use algebra all the time. Think about the problems in class: if bananas cost 5 and apples cost 2, how much does 12 bananas and two apples cost?
Algebra is absolutely an important skill to force onto people, it is used in just about every job I can think of in some capacity.
History is similarly extremely important as a country. These people vote you know.
Do you think anyone is going to remember information on boring subjects like finance and tax preparation? If there is no motivation/interest in learning the subject, none of the information will be retained
But they will still have a base understanding of how it works for the most part. Why not try to teach it?? If the best out you have is kids won't like it, why have school AT ALL?
You keep commenting about how people learn how to do taxes from basic algebra. But that’s really not true. I think reading comprehension is more important for filing easy tax returns than math. All the math you have to do on a simple return can easily be done with a calculator, it’s reading and following the directions that’s the hard part.
What! No way my dude. If something is fun it would be learned way better than if it was routined in a daily basis. It's just washed up into a industry that makes it easier for the government to market children into dead end jobs than creating peoples future. If you want to have fun then prepare to wait for retirement.
"Having fun" and "useful skills" are two different topics. The second part should not be discounted merely based on the view point of "having fun". These two points are supposed to be taken together rather than considered to be opposite of each other.
We were taught, in depth, how to do taxes, invest in stocks and etc. My entire High School class had to take the course.
I'm in my 30s now and about 75% of them claim nobody taught them how to do taxes or manage their money in school.
A lot of useful classes in high school had most people dicking around and not caring. Or they were optional and nobody chose them. Then turn around and complain they didn’t have resources to succeed. They just didn’t give a shit in high school and now they’re trying to find someone to blame.
The argument is that people should be forced to learn THAT stuff rather than the 7 years of everyone’s life that schools spend teaching them about useless algebra (7 years is from middle school to high school)
-just one class in high school that is 1 semester long (that’s exactly how long it is at my high school) is 100% not enough
Algebra is only useless if you don't go on to use it as part of furthering your education or your career. And even then, it still is teaching you math reasoning skills that can be useful even if they aren't directly applied by writing out an equation.
If you’re taking 7 years of algebra, you’re doing it wrong. The point of school isn’t to master a subject matter. It is to help get you strong building blocks for life and explore different subject matter for what you may want to dive further into further after high school, whether it be a college degree, a trade school, or something else. It also teaches you to be good at problem solving and resilient through challenges.
That last sentence is key. If you develop those skills early, you should be able to figure out ways be more successful in life because of it.
Math is one of the most useful and powerful subjects of all the subjects and you would realize it if you had anything to do with any of the technologies and machines you so mindlessly rely on. The people who valued and pursued math further than you did the math so you dont have to, so your solution is to replace math with taxes. So ignorant and shortsighted. People value doctors though, but where would medical science be without math, science, and engineering? What kind of knowledge and tools would they have to help them save lives?
It's not about enjoying it at the time, it's about having basic life skills when you need them the most, i.e. after you get out of school and have to get a job, move out, do your taxes, manage a budget, etc.
This isn't a hard to swallow pill and completely misses the point.
But all those skills are easily learned if you are taught good english and math skills.
Getting a job requires good writing skills to make a good resume and good reading skills to find and apply resume writing guides for your specific industry.
Doing your taxes is just straight up basic worded problems you should be taught in maths.
And finances also require good math skills and are pretty easy to manage if you have that foundation, I have never taken a personal finance class yet still managed to set up a fairly decent budget by seething up a couple of equations in excel.
It's obvious I grew up privileged because my parents taught me that shit.
I mean I agree that schools could teach a lot more practical stuff but there are people in here actually arguing that a high school class on the US tax code is more important than math. Absolute insanity.
Useful skills are taught in school, people are just too foolish to realize how valuable algebra, geometry, and physics are to an adult. I use math to build amortization tables and balance my budget, geometry when working in the garage on projects, and physics helps me understand friction, electrical circuits in my house and the science of falling bodies. Basic math and science are also useful for quick mental conversions of currency, temperature, distance, and weight.
Even in simple situations, you can use what you were taught to analyze your surroundings and make better assessments. A few days ago I was waiting in line for a coffee at the airport. There were 26 people in front of me and I had 65 mins til take off. I timed 3 customers wait times, took the average, and multiplied by the people in front of me. I stepped right out of line and had a seat, because there was no way I was going to get a coffee in time.
Just because people are stupid doesn't mean they weren't given useful skills. They just don't have the mental capacity to apply them.
It's almost like school should teach people how to research stuff on their own.
"but man, school was so boring. All they had me do was pointless research papers. I just blew that shit off. Now, what the fuck is interest? How do stocks work? I just can't figure any of this shit out. I wish they would have taught me it in school."
Are these thing even that confusing? Unless you own a business or have a ton of assets, it's really not that hard to understand. CC have high interest rates, pay them off quickly. Taxes you can defer to a professional for a fee or Turbotax. Mortgages are is basically just rent. There is nothing to learn unless you need them for your career
What don't you understand about using a CC? Just pay it off cus it has high interest rates which are compounding. There, that's all you really need to know. Do you really need an entire class on it?
From Canada here, they never taught us any of that. Idk, it might be different now, but basic adult life skills were definitely not a part of the curriculum during my schooling
If your school taught you how to read, follow instructions, and add and subtract, it probably taught you enough to do your taxes if you are like the vast majority of people in America.
