Have you ever come home from school and when your parents asked, “What’d you learn today?” you replied, “stuff” or “nothing”? Well, most kids in school believe that they aren’t learning things that they will use once they get out of highschool. I know that my friends and I have thought that plenty of times and will most likely continue to believe that until we graduate from college. Students should be getting more of an education to benefit them for once they graduate. No one teaches us how to do our taxes, or the struggle of buying a house and starting a family, no one teaches you how to balance your money as a college student/young adult, etc. While some of the core classes do benefit us in our jobs and our lives outsides of school, not all of them do. Take math classes for example, at some point in our four years in high school our math teacher should be responsible for teaching us how to do taxes, even if you take that class as a senior you’re at least getting the information you need on how to do taxes. High School students should be able to choose the core classes they will need to take based on what they want to be when they grow up, however the schools could decide what grade(s) the students would be allowed to do this in. Then, your first year of college you might have to take all the core classes to make sure you still have the knowledge you need. Students should be learning lessons that will benefit them in the long run.

An author wrote this, “In 2002, CPS recognized that, although their test results were improving, their graduates were still struggling to find employment. They also concluded that those graduates who found employment were having difficulty retaining their jobs.” Schools in Chicago started a employability soft skills training program. The article said they benefitted from this program greatly. “Teams from 60 high schools were trained during the 2004-2005 school year. This year, Chicago Public Schools will continue to roll out this program to over 40,000 students district wide." They ended up saying that they will continue to teach this program not only in Chicago but to many different high schools. (Ebscohost, Baxter Gamble, September 1, 2006, Teaching life skills for student success: in Chicago public schools, a program that teaches life skills is helping students make a successful transition into the workforce and into personal success. 

Another author wrote, “But through the program, students prepare by spending time in the community and as part of work crews.’They learn as many job skills as they can,’ Widaman said.” These students with disabilities were learning life skills that would benefit them after high school. One of the students had said, “Cole – who wants to go into law enforcement after graduating from high school – said the program has taught him both patience and job skills.

‘I’ve learned, basically, how to be an adult,’ he said.” The students were running a coffee shop at their school, Canyon Ridge High School. (Ebscohost, Julie Woolton, March 5, 2012, 'Hire' Learning Program Focuses on Teaching Students Life Skills)

While some may say that we need to get our basic education there are resolutions to that problem. We can still get our basic education while learning how to manage our life outside of school. When we have math class or any other class we can still learn the curriculum, we just need to know life skills for life after high school. If teachers took even a day or two out of the week to teach us some things we should know for life after high school we would benefit from that greatly.

In conclusion, I do believe that students should be taught life lessons instead of sticking to the original curriculum. We wouldn’t lose any basic information, if anything we would be learning more by  being taught life skills.