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human
CMV: High school should prepare students to become responsible adults, rather than focusing on college prep

I realize this has probably been done to death, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Also, a couple of disclaimers. I'm coming from a US perspective, so I apologize if any terms or concepts don't correlate to other cultures. And, I graduated from high school ten years ago, so it could be that high school curriculum has changed since then.

I understand why schools focus so much on college prep. In the US, college is treated as a requirement, despite the fact that a huge number of people never get a college degree. So many jobs that pay a living wage have the luxury to require a bachelor's degree due to the sheer number of applicants, even when the position really doesn't require any advanced education. They can afford to be picky, if only to reduce the applicants to a manageable number. So parents know that for their child to achieve a financially comfortable life, they need to get a college degree. Parents vote for educational leaders who will implement policies aligned with that goal.

And when I say college prep, I'm talking about the more specialized classes we take in high school, like chemistry, biology, college algebra, and basically all the AP courses. Of course all of those teach valuable skills that apply to multiple areas in life; I'm not trying to say that these classes aren't valuable. Consider biology for example. There are many aspects of biology that are relevant to the average citizen, things like overall health awareness, understanding common medical procedures like vaccines, how diseases work and how they spread. The only reason I remember dissecting frogs is because I hated it, and I didn't really learn anything meaningful from it other than the haunting image of what a dissected frog looks like. I suppose you could say it helped me understand how life forms in general work, like how things have organs and blood vessels and system and such. I just find myself questioning the importance of knowledge like that, when there are other things I needed to know that were not taught to me.

When I think back to when I graduated high school ten years ago, I realize that I knew basically nothing about how to be a functioning member of society. School taught me about all of these advanced, college-level topics, but I didn't know a single goddamn thing about the following:

* That I had to pay taxes. I'm serious. I didn't pay my 2012 taxes because I didn't know I was supposed to. (I was part time minimum wage so don't worry, I don't think the IRS cares. It would have been a refund anyway, so technically I saved the government money)
* How to calculate my tax bracket. I had to learn this myself when I was self employed in 2016, and I ended up miscalculating and was $3k short in my self-withheld tax savings. I also didn't know that self employment tax had to be paid quarterly rather than annually, so I had to pay a nice fee for that.
* How to send a letter. My first landlord actually taught me because that's how he wanted me to send rent checks.
* How to budget effectively. I spent my first few years of employment paycheck to paycheck, sometimes being completely out of money days before my next paycheck, when I could have been saving money if I had a budget.
* How to maximize my savings, things like tax-advantaged accounts, investing, stocks
* How to build and maintain good credit
* How to build a resume. I actually learned this in my last year of college, everyone in the class had no idea.
* How to apply for jobs effectively, tailoring the resume and application to the position, nailing the interview, etc.
* How to get involved with the local community, townhall meetings, council meetings, boards and commissions, nextdoor, local news, etc.
* The importance of being politically involved and voting in both local and federal elections. I voted for the first time in 2018, before that I just never cared about politics because I didn't keep up with the news at all.
* Almost anything related to the law other than really simple things like don't attack people, or driving laws (which I didn't learn in school, technically). I didn't know anything about labor laws, local codes and ordinances, residential laws, my rights when interacting with the police, etc.
* How the government works, which branches are responsible for what, which elected official have the power to make what changes, etc.
* Almost everything related to the home. Maintaining the systems and foundation, utilities, how and when to buy a house, etc.

I don't think I'm the only one who graduated high school without the above knowledge. But now, as a 28 year old adult, I don't know how I could function without knowing those things. How could we expect any 18 year old to become a productive member of society without this knowledge? The only reason I made it is because I had a lot of privilege. Between my supportive parents, friends, other mentors, and the internet, I managed to learn everything I needed to know, but I often had to endure hardships because I didn't know these things when I needed to. In fact, if not for my somewhat natural talent with computers, I don't think I would have been able to learn what I needed to know before it became a very big problem.

Many people who support the current curriculum believe that it is the parents' responsibility to teach what I listed above. I will say my parents taught me a lot of important things that allowed me to learn what I needed to learn. For example, how to use computers and the Internet effectively, that was hugely important for me. But I guess for me, I just don't think it's right to expect certain things like paying taxes and being politically involved without making sure that the federal education curriculum teaches those skills. Just look at how many young adults end up in prison or homeless because they just don't know how to do basic things like maintain a budget, get a job, communicate effectively, and so on. These people end up being a drain on society whereas they could be meaningful contributors. I felt cheated when I got out of high school and realized I didn't know any of the things I was expected to know. Again, I don't think things like biology aren't important, but what does it say about my education when I remember that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but I don't know anything about paying taxes? It just feels like we've got the priorities reversed.

There are other things I think high school should teach based on what seem to be many shortcomings of current adults. The most important one, in my opinion, is how to research and evaluate sources effectively. I learned a little bit of this in high school, mainly that wikipedia doesn't count as a proper source for research papers, but college taught me so much more. Things like how to identify bias, how to evaluate research methods, red flags like spotting whether or not an article lists any sources, or if those sources are credible, diversifying information sources, being aware of my own biases and not only agreeing with titles that agree with my preconceived notion.

Literally just think about that for a second. How many people read a title that agrees with their bias and just assume it's true? How many people read or hear something very charismatically delivered and assume that they must be telling the truth? This is why there's such a prevalence of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, and so on. If we all understood the basics of fact checking and how to evaluate credible sources, these things would almost certainly disappear. We would immediately have a better educated society. We would start to see presidential candidates based on merit rather than popularity. This is one of those things that I genuinely think could solve a tremendous number of problems all by itself.