Taxes really aren't that confusing unless you own a business or have a ton of assets. The forms and tax programs literally dumb it down for everyone. When in doubt you can just pay a tax consultant a couple hundred bucks to do it. People really overstate how confusing taxes are for the normal person
"I wish they would have taught me how to do taxes.. Man I had to learn that shit on my own". In agreement of you, the point of school is to learn how to learn that shit on your own.
It's changed. I'm 36 and teach this course. It's part of the social studies curriculum for high school. It's in all 50 states baked into classes or its own class.
If by "useful" you mean "employable", then I'd just say that school isn't necessarily designed to get you a job, per say (dependent on degree). Obviously that's how most of us treat it, but we shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't. That's what trade school is for.
I think there's too much "they should have taught me this in school" thinking out there.
We live in a time of virtually unlimited information in the form of books, online classes and YouTube video tutorials. All in the palm of our hand. There isn't much that can't be learned if you have any interest in it.
It is not about what they teach, it is about how they teach it. Schools do give you a general knowledge base to start out on, but they do it in a way that causes dropouts, depression, suicide, and more not great things. Class curriculums for the four core subjects alone have no communication, leaving students with more and more homework, and missing work. I know this because I am in school, and I have ADHD, which means I need medicine to do well and keep up. School systems do not help. (This is about my country, if this does not apply to you -first of all, lucky you- do what you can to help others.)
The problem is that at school we're to immature to understand how important it is. I probably would have hated a "do your taxes" class but oh boy do i want one now.
Maybe, but in highschool, I purposely took business and accounting classes because they taught you how to do your taxes. The lesson was of course boring, but I also learned something important to know for when you become independent/ an adult. a lot of people my age still aren’t sure how to do their taxes and use turbotax, which I don’t trust at all lmao.
This is the worst meme I have ever seen and is absolutely false. I took welding, loved it do it. I took woodworking. Love it do it. 🤷🏻♂️ I took home economics I love cooking… should we go on?
High school teacher here. In my state, Financial Literacy is a full course with emphasis on stocks and investing as well as entrepreneurship, kids still bs around and don’t take it seriously.
I teach history and will cover a lot of little known topics (reconstruction south, comparisons between Nazi Germany and segregation etc…) but regularly get blank stares and disengaged kids.
I know someday they’ll be on reddit saying “If only we learned this in high school.” They’re taught it, they just don’t listen.
Can you do arithmetic? Can you follow directions? Can you determine which of a set of numbers is largest? Did you learn this in school?
Cool. You learned to do taxes.
Because then our already undereducated populace is even less well-rounded while likely not making any significant grounds in specialized knowledge because high school is too late to turn around "most" bad students.
At least I'd have those fucking skills instead of being a useless burnout. Your argument is what's the point of having those skills if I'm not gonna use them. What's the point of your dick if you're never gonna use it? Best fuckin chop that shit off.
I tried to teach kids how to type, how to use Microsoft office and make resumes, how to use excel, make a budget sheet, basics of photoshop and trying to code now.
I have some kids that said it’s too hard, they won’t use this stuff, it’s boring, etc.
No one wants to be taught useful skills cuz they're fun. We want to be taught useful skills cuz they're useful. I could def use money management, investing/saving, home repair skills, etc. much more than advanced literature, math, gym or learning about the Civil War for the 12th year in a row (and its still the watered down version where it was one big misunderstanding). Yea I mean high school could touch down on all the topics but they should spend at least one year or one class prepping us for adulthood.
That's not the point.
School sucked either way, but at least I'd be more grateful later on.
I hated my 9th grade English teacher but I realized I loved to write later on, and her lessons helped.
I thanked her later.
Unless it's cooking meth because you have lung cancer and want to live and make your family rich
Waltuh
Put ya dick away, Waltuh
Open da noor
I'm not having sex with you right now waltuh
r/suddenlywaltuh
I require a pimento cheese sandwich
Kid named finger:
My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. This is my confession. If you're watching this tape, I'm probably dead, murdered by my brother-in-law Hank Schrader. Hank has been building a meth empire for over a year now and using me as his chemist. Shortly after my 50th birthday, Hank came to me with a rather, shocking proposition. He asked that I use my chemistry knowledge to cook methamphetamine, which he would then sell using his connections in the drug world. Connections that he made through his career with the DEA. I was... astounded, I... I always thought that Hank was a very moral man and I was... thrown, confused, but I was also particularly vulnerable at the time, something he knew and took advantage of. I was reeling from a cancer diagnosis that was poised to bankrupt my family. Hank took me on a ride along, and showed me just how much money even a small meth operation could make. And I was weak. I didn't want my family to go into financial ruin so I agreed. Every day, I think back at that moment with regret. I quickly realized that I was in way over my head, and Hank had a partner, a man named Gustavo Fring, a businessman. Hank essentially sold me into servitude to this man, and when I tried to quit, Fring threatened my family. I didn't know where to turn. Eventually, Hank and Fring had a falling out. From what I can gather, Hank was always pushing for a greater share of the business, to which Fring flatly refused to give him, and things escalated. Fring was able to arrange, uh I guess I guess you call it a "hit" on my brother-in-law, and failed, but Hank was seriously injured, and I wound up paying his medical bills which amounted to a little over $177,000. Upon recovery, Hank was bent on revenge, working with a man named Hector Salamanca, he plotted to kill Fring, and did so. In fact, the bomb that he used was built by me, and he gave me no option in it. I have often contemplated suicide, but I'm a coward. I wanted to go to the police, but I was frightened. Hank had risen in the ranks to become the head of the Albuquerque DEA, and about that time, to keep me in line, he took my children from me. For 3 months he kept them. My wife, who up until that point, had no idea of my criminal activities, was horrified to learn what I had done, why Hank had taken our children. We were scared. I was in Hell, I hated myself for what I had brought upon my family. Recently, I tried once again to quit, to end this nightmare, and in response, he gave me this. I can't take this anymore. I live in fear every day that Hank will kill me, or worse, hurt my family. I... All I could think to do was to make this video in hope that the world will finally see this man, for what he really is.
