Eva Guo (10) | STAFF REPORTER
The purpose of school is to prepare children for a prosperous adult life, so why is it that many students upon their graduation find themselves with no idea of how to change a tire, file taxes, or do something as basic as cooking for themselves? Instead, the invaluable knowledge that they are equipped with is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, thus why all schools must offer essential life skills courses.
There are many essential skills that should be offered by schools, including cooking and cleaning, basic life skills that must be mastered to survive in the real world; financial literacy, to manage money effectively and reduce financial stress, and basic home repair and maintenance, encouraging responsibility and ensuring self-dependency.
The biggest flaw of the education system is that it only equips students for a specific aspect of life. High schools nowadays solely focus their attention on providing academic courses to send students to post-secondary education. However, these academic-centred programs ignore the life that comes after they get into a post secondary program, when children become adults and must learn how to survive in an adult world.
Additionally, these programs seem to forget about the students who don’t wish to go onto post-secondary education. They are left stranded by the system with no benefits to reap. To these students, the steps to graphing a parabola or the stages of the cell cycle will never matter: what they need to know is how to cook, clean, manage their credit, and do other practical tasks.
A common argument surrounding this discussion is that these life skills do not need to be taught in schools as students can be taught these skills at home by their families. This assumption is incredibly overgeneralizing as not all students have family members who are able to teach them these skills due to certain circumstances. The public education system is meant to promote equality and give a fair chance to everyone, regardless of personal background. Therefore, schools cannot rely on families to teach something so essential to success.
Although core subjects are undoubtedly important, the glaring reality is that many students find themselves learning information that they will never need and no life skills whatsoever. The education system must equip students with the necessary skills to ensure their success in the adult world.
