“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school.
They don’t teach you how to love somebody.
They don’t teach you how to be famous.
They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor.
They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer.
They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.
They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying.
They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
~ Neil Gaiman

I’m not sure I’d agree with Gaiman that they don’t teach you anything worth knowing in school, but I do agree that a lot is left out. There are a number of things I’d add to Gaiman’s list. Here are just three:

Parenting
Nevermind diaper changing and feeding a baby. While important, those are the obvious things. I think we should teach kids a few different theories of good parenting. I would recommend these two excellent books:  STEP: Systematic Training for Effective Parenting,  and  How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk as texts for that course. I’d love to see active discussions and games where you discern the best approach to different parenting issues. What a great course that would be!

Money Handling