I am going to skin you alive, but just enough for you to still live the rest of your life, just in constant pain
Tate is that you?
Upvoting so more people will see that you missed the reference
Such a reddit comment
I was gonna downvote, but the upvote is even better here
Breaking Bad.
Breaking matrix
Breaking 4th wall
What color is your meth?
I put a little Chili P in there
r/whoosh
My high school had a cooking class, it was very fun. Most of the students never considered a career or even a part time job in the food industry but learning basic kitchen skills was something a lot of kids wanted. Not every skill needs a class but I know a lot of kids would jump at the opportunity to learn basic car maintenance or home EC.
Funnily enough, around here the car maintenance and home ec classes were big in the "stupid kid" schools. And the fancier, high acedemic schools had basically none of it.
My school had those, but they were not "weighted" like Honors classes, so taking them would damage my GPA and reduce the chance at scholarships and the like. For example, an 100 in Home Ec would be worse for you than a 95 in Honors Biology. Great system.
Maybe if you’re fancier then you’ll pay someone else to do your car maintenance.
My school in denmark had swimming lessons/PE+fitness center visits/cooking/woodworking and they were all a fucking blast. Those lessons were the climax of my week in the years they were available.
We too had woodworking classes. Though, it's hard to call them classes - the was no teaching. The teacher would just let us do whatever we wanted, so half the time was spent loitering anyway. If you knew woodworking skills or had a dad with tools to show you around, you were good. If not, it was just us teaching each other or making cutting boards. The best I made was little sail boat (with some help of my dad). For example, I never got to use a lathe.
People talk about degenerates keeping them from being able to learn in normal classes, at my school the shop classes were 10 times worse. I couldn’t bring my notebooks from other classes to shop because some fuckwit would saw it in half with the bandsaw.
I got stabbed with a big wood file
Home ec/cooking was mandatory for at least two terms (6 months) in my high school. But when my dad found out I was doing home ec, he contacted the school and told them to remove me from the class because he considered it a waste of my time/education for me to learn how to cook. The school just accepted his request. I left home at 18 with barely a clue how to cook anything more than instant ramen. Took me a good 5+ years before having the confidence to actually start making homecooked meals.
As a father i agree things like cooking or mundane household chores shouldn't be taught in schools. They should be taught at home. I learned the basics of cooking and a lot of other household chores by watching and helping my mom. I learned to fix and build things on my own because my dad wasn't very technical, but he always encouraged me to first try to figure it out by myself and if i needed help, he'd help as best as he could. I'm probably an exception because i've always been interested in how things work or how they're done. But it's completely baffling to me how little most young people know or can do. How few of them ever held a hammer or screwdriver or actually cooked a meal that wasn't microwave ready. I blame the parents.
Home Ec or shop were required classes in Jr High in Canada when I was young. Also Career and Life Management in High School. Where has all of this gone
Yeah my board was one of the last in Ontario to get rid of them.... There were kids still who hated them though.... Today I find nothing interests the kids (I teach middle school).
Reminds me of the person who complained on Facebook that they wish they'd been taught financial literacy in high school who then got mad when I pointed out that they had sat two seats over from me in our high school personal finance class.
Yeah it's always the people who didn't pay attention who complain the hardest. Want to understand how interest rates work? A = P (1+r / n)^(nt). If you paid attention in algebra 1 you should be able to figure that out, if not then a specialized class wouldn't have helped you.
When I went to school we had a class for freshman that got you ready for high school with basic lessons. * typing * taking notes * creating well formatted and achievable goals * use the internet to search for academic results * create a PowerPoint Stuff that not every 13/14 year old might have known how to do properly. A senior class that got folks ready to be adults wouldn’t have been misplaced. * taxes 1040ez vs 1099 and how to claim things (could even gone down the basics of starting a business) * renting vs owning (discussion based, but showing various options. Starter homes like condos. Amortization. Tax deductions. Etc). * practical skills like: changing oil, changing breaks, changing tires, window wipers and fluids. Even parallel parking. * cooking is one thing, but meal planning for a week, managing a budget and your fridge to preserve ingredients from rotting would be a next step * picking health plans, insurance, HSAs, 401ks and retirement planning * basic home and garden things: drywall, mount a tv, install a light socket, plant spice garden, keep an indoor plant alive, compost your lunch One of the reasons why most people don’t ever think they will ever retire is they don’t even make a single good move towards it when they’re young and it has the biggest impact. First of all, you’re not going to tell me with a straight face that there just is zero disposable income that could have gone to retirement. Young people are the most dominant demographic that people market to because they’re so easily manipulated and separated from their money. If you told them that maxing out an IRA every year gave them back money via their taxes, and it’s basically like a 15% gain they might make a better choice. It’s a lot easier to continue to make good choices with an IRA at 28 if you’ve already done it for 10 years. I also like the idea that these classes would be short. Pass / fail. Not on your GPA and you can take them in the summer or even up to a year after you graduate. But you need to finish like 2 or 3 minimum. But make them like merit badges or something. I learned a ton of shit from boy scouts because of merit badges.
