7 Classes Our K-12 School System Should Require To Prepare Younger Generations For Real Life
I write about the future of Business, Psychology, and the Creator Economy. My goal is to educate, motivate, and create educational content for my readers. If this interests you, Subscribe to my âPredicting The Futureâ newsletter and get new articles directly to your inbox!
Our education system in the US doesn't properly prepare our youth for the real world. Education is significantly underfunded, teachers are underpaid, & the system often fosters old-school ideas.
Iâd argue that education is the most important issue we can talk about in the US when looking at a successful future for our country. Weâre talking about our children here! Yet, our current system is significantly flawed and faces huge issues that arenât being addressed at scale. Here are just a few of the largest problems:
Funding & government deficits
Decreased teacher salaries
School safety
Racial inequity, systematic racism, and student poverty
Suicides & mental health challenges
Overcrowding in classrooms
Outdated teaching methods
Problems with common core curriculum & standardized tests
Lack of technology adoption
If education is such a valuable investment, why do we spend more than eight times as much of our federal budget on the military than schooling? 1
Our allocation of the national budget is immensely frustrating (on many levels I might add) and Iâve been thinking a lot about how we can help change the status quo. Bottom line: we need to reshape our education system and make it work for the 21st century and beyond. I recently wrote a blog post talking about 5 ways I believe online learning will revolutionize our education system. Today, Iâll talk about 7 classes our K-12 School system should require everyone to take. Without further ado, here we go!
#1: Emotional Intelligence 101 (EQ)
EQ is the ability to manage oneâs feelings and interact positively with other people. It canât be taught in one day; it takes your entire life to develop these skills. Unfortunately, our current education system isnât doing a good job of teaching us what EQ even is in the first place. These skills are fundamental in self-growth:
Self-awareness (knowledge of self, confidence, accurate self-assessment)
Awareness of Others (empathy, organizational acumen, appreciating diversity)
Motivation & Self-Control (integrity, adaptability, initiative, and innovation, learning orientation, emotional self-control)
Building Relationships (Communication, managing conflict, inspirational leadership, developing others, facilitating team performance)
EQ involves both the emotional skills and the social skills necessary for happiness and success in school and life, and students who are not prepared with these skills will be at a serious disadvantage in their educational and career trajectories. High EQ is tied to a positive sense of self, as well as to the ability to have meaningful and rewarding relationships with others. Like its partner and complement âIQâ (which is primarily about a personâs reasoning ability), EQ promotes academic achievement and helps students become more available for learning. Additionally, emotional intelligence is more highly correlated with career success than are academic skills.2
#2: Financial Literacy
Taxes
Real Estate
Investing & Compound Interest (I recently wrote a blog post: 2 Ways Compound Interest Can Improve Your Life)
Accounting
Credit, Loans (before going to College would be nice!)
Insurance
As a country, weâve seen where a lack of personal finance education can lead. Millions of Americans struggle every day with their money, living paycheck to paycheck and relying on credit cards for necessities, only to wind up deep in debt and short on hope. Beyond that, many Americans are finding that they canât buy homes, do their own taxes, invest for retirement, or save for their childâs college fund because of their own student loan debt, massive car payments, and general lack of financial planning. Despite some systematic failures we need to address, many of the money problems Americans are facing could have been avoided if financial literacy was taught earlier in school.3
Crazy stat: As of this year just 39% of Americans could pay for a $1,000 emergency expense.4
#3: Mental Health
Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for ages 10-24 and isnât talked about nearly enough. 90% of those who commit suicide had an underlying mental illness. Without being taught about the reality of mental illness â how dark, scary, and alone it feels â kids wonât understand the impact that âjust being kidsâ, whether thatâs bullying, slut-shaming, or spreading rumors, can actually have.
Half of the individuals living with a mental illness experience onset by the age of 14. This number jumps to 75% by the age of 24. One in five youth live with a mental health condition including major depression, but less than half of these individuals receive needed services. Undiagnosed, untreated or inadequately treated mental health conditions can affect a studentâs ability to learn, grow and develop.5
#4: Coding 101 & How The Internet Works
For starters, basic coding courses in schools provide students with the know-how to develop their own websites, apps, and computer software. At its most basic, learning how to code is learning to tell machines what to do, which is an essential skill for the 21st century and beyond. This further requires the mastery of a problem-solving skill known as computational thinking, which involves breaking larger tasks into a logical sequence of smaller steps, diagnosing errors, and coming up with new approaches when necessary.6 Likewise, as technology develops, itâs important to understand how algorithms, databases, AI, and the future of technology works at a fundamental level. I wish I had learned about all of this sooner.
#5: How To Find Quality Resources Online
Fact-Checking Sources
Using Critical Thinking Skills
Identifying Fake Videos, Conspiracy Stories, AI Deep Fakes
Teaching students about the importance of finding credible information online is vital to developing your students' critical-thinking skills. When you arm your students with the tools to find credible and reliable information online, you are helping them become better-informed digital citizens.7 Donât just believe every TikTok âfactâ you see. Iâm deeply concerned about this.
In my opinion, the lack of credible information online is one of our biggest threats to democracy in 2021.
#6: Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship-focused programs teach students crucial life skills that will help them navigate this uncertain future. These skills include problem-solving, teamwork, and empathy as well as learning to accept failure as a part of the growth process. This is important to know in your K-12 schooling experience, so you have time to think about what you want to do in either college, technical school, or the real world8
Essential Entrepreneurship skills to learn:
Understand how to create and run a business and be your own boss
Understand capitalism, our economic system, and other systems (both the successes and failures) from around the world
Understand which large corporations own what & how they make money
Understand Opportunities in the Creator Economy
#7: Self-Defense
Putting this one is sad, but it needs to be covered. This is to protect our kids from the bad in this world. Additional benefit: Self-defense helps students build confidence in themselves. They can develop self-discipline, improve their physical condition, and improve their street awareness. Self-defense can aid students particularly when they are walking alone at night after classes. The bottom line is our country isnât safe and our children need to be able to defend themselves. Add this to the PE Curriculum and spend quality time covering it.
I will be focusing on some of the above topics in future articles. For now, thatâs all. As always, thanks for reading :)
Hayden Schuster
