American children are failing. Students in the USA are behind because of our flawed school system. In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey that spanned 73 countries, the United States’ ranking was 30th, placing it far below what a highly developed and advanced nation should have scored. Why such large a disparity in test scores? Schools in America highly value academics over almost everything else, which is extremely counterproductive. Compare American students to students in Finland, a country which places the exact same emphasis on the arts and life skills as it does academics. And what did Finland score on the 2015 PISA survey? 7th place. American schools need a reform in the form of taking the focus of school away from “passing the test”.

Schools have always been places of learning, but recently, curricular focus has shifted to simply making students exam-taking machines (Seldon). In many schools, the curriculum is based on the final exam, not the other way around. This is a problem because schools just teach students what they need to pass the class, not what they spend to succeed and thrive in their adult lives. Schools should hold preparing students for the future as a primary focus, and in more ways than just academics. While learning, math, sciences, and history can be important, schools should teach a curriculum made up of a mix of both life skills and academics so that our children can live successful adult lives.

Most schools are currently focused on giving students knowledge, not the money management, communication, and flexibility skills that they absolutely need for the future. Many schools in the US have arts and non-academic programs that are completely dependent on various grants: if the grant is revoked, the program shuts down. Some detractors of teaching students life skills say that academic courses already have substantial amounts of life skills work into them. However, this is simply not true. Most academic courses only include a half-hearted attempt at connecting studies to the future, leaving the course isolated and not applicable to anything else in a student’s life. As an example, many of the real-life application problems (one of the school system’s futile attempts to connect academics to the real world) in math that I have personally experienced amount to: “The H-Bird’s profit can be modeled by the function: f(x) = (x + 4)2 + 5 . What is the inverse function of the H-Bird’s profit?” This example, as well as other so-called “real-world application” problems, does not in any way show how the real world works and how math can be applied in the real world (Whitney). In one math class, a student got so frustrated by the apparent uselessness of Algebra 2 that they asked the teacher the point of what they were learning. The teacher replied by saying that there was no point to Algebra 2 and that the student just had to mindlessly learn the math so that they would have a good grade and go to college, where they would learn things that they would actually use in their profession. When faced with highly-academic curriculums that “teach to the test”, students often simply try to learn only what the test will cover. Students that study in this way often learn everything just good enough to pass the test, and not to connect it with previous knowledge or analyze the information in any way. Although this “skimming method” results in a higher test grade (Kohn), it results in poor long-term knowledge gain. Pre-college academic courses currently do not make a large enough impact on a student’s future.

On the other hand, life skills are applicable throughout one’s life. A life skill is any skill or ability that is necessary or at the very least desirable in order to live a good life. The impact of learning a life skill can be felt from youth to old age, making them one of the most important and universally applicable skills to learn. Emphasizing creativity in lessons allows for adaptation and flexibility in the adult life of students (Gabora). With the life skill of financial planning, our children can lead financially stable and secure lives, complete with responsible spending, understanding economics, and saving income. Students that know how to speak in public are generally more courageous and not afraid to share their ideas (Barnard). Life skills trump academic skills because of their utility: an academic skill is only useful in pursuit of one discipline, but life skills are used both in and out of the workforce, in every possible aspect of one’s life. Critics of teaching life skills often say that life skills should be taught by the family of the student instead of by a school because it is the family’s job to ready the student for the future. However, life skills are too important to just be taught by the family, although additional guidance for students is beneficial. Teaching life skills in school standardizes the process, making it so that children with a bad familial  relationship can still acquire these necessary skills. Life skills are much more applicable than normal academics, for which reason they should be implemented and focused on in schools.

Because life skills are universally applicable and beneficial, and current academic courses have little impact on a student's adult life, it is worthwhile to switch curricular focus from academics to life skills. One example where flipping the syllabus to teach both academics and life skills led to benefits is the Burlington Integrated Arts Academy in Vermont (Schwartz). Six years ago, this school (called H.O. Wheeler elementary school) was in danger of closing. Only seventeen percent of third graders managed to score a proficient on the math section of the NECAP, Vermont’s standardized test. The school was also very poor, with 95% of the students qualifying for free/reduced lunches. The school board had to do something drastic to save the school. And then they did. Under the IAA’s current curriculum, students learn academics through the medium of arts. Creativity and persistence are emphasized in the transformed school. And the changes have paid off. In the 2018 math NECAP, 66% of the IAA’s third grade achieved proficient or above. In addition to the academic improvement, teaching life skills results in a closer-knit community within the school and fewer disruptions to the learning environment (Bates). Your children’s school could also reap the benefits of the Integrated Arts Academy, by changing its curriculum to focus less on academics. By supporting policymakers that advocate for increased life skills being taught in schools, you can ensure that your children have a stable and secure future, no matter what profession they enroll in.