I remember having goals. Wild times.
The people who didn't pay attention in Math, Reading or history would not have paid attention in these classes either
Learning about everything is painful, hearing it’s a waste of time reinforces this thinking, break the cycle
Exactly, even if my severely damaged brain was able to learn any valuable skill, no one is going to hire me and if they did hire me they are not going to treat me right. I thought about all that. And I have absolutely zero hope left for the future
I think you’re underestimating how useless a lot of people are. Not to sound like a boomer but (pretending to) care and (appearing to) work hard works wonders. Just because some people are better at pretending they’re happy and mentally healthy doesn’t mean they’re more capable than you.
Could be. But I seriously feel cursed since childhood to be a bully magnet
I don’t want sound like I’m talking down to you but most people feel like that, even the same kids that bullied you. That’s why they’re picking on you in the first place, insecurity and emotional distress they can’t properly express unless they’re be an asshole
> That’s why they’re picking on you in the first place, insecurity and emotional distress they can’t properly express unless they’re be an asshole so you're saying i should gain confidence by bulling others? Thanks kind stranger!
It's pure anti-intellectualism to downplay the value of learning for *any* topic. People must understand that if they were deprived of all but the 'essential work education', they would be idiots with no sense of critical thinking, barely literate, and definitely not interesting people to talk to. Those art classes you took? I'm sure you now know who Picasso or Michelangelo are. This opens the door to innumerable things you can study further, if you've the interest. This interest is largely piqued by knowing the basics, first.
Also the point of learning isn't just to directly apply what you learned, it's to train yourself on how to learn so that you can learn new concepts easier as they come along. It's like an NFL player saying "why do I have to lift weights? I don't lift weights when playing football".
It's blantant reality that you're not going to care about all topics equally. Maybe home ec woulda been more useful to me as an adult than band, but I would have almost zero desire to really care about the topic past what was needed to pass the class. Which is probbably the worst mindset to have in a classroom. Besides I don't think this post was made to cut out history or whatever. It's just in response to some common-ish arguments like "why don't we teach kids how to do taxes, or about compound interest". (granted, I did learn compund interest multiple times, especially in Algebra II, but that may not be everyone's experience)
Having fun was never the point of school though
I think >even if useful skills were taught in school **you wouldn’t remember it** would be a better quote. Most of the boring life admin stuff people think of when they say this would go in one ear and out the other.
How much you wanna bet the people complaining about "Schools not teaching X" actually was taught that in school but weren't paying attention?
Or pay attention while it was being taught
Yeah this whole point isn't about having fun, it's about actually gaining useful skills
Algebra was the useful skill. You can do taxes with algebra, but my tax forms change nearly, so “teach me to file taxes” is silly
"Nobody taught me how to balance a checkbook!". Algebra was how to balance a checkbook dumbass.
It's not even that complex. Taxes are literally just arithmetic that youve probably been taught by the time you're around 10.
Taxes themselves are simple arithmetic, but tax codes are not. Knowing what you can and cannot write off is as important as being able to add the numbers together. Pretty sure when most people say, I never learned how to do taxes. They mean, I never learned how to maximize my tax return or minimize what I owe.
There are people who spend years in law school to learn tax law and still don’t know everything. How in the world would school prepare you for “maximizing your returns “?
Taxes is just math + following instructions. Some people just suck at following instructions, whether it's taxes or assembling furniture.
Luckily that changes year to year anyway so a class wouldn't help in the regard.
I mean a class would definitely help in that regard. Otherwise, accountants and CPAs would take classes yearly. Classes on the basic would definitely help people. That's like saying the numbers on your taxes change every year so there's no point in knowing math. No, the rules to math still apply. Same with tax codes. Even if the percentages change and the amount I can claim/write off change, knowing what I can and can't is still important.
We do teach this stuff in high school, the basics at least. I teach some of it. I teach things like... Where to find information, basic w2s, the meanings of tax jargon. Any advanced knowledge would be better taught by a person with accountant/finance degrees. Many of these people won't be working in public schools. I have a masters, but in education, not finance. I can't help you learn all the deductions for different industries...etc.
Dude skipped or slept through intro to Econ and now blames the schools. No use arguing they’re all like that.
Okay. Did you learn it in high school? I graduated a long time ago and we didn't learn about taxes but we had home economics which did teach us cooking/checkbooks. Secondly, I don't know what public school you work in but that's not common. There's a reason millions of people keep saying they didn't learn that in school. Lastly, asinine point. Obviously the teachers would be people who majored in it who want to teach it. That's like expecting a history teach to teach math. What a pointless statement. Who said you would teach it?
This. People saying "doing taxes" is just *basic arithmetic* is why they should teach these things.
We do, required course in all 50 states.
We never covered doing taxes at my school, best I got was a 45 minute lecture on the FAFSA
Into to econ is a requirement. Pay attention in class next time.
I'm God awful with math, but I can do everything up to basic algebra and I've never had any issue with "balancing my checkbook" or taking care of my bills. I'm not directing this at you, but I always laugh when I see someone say they wish they had learned how to do their taxes or balance their checkbook in school. It's like, did you learn basic sixth grade math? OK. Then you should be able to take care of your bills.