High school is supposed to prepare children to become responsible adults. I think rather than hoping that parents should teach life skills and government mandated responsibilities, the school system that our taxes pay for should give us at least the bare minimum of knowledge to do everything an adult is expected to do. Ideally other life skills like finances and job preparedness should also be taught, and for those who intend to pursue a career that requires higher education, they should have the option to include college prep courses. I don't think someone should be allowed to graduate high school without being taught how to do what is expected of them in adulthood.

Edit: Many have made the point that the aforementioned content would likely add at most a semester of material, but probably even less than that. As such, I no longer think this content should *replace* college prep, but rather it should simply be included. I do still believe that some of the more specialized courses such as higher level math, sciences, and so on should be electives for those who intend to pursue relevant fields, especially if the additions I'm proposing could not be added seamlessly.

Edit 2: Here's what I have learned or changed my view on so far:

* I should have clarified that I spend all of my grade school years in private school rather than public school. It's entirely possible that private schools may not be held to the same expectations about their curriculum as public schools, so my experience may not match what those who went to public school experienced.
* Some of these things I did learn in school, such as the structure of government. I honestly just misspoke there, because what I meant to describe was that I didn't really understand how I was supposed to interact with the government. Same thing with taxes, of course I understood the overall idea of taxes, but I didn't understand what I needed to do specifically. I knew that a portion of my income had to go to the government, but I wasn't taught that I needed to report it. So when my first job explained that my taxes were automatically withheld, I assumed I didn't have to worry about it. It wasn't until the next year that someone explained to me that I needed to file. As for interacting with the government, I knew about the branches of government, but I didn't understand that we voted for more than just the president.
* I agree with many who have said that this information in total would likely not require a substantial change to the curriculum, maybe just some added courses at the most. As such, if I could I would revise the title such that these concepts were taught *in addition* to college prep rather than *replacing* college prep.
* I would concede that perhaps rather than even a single course, with the prevalence of technology and the Internet, it may be optimal to impart this information in a concise, easily digestible collection of digital resources. Maybe just brief documents or infographics reminding upcoming graduates of what tasks they will be expected to perform as adults, and other information they can refer to rather than just being tossed in the pool and told to swim. With the Internet, they could easily look up the details when needed.

Edit 3: Some final reflections. I originally intended to reply to every comment, but there are far too many responses at this point for me to even try that. 

In retrospect, I regret using "rather than" in the title. I think it created an unnecessary focus on defending specialized subjects. The reality is that I enjoyed nearly all of the advanced courses I took. I should have been more careful with my wording, because honestly the true feeling I had was that these life skills should be considered more of a requirement than they are. 

Many people brought up courses like civics and home economics, which my school didn't offer, not even as electives. However, I seem to be in the minority with that experience. Even so, it doesn't change my belief that those courses should be required, not electives. 

Despite what some have assumed/implied about me in this thread, I'm actually a pretty smart person. I was very successful in both high school and college, and now in my career. I had a 3.9 in high school IIRC. Somewhat embarrassingly a 3.1 in college, but that was mainly because I figured out what career I wanted to pursue, and it didn't require higher education, so I lost the motivation to keep my grades up in the last two years. I was one of the only people to make an A in calculus II, for whatever that's worth. 

I should have been more clear in the original post about my understanding of taxes and writing letters. Many people thought that I didn't have any awareness of taxes at all, and of course that's not the case. I feel like this became a point many people dwelled on rather than spending time on other points. And many pointed out that letters were taught in elementary school, but I genuinely don't remember learning it, and I just never needed to send any letters growing up. I set up my first email account in 1999 when I was 7 years old, so I sent most of my messages via email rather than sending letters. 

To be fair, some of the issues like sending letters are really not that big of a deal. It was honestly a bad example, I was just trying to be thorough and got carried away. And I definitely did learn about the structure of the federal government in school, maybe also state government, but I don't recall learning anything about county or local governments. 

There seemed to be a fundamental debate underneath all of this in the form of what schools and parents ought to teach respectively. I didn't expect how divided many of the opinions would be on this issue, but I feel that the arguments were very instructive and meaningful. 

I think many people oversimplified the issue by saying that all of these things could be figured out in a google search or youtube video. Of course that's true, but if you don't know it's required of you, you won't know to look it up until you're already in trouble. Some brought up that these moments of messing up and then doing the research are part of learning in the real world, and I suppose I can't really dispute that. I just don't think it's unreasonable to give students some easily digestible information for the common things they'll likely need to know as adults, and if I had been given that information, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. 

Many brought up that high school students won't care or listen anyway. I mean sure, but those students aren't paying attention in other classes either, yet we still require those. We can't force students to pay attention, but we can at least make sure the information is made available to them.

Overall, this thread has been very interesting. I've got a lot to think about for sure.
gpt
I was personally taught many of the things you list but it's not very effective. You're teaching a child the rote steps to a procedure in the hopes that will use it multiple years later and remember how to do it. The likelihood is that they won't and will just google "how to address a letter" when they need to use it. The goal of teaching more abstract concepts, like biology, is so that students develop an intuition about the underlying systems. They don't need to remember the specific facts about the parts of a cell to remember that the human body has a highly advanced system for filtering and removing waste so that expensive juice cleanse that "removes the toxins from the body" is likely bullshit.