Where is the real world education for teens?

Why do my kids learn about some French Painter who died over 300 years ago, but they aren’t taught how to get along with other people?

Why are they taught how to balance chemicals, but not checkbooks?

Yes, school is important, but I’m a little concerned. Where are the real-world skills being taught? I do my best to teach my kids about attitude, money management, goals setting, and planning for the future, but it’s hard to get them to listen to their parents.



- Ash

Well..I don't know where your kids go to school, but My senior year...I had Co-op...we learned to balance checkbooks,,,do out own taxes (of all kinds...married and with kids too) and we had to get a real job for part of our grade.

WE had co-op too!

Ummm , , ,I don't want the school to teach my children value laden things like getting along with others, etc. I prefer my daughter learn these skills in my home. In our area, schools teach to the OGT (Ohio Graduation Test) and nothing more. Best they be taught life skills by those who love them!

I agree with Cheryl. I think parents do need to take the responsibility for those kinds of things. As far as getting along with others, I think kids learn from example. If you get along with others and teach them how to treat people then they will have no problems.

I also had a program that taught life skills at our school and there are accounting classes at most schools these days. I took extensive business classes in my high school and they are definitely not one of the leading high schools (big understatement!).

I think the attitude stuff needs to be taught at home. I don't want someone whose views are light years from my own imposing their ideas on my kids... they get enough of that from their peers anyway. Besides, I think that by the time a child reaches his teens, the groundwork has already been laid. And as teens, they're often going to have lapses... lots and lots of lapses. But I'm not sure that anything they learn in a class would change that.

As far as the skills go, I agree: there should be some room for the practical. When I was teaching, I was given the opportunity to create a Consumer Ed. course for our slower track Seniors. I put a lot into it and covered checkbook (they had to pay "rent" for their seat use each month with a make-believe check, no reminders), buying insurance, getting an apartment, and so on. The "smarter" kids were taking Precalculus and Calculus and never saw the material.

I think the problem is that we can't agree on what education is. Schools now are expected to get our kids into great colleges, preferably with scholarships. So there's the academic push. Think of No Child Left Behind, or better yet, the 1980 report "A Nation at Risk." (IT said that if a foreign government were to impose as mediocre an educational system on our kids as we were currently providing, we would consider it an act of war... only they phrased it better!) So there's a rush to have tons of assessment tests and the teachers have to teach the material or the kids won't graduate.

But schools are also expected to do soooo much more: AIDS education and free lunches and catch vision problems and learning problems and scoliocis (sp) and keep the kids occupied from the time they're dropped off at 6 am until they're picked up at 6pm. They're supposed to change our kids into good citizens and teach them economics, and provide them with the education they need to get a job.

Unlike many other nations, a college education is available for almost everyone, at the relatively affordable community college level, and they'll accept almost everyone; SAT scores don't matter there.

And all this on as little as possible, as more and more budgets don't pass. (I'm not going to address all the waste on upper levels, or this would become a thesis instead of a post... let's assume that most districts are honestly doing what they can in a moral and honest way.)

Seriously, what do we want our educational system to be? Something's got to give!!

OK, off my soapbox now!!

Unfortunately, teachers are required to teach the stuff that our government has mandated that they teach, State Standards, so much so that they have no time to teach all the other important stuff too. Our schools are being forced to "teach to the test" so that STAR test scores (or others like them) are going up so that the schools can get funding that they need. It is a really distressing topic to people like me who are going to school to become teachers. Makes me wonder what I'm getting myself into...
I agree that parents should teach all the "life skills" as mentioned. Unfortunately, not everyone does. I do think that the schools should teach some life skills because some of our students will never make it to college. Many kids graduate high school without knowing how to budget their money and then they end up living with their parents until they are 35 (or older)...

Ok, I too will step down.