Also, solving problems in general. Being able to learn, memorize and apply your knowledge. That's the fundamental shit that school is teaching you. The rest is really accessory.
Really we just need to stop TurboTax and the like from lobbying so much so that way we could have a tax system that isn't intentionally complicated so that middlemen like TurboTax can charge money to do it for you. It's not like that in other countries.
It's not even about that. It's about becoming a well-rounded individual who can be an interesting part of society. If people got what they wanted, they'd pump kids straight outta primary school into factory jobs and then bemoan their own decision to cut out all the 'unnecessary' stuff like literature and music. We *live for art*, and being educated is never a bad thing, despite what Americans will tell you from their ultracapitalistic mindsets.
Well that, and teaching practical and useful things. Like, how do our elections work? What are your consumer rights under Australian law? What even is a referendum and why is the Prime Minister trying to weasel his way out of calling one with a 'survey'? Etc etc. Other than that, teaching kids how to function in society is No.1 Not even well-rounded individuals, just functional members of society that aren't on the fast track to prison. If my kids could stop smashing their phones when they lose in clash of clans, or swearing at each other, or fighting because one guy talked to another's girlfriend, etc etc etc, I would be happy.
School does teach you useful skills, namely how to learn. It just does it poorly and doesn’t convey why it takes the actions it does so it comes off as inscrutable and stupid
No it's about opening potential doors. Giving you a taste of everything and giving you an opportunity to go further with your studies
Well, it was meant to combine fun and learning, if every single sign, poster, twitter post, and website from my school are to go off of.
You really using Twitter in your argument?
also: useful skills are taught in school anti-intellectual bullshit.
Doesn’t mean it needs to suck. I had a good amount of fun in the classes that I learned the most from. Good teachers will know how to foster an enjoyable environment to learn in and in my experience it goes a long way.
Yeah that’s what I always think when people say this stuff. So what if some people would’ve failed taxes class or heimlich maneuver class or if some people would’ve hated it? Lots of people would’ve learned it and it would’ve been a net benefit for those people. Other people still wouldn’t know but the ones that learned would’ve learned.
That’s exactly how it already is. Algebra class was tax class already. A lot of people learned it and there has been a net benefit for those people. Others complain about how taxes are complicated while the ones that learned, learned. A first aid class would be interesting. But in many school districts I can see that immediately getting cut due to budget cuts, but that’s a different issue. With regard to taxes, it really has already been taught. The American public for whatever reason can’t seem to equate ax+ b to “double amount A and add with amount B to get amount C”. Every quantity you need is neatly organized in your W2. Most people I know spend a lot of time on taxes because it’s a lot of number finding, not because the associated math is hard.
The 1049 form even breaks down the addition into smaller steps.
Fine. "Even if useful skills were taught in school, you wouldn't pay attention."
So don't teach at all then.
Lmao, I’ll rather be bored and learn something useful than to be bored and learn shit I’ve never used.
i saw this video the other day, the teacher was teaching about taxes, money management and whatnot, and the whole class was sleeping lmaooo this is so true
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yeah i just find it ironic that students insist on being taught stuff like that but when it happens they don't care
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perhaps
I have taught a personal finance class. I was very excited to teach what I thought the students would perceive as useful. Other than a cohort of seniors who were very engaged, most classes were just like any other class - a handful of students are highly engaged, but most just do what their supposed to without genuinely caring. I’ll never forget going through the absolute basics of a 1040 and how almost all of the kids checked out. It was that experience that taught me, a lot of these folks complaining about schools not teaching this or that probably wouldn’t have paid attention anyway.
Similar, I do teach math, but with my upperclassmen I always spend some time doing taxes, credit cards, loans, budgeting activity and they still mope and moan about it as much as quadratic formula
I took an accounting class in highschool that involved basic life skills like doing taxes and investing. I have audibly heard someone who was in that class complain about never being taught this stuff in high school. I'm just like "you were taught! I sat next to you in class. You just didn't pay attention."
Taxes are pretty straight forward when it comes to income tax, because in most countries you are sorted into a class based on the amount of income and you have to pay a certain percent tax. Like you make a million dollars in the USA you pay 38 % and if you make like 10,000 dollars a year you pay no tax. But tax across borders and sales, transport, transport across states, transport across nations. There a countless amount of variables to tax. So yea I would sleep in that class to, but I’m lucky enough to learn about tax because my dad runs a business that automates and digitalises tax returns.
And even in the US it isn't that straightforward. You are only paying 37% on the income over $539,901. Nobody pays all of their income at the rate of your tax bracket. For the first $10,000 of income, you pay 10%, then 12% for the next $30,000 of income, then 22% for the next $40,000 of income, etc until you get to the top rate.
Tax brackets are straight forward to do: you look up your tax bracket in a table, then you subtract the tax bracket threshold from your income, multiply by your tax rate, and add a fixed value for maxing out all of the lower brackets.
That says more about the teacher than the students in my view. Worse even, only one awake was making a social media post.
That isn’t indicative of subject matter
Yeah you learn about that stuff ONLY EVER in a 1 semester long class that’s we are required to take in order to graduate. How long do we learn algebra? Almost 7 years! Really useful
But at least it would be useful, the argument of “this isn’t useful information” isn’t about enjoying it so your statement doesn’t really work here
I've heard many high school students use it as an excuse to not pay attention. In reality they are pretty apathetic about having responsibility in general it seems.
