Many high schools require students to have four credits for each of the four core classes: science, math, history and English, but students don’t gain critical real-life knowledge they will use in their day-to-day lives. The school board should reevaluate these requirements and offer more classes that prepare students for the real world instead.
For the most part, schools do not require financial literacy classes. Only 26.3% of U.S. public high school students will take a financial literacy course. Learning how to file taxes, budget and invest make up some of the most pressing responsibilities graduates will take on after finishing school, but many students will be lost on what to do. According to a recent poll, 82% of respondents wish they had taken a required personal finance course in high school, showing that school did not prepare them for life. Many students do not have access to learning certain life skills at home, making it necessary for schools to provide the required education for all aspects of working-class society.
In most high schools, students have the option to take classes like calculus and physics for advanced credits, but students must take courses like chemistry to graduate. While these classes prove to be important for students who plan on going to college and majoring in one of those specific fields, a lot of the curriculum becomes unnecessarily in-depth for students who plan on finding their path in art, attending a trade school or acquiring a GED (General Educational Development). The Texas Association of School Boards lists the three primary reasons for schooling, including developing a productive workforce, creating an informed citizenry and providing for social mobility. The inclusion of specific higher-level classes may add to these things, but it does not create an informed citizenry. Students graduate high school knowing stoichiometry but not how to manage credit or even problem-solve, which develops a society unable to perform basic responsibilities instead of the fully able, informed society the school board supposedly aims for.
Opponents of implementing real-world preparation in schools over the present coursework argue that the availability of personal finance, nutrition and wellness, home economics and other basic classes as electives provides students with enough opportunity to learn, so there’s no need for a change or addition in required classes. However, many students cannot fit extra classes into their schedule or don’t think about choosing those classes. Schools should require a course compiling all of these life skills or even implement units that cover personal finance and basic nutrition into the curriculum for required math and science classes.
Students should not be graduating high school unprepared for what real life asks of them. The school board needs to tailor course requirements to provide students with the knowledge they need to handle future responsibilities.
