There are some things that should be taught in school that would just make grownup life go easier. I could have really done with one less year of history and a year of household repair.
Duct tape, it comes in colours.
Cooking, use it like applied chemistry, incorporate into school meals, teach budgeting with it, and while being eaten teach different food customs. This can go into personal care from nutrition to exercise. Real physical education-not dodge ball and rules to volleyball- but learning universals like how to stretch, lift, push and fall.
There are so few people that fall correctly.
I’m in the process of finishing the dining room and the kitchen with Pergo oak flooring (350 square feet). My wife is pleased, and my knees could use a hot soaking tub bath and a week to recuperate. By the way, red tape was what I used to tape together the under layer of felt.
Measure everything twice and write it down.
Yep, I find I use only a fraction (ha!) of the maths they tried to teach me at school; juggling lessons would have been much more useful.
It’s sad that schools no longer offer the life skills classes they used to teach. Anyone remember shop? Auto shop? Home ec? I think that there are some basic life skills that every adult should know…from how to manage a household budget, cook a decent meal, and do basic mending to how to change a tire, check engine oil and do basic household repairs.
Redwolf
Unfortunately one had to go to the public schools to get such classes in my community. I think it would be neat if students learned how to count change. I don’t trust anybody under the age of forty to give me correct change.
and be of the correct sex to be allowed in the class 
I grew up in a small town whose major industries were glass manufacturing and mold making. Even though I only had about 100 in my graduating class, the public high school offered several courses in machine shop with a good variety of very nice lathes and other machine tools. I think that the machinery was donated by the local manufacturing companies. I’m guessing that a course in machine shop would be a rarity these days, although wood shop is probably still fairly common.
For three years I taught a high school course called Consumer Math. Mostly non college-bound seniors took the course for an easy math credit. In addition to a review of basic arithmetic, the course covered many of the skills that would be needed for daily living, such as making a budget, buying a car, managing a bank account, paying taxes, etc. I invited business people from the community to discuss their specialty for the students. I feel that the course was helpful for these students.
My daughter took that class last year. She is college-bound, but like most of us who don’t plan to go into engineering or the sciences (she’s going to art school), really had no need to continue banging her head against higher level math.
That’s something that angers me about colleges (and college prep) these days. You can’t even hope to get into the University of California if you don’t have physics, algebra II and pre-calc, regardless of your major. Why in heaven’s name does a person who hopes to work as a copy editor or a graphic designer or an English professor or a social worker need pre-calc? Heck, I haven’t used algebra since my last required algebra course in college.
You have to have higher math so in case you have a kid like this you’ll have an inkling of what in the world he is talking about. http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/26/12-year-old-genius-expands-einsteins-theory-of-relativity/
I have always thought a basic course on household finances, credit, mortgages and such should be mandatory.
I don’t know that it would have helped me though, since I rarely really gave a lot of thought to any topic prior becoming interested in it from actual context.
I could have saved one surgery if I’d been taught (experimentally) tuck-and-roll, which is finally instinctive. 30 years too late.
I also think on career day, when they invite doctors and lawyers and professional folks to talk about careers, they should also invite winos, drug addicts, couch potatoes, and those grown men who live in their parents’ basements to talk about the opportunities available in those careers too.
judo… I learned in my tweens. I had a friend that took lessons. He needed someone of similar caliber to practice with. It’s saved my life so many times.
I’d guess that most teens don’t really know what they want to do in terms of a career or a college major, so I’d encourage them to get a broad, strong, basic education in high school to keep all their options open. I’ve spent a lot of years of my life teaching college students things they could (and I’d say SHOULD) have learned for free in public middle and high school. Instead, those students have to spend precious money and time to learn (sometimes relearn) it later in college. I’ve also encountered a number of students who give up on a dream or interest (e.g., marine biology) because of the math. That’s sad.
There are lots of things I learned in high school and college that I haven’t used. Does that mean they were worthless and I should never have bothered with them? I don’t think so. I think a basic grounding in mathematics helps foster attention to detail and careful logical thought, traits that can be very useful in many different endeavors. I wish those traits were more widespread in the U.S. citizenry.
I guess I’m just an old-fashioned believer in the the liberal arts. I think our kids should get educated, not just “trained” for one narrow field.
On the flip side, is it right to deny kids a college education because they have either no interest or no talent in one very specific field? We’ve gotten to the point where “smart,” “capable” and “worthy of education” equate to “being able to function in the world of science and higher mathematics”…how fair is that? Are kids whose abilities lie in other areas to be condemned to working at McDonalds? Are the writers and the artists of this world unworthy of higher education? Because the reality is, that’s what we’re telling kids today. Math and the sciences matter, and if you can’t cut it in those areas, forget it, unless you’re lucky enough to have very wealthy parents who can float most or all of the cost of a private school. Fail high school physics and your dream of working as a graphic designer, an editor or a reporter (or even as a secretary, as even that kind of work these days requires a college degree in most areas) is down the tubes…is that right?
Liberal arts is fine, if that’s the way a person wants to go. But the world we live in requires college degrees in the same way that the world our parents grew up in required high school diplomas. Hell, in many markets, you can’t even get a job as a receptionist without a degree (in fact, just today I applied for a job as a PART-TIME receptionist that required a minimum of a four-year degree…good thing I didn’t have to pass physics or calc to get mine or I’d be SOL. And, FWIW, my degree, from a respected liberal arts university, was Summa Cum Laude. And without physics, or any math beyond basic algebra).
My point is that we’ve decided that a) A college degree is the equivalent of what a high school diploma was 50 years ago and b) you can’t get one unless you’re rich or mathematically gifted. That’s not liberal arts…that’s narrow-minded insanity and, frankly, very contrary to the ideal of liberal arts that I grew up with.
Redwolf
These last posts were interesting. West Virginia has one of the lowest rates of people with college degrees. At least in social work and related fields many positions are vacant because of a lack of qualified applicants and the qualifications continue to raise. Even the position that I hold with a Bachelor’s Degree is now requiring/hoping for a Master’s Degree. Yeah, that’ll happen. The debt/benefit ratio is not worth it. (I am one of the few social workers who can do math.) But, I was at Staples the other day and the sales clerk told me, out of the blue, that he had an MBA. What’s up with that?