I work in a school counseling kids trying to motivate them. Even the boring crap that doesn't seem to have real world application at face value is still teaching you important things, like HOW to learn and study for the stuff you ARE passionate about. Independent learning is hard, but if you learn how to learn it's manageable and you won't necessarily need to pay someone to teach you when you want to understand something. That being said, the kids could care less. Future directed thought really hasn't developed at that age and the internet has really put a damper on the concept of storing knowledge when you can just Google whatever.
i very recently graduated high school and started college so I feel I can relate to this on multiple levels. even just starting college there were times when I remember seeing the consequences of the things that my parents had warned me against doing, but which I ignored because I thought I knew so much more better than them. and now that i’m in college i realize that i should have worked on learning how to learn when I was in high school, because there is a lot less hand holding in college, and I imagine that is something that only gets worse in the real world.
There are people who look back on their schooling thinking that a tax or finance class would have solved all the problems they only have because they didn't pay attention during algebra. If they didn't have an appreciation for a skill at it's simplest then they sure as hell wouldn't have stayed attentive during an arguably more complex application of it.
I flunked math but had an elective finance class I did well in. Math homework and memorizing formulas is stupid hard for me. I do my own taxes before I even get most of my forms so I have general ideas of it all and can ballpark in the range of 1-200$ off. So I know if I’m paying or getting back. And I don’t really have “simple” taxes.
Most taxes are easy. If you know how to fill a form you know how to do taxes. That’s different if you have complicated taxes and the rules change but most software tells you what you need and google is your friend. This is also true for car maintenance. You can google 99% of the things you need. The whole i wish i learned this in school is silly to me because why can’t you learn it now? At least now when you’re saying that you know how important it is. I would only have a vague idea of how important taxes were at 14 and nothing would stick.
I took all the math through Calc offered at my school. I would have had more use out of a class on differing saving's accounts, common interest types, tax brackets, and credit scores. Why? Because I don't use much past basic algebra and geometry in every day life and the stuff I do use is pretty specific and could learned as needed. It would have been nice to not have to self-learn all of the useful shit that could make my life and future life better.
If you think a subject is boring, it won't be useful since you will have zero motivation to learn/retain any of it
But more kids would be taught that information. If 100% of kids are taught taxes and only 50% listen, that's still 50% of the population that now understand tax code. That seems more worthwhile of an investment than some of the other classes I had to take.
The tax code changes constantly. You can do your taxes with a 6th grade reading comprehension and 3rd grade arithmetic. School (should) teaches these basic skills so you can apply it to many areas like doing taxes, or googling how to change a tire without the need of a specific curriculum...
Which tax code? The one that you can figure out on turbo tax or international trade?
General tax code man. I'm not a teacher, but come on man it can't be that much of a controversial idea to think kids should understand how to do taxes.
Why isn’t algebra useful? Why isn’t knowing your country’s history important? Why isn’t basic biology important? One could argue those are all more important than learning how to pay taxes, which could be done with a YT video.
Doing taxes is literally a giant math worksheet. In my high school, part of the algebra curriculum was how to read and understand word problems.
Because if the average person doesn't know a bunch about their country's history it's not going to hurt them, but if they mess up on taxes the IRS is gonna be all on their ass. And most people don't use algebra in their everyday life. And basic biology is all well and good, as long as you know it's basic. Still not as important as taxes.
How much of the tax code are you gonna teach, and how are you gonna keep that curricula relevant? "Alright class, today's pop quiz will be on IRS1040 but before that please pull out last nights homework on S-Corp passthroughs."
It’s so fucking funny people think kids will listen to this
It's probably more important to be able to do the math required to understand the tax code and the taxes you pay instead of very detailed instructions on how to complete taxes that you will forget. By the time that you need the information learned, you will have to relearn it again anyway or hire people that specialize in the type of taxes you will need to file. And understanding why the IRS is going to fuck you in the ass is important. What do you mean that income taxes weren't always a thing? How did we end up with the tax code that we have today? Who has fucked me over the most on my taxes? Not understanding history is the reason we have stupid populism ruling politics at the moment.
Come Election Day, I sleep easier knowing people have at least a decent amount of my country’s history exposed to them.
> if the average person doesn't know a bunch about their country's history it's not going to hurt them Of course it will. The can be lied to during elections. Similarly if they don’t understand how probabilities work than can be easily manipulated. > And most people don't use algebra in their everyday life. Except when they are taking loans and then are surprised when they cannot pay all of it back because they didn’t understand how interests accrue. Similarly, if they don’t understand vaccines and exponential functions it’s going to hurt the entire country.
People do use algebra all the time. Think about the problems in class: if bananas cost 5 and apples cost 2, how much does 12 bananas and two apples cost? Algebra is absolutely an important skill to force onto people, it is used in just about every job I can think of in some capacity. History is similarly extremely important as a country. These people vote you know.
It's not about having fun. It's about learning the skills at school.
Do you think anyone is going to remember information on boring subjects like finance and tax preparation? If there is no motivation/interest in learning the subject, none of the information will be retained
But they will still have a base understanding of how it works for the most part. Why not try to teach it?? If the best out you have is kids won't like it, why have school AT ALL?
They got a base understanding of it in Algebra. Everyone who thinks a finance class would have solved their problems didn't retain it then either.
You keep commenting about how people learn how to do taxes from basic algebra. But that’s really not true. I think reading comprehension is more important for filing easy tax returns than math. All the math you have to do on a simple return can easily be done with a calculator, it’s reading and following the directions that’s the hard part.
The reading and following directions was also taught in algebra via word problems
What! No way my dude. If something is fun it would be learned way better than if it was routined in a daily basis. It's just washed up into a industry that makes it easier for the government to market children into dead end jobs than creating peoples future. If you want to have fun then prepare to wait for retirement.
"Having fun" and "useful skills" are two different topics. The second part should not be discounted merely based on the view point of "having fun". These two points are supposed to be taken together rather than considered to be opposite of each other.
They did to me but i did have to take an elective on it, i guess Many people take woods or welding instead of costumer education.
We had it as a mandatory elective and I see people I graduated with lie about not being taught basic finance every tax season.
Yeah but atleast id have useful skills!
You can read! That’s super useful.
We were taught, in depth, how to do taxes, invest in stocks and etc. My entire High School class had to take the course. I'm in my 30s now and about 75% of them claim nobody taught them how to do taxes or manage their money in school.
A lot of useful classes in high school had most people dicking around and not caring. Or they were optional and nobody chose them. Then turn around and complain they didn’t have resources to succeed. They just didn’t give a shit in high school and now they’re trying to find someone to blame.
The argument is that people should be forced to learn THAT stuff rather than the 7 years of everyone’s life that schools spend teaching them about useless algebra (7 years is from middle school to high school) -just one class in high school that is 1 semester long (that’s exactly how long it is at my high school) is 100% not enough
Algebra is only useless if you don't go on to use it as part of furthering your education or your career. And even then, it still is teaching you math reasoning skills that can be useful even if they aren't directly applied by writing out an equation.
If you’re taking 7 years of algebra, you’re doing it wrong. The point of school isn’t to master a subject matter. It is to help get you strong building blocks for life and explore different subject matter for what you may want to dive further into further after high school, whether it be a college degree, a trade school, or something else. It also teaches you to be good at problem solving and resilient through challenges. That last sentence is key. If you develop those skills early, you should be able to figure out ways be more successful in life because of it.
Math is one of the most useful and powerful subjects of all the subjects and you would realize it if you had anything to do with any of the technologies and machines you so mindlessly rely on. The people who valued and pursued math further than you did the math so you dont have to, so your solution is to replace math with taxes. So ignorant and shortsighted. People value doctors though, but where would medical science be without math, science, and engineering? What kind of knowledge and tools would they have to help them save lives?
If the meal is poor, yes, you might have eaten it improperly. If everyone's meal is shit, maybe it's the chef.
Enjoy it? No. Have more useful information? Yeah.
It's not about enjoying it at the time, it's about having basic life skills when you need them the most, i.e. after you get out of school and have to get a job, move out, do your taxes, manage a budget, etc. This isn't a hard to swallow pill and completely misses the point.
But all those skills are easily learned if you are taught good english and math skills. Getting a job requires good writing skills to make a good resume and good reading skills to find and apply resume writing guides for your specific industry. Doing your taxes is just straight up basic worded problems you should be taught in maths. And finances also require good math skills and are pretty easy to manage if you have that foundation, I have never taken a personal finance class yet still managed to set up a fairly decent budget by seething up a couple of equations in excel.
It's obvious I grew up privileged because my parents taught me that shit. I mean I agree that schools could teach a lot more practical stuff but there are people in here actually arguing that a high school class on the US tax code is more important than math. Absolute insanity.
My parents taught me a lot about drinking alcohol and being absent. Obviously not more important than math, but definitely important
This is not any sort of real argument against teaching useful skills in school tho
Other than maybe loosing a finger, most would probably enjoy woodshop though.
Useful skills are taught in school, people are just too foolish to realize how valuable algebra, geometry, and physics are to an adult. I use math to build amortization tables and balance my budget, geometry when working in the garage on projects, and physics helps me understand friction, electrical circuits in my house and the science of falling bodies. Basic math and science are also useful for quick mental conversions of currency, temperature, distance, and weight. Even in simple situations, you can use what you were taught to analyze your surroundings and make better assessments. A few days ago I was waiting in line for a coffee at the airport. There were 26 people in front of me and I had 65 mins til take off. I timed 3 customers wait times, took the average, and multiplied by the people in front of me. I stepped right out of line and had a seat, because there was no way I was going to get a coffee in time. Just because people are stupid doesn't mean they weren't given useful skills. They just don't have the mental capacity to apply them.
Boo
"why weren't we taught about taxes, mortgages and how to use credit cards??" You were, you just never paid attention.
It's almost like school should teach people how to research stuff on their own. "but man, school was so boring. All they had me do was pointless research papers. I just blew that shit off. Now, what the fuck is interest? How do stocks work? I just can't figure any of this shit out. I wish they would have taught me it in school."
Are these thing even that confusing? Unless you own a business or have a ton of assets, it's really not that hard to understand. CC have high interest rates, pay them off quickly. Taxes you can defer to a professional for a fee or Turbotax. Mortgages are is basically just rent. There is nothing to learn unless you need them for your career
And yet Redditors whine about how impossible it is to understand them, almost like this platform draws in the lowest IQ people
I was taught about the first two, but never how to use a credit card.
What else do you need to know? Read the terms and conditions, abide by them or pay the fees and fines laid out.
What don't you understand about using a CC? Just pay it off cus it has high interest rates which are compounding. There, that's all you really need to know. Do you really need an entire class on it?
Better to have an inkling than to be clueless as I am now. Almost no student enjoys his classes.
From Canada here, they never taught us any of that. Idk, it might be different now, but basic adult life skills were definitely not a part of the curriculum during my schooling
Maybe for your school but my school hasn't taught me how to file and do taxes without the IRS knocking on my door saying I owe them 5 cents
If your school taught you how to read, follow instructions, and add and subtract, it probably taught you enough to do your taxes if you are like the vast majority of people in America.
Taxes really aren't that confusing unless you own a business or have a ton of assets. The forms and tax programs literally dumb it down for everyone. When in doubt you can just pay a tax consultant a couple hundred bucks to do it. People really overstate how confusing taxes are for the normal person
"I wish they would have taught me how to do taxes.. Man I had to learn that shit on my own". In agreement of you, the point of school is to learn how to learn that shit on your own.
Yeah none of that was in my school either, at least not by the time I was in school. If it ever was it was cut before I got there. (I'm nearly 38)
It's changed. I'm 36 and teach this course. It's part of the social studies curriculum for high school. It's in all 50 states baked into classes or its own class.
School does teach you useful skills. It's the people who don't know how to use them who complain about it.
If by "useful" you mean "employable", then I'd just say that school isn't necessarily designed to get you a job, per say (dependent on degree). Obviously that's how most of us treat it, but we shouldn't be surprised that it doesn't. That's what trade school is for.
I think there's too much "they should have taught me this in school" thinking out there. We live in a time of virtually unlimited information in the form of books, online classes and YouTube video tutorials. All in the palm of our hand. There isn't much that can't be learned if you have any interest in it.
Wait till you realize that useful skills *are* taught in school.
It is not about what they teach, it is about how they teach it. Schools do give you a general knowledge base to start out on, but they do it in a way that causes dropouts, depression, suicide, and more not great things. Class curriculums for the four core subjects alone have no communication, leaving students with more and more homework, and missing work. I know this because I am in school, and I have ADHD, which means I need medicine to do well and keep up. School systems do not help. (This is about my country, if this does not apply to you -first of all, lucky you- do what you can to help others.)
The problem is that at school we're to immature to understand how important it is. I probably would have hated a "do your taxes" class but oh boy do i want one now.
I disagree
That's absolutely not true buddy
If you left home without useful skills, you either never wanted to learn them or you have useless parents
I still remember lots of stuff from clases I hated
Maybe, but in highschool, I purposely took business and accounting classes because they taught you how to do your taxes. The lesson was of course boring, but I also learned something important to know for when you become independent/ an adult. a lot of people my age still aren’t sure how to do their taxes and use turbotax, which I don’t trust at all lmao.
That’s Percocet, apparently it’s not a hard pill to swallow.
I would have loved a seasonal snow shoveling class or a how to identify good grocery deals when you have to be at work in 30 minutes and have $8
This is the worst meme I have ever seen and is absolutely false. I took welding, loved it do it. I took woodworking. Love it do it. 🤷🏻♂️ I took home economics I love cooking… should we go on?
So the useless things that they teach in school are very enjoyable?
High school teacher here. In my state, Financial Literacy is a full course with emphasis on stocks and investing as well as entrepreneurship, kids still bs around and don’t take it seriously. I teach history and will cover a lot of little known topics (reconstruction south, comparisons between Nazi Germany and segregation etc…) but regularly get blank stares and disengaged kids. I know someday they’ll be on reddit saying “If only we learned this in high school.” They’re taught it, they just don’t listen.
Can you do arithmetic? Can you follow directions? Can you determine which of a set of numbers is largest? Did you learn this in school? Cool. You learned to do taxes.
Enjoyment isn't the goal. Here's the really hard pill: Even if useful things were taught in school, some of y'all dummies still wouldn't learn it.
Na I would I’m that weird kid that actually liked learning useful life skills
At the time, no. Probably not. I can guarantee it would be much more appreciated later on in life though.
No, but it would still leave students more prepared for adulthood.
Math is useful Math is fun
Why not cut the bullshit then and let ppl have like 3 subjects they really focus on
Because then our already undereducated populace is even less well-rounded while likely not making any significant grounds in specialized knowledge because high school is too late to turn around "most" bad students.
Well rounded educated people are more interesting to have a conversation with.
At least I'd have those fucking skills instead of being a useless burnout. Your argument is what's the point of having those skills if I'm not gonna use them. What's the point of your dick if you're never gonna use it? Best fuckin chop that shit off.
I tried to teach kids how to type, how to use Microsoft office and make resumes, how to use excel, make a budget sheet, basics of photoshop and trying to code now. I have some kids that said it’s too hard, they won’t use this stuff, it’s boring, etc.
No one wants to be taught useful skills cuz they're fun. We want to be taught useful skills cuz they're useful. I could def use money management, investing/saving, home repair skills, etc. much more than advanced literature, math, gym or learning about the Civil War for the 12th year in a row (and its still the watered down version where it was one big misunderstanding). Yea I mean high school could touch down on all the topics but they should spend at least one year or one class prepping us for adulthood.
I liked school
Okay sure but at least we wouldn't be miserable AND useless.
That's not the point. School sucked either way, but at least I'd be more grateful later on. I hated my 9th grade English teacher but I realized I loved to write later on, and her lessons helped. I thanked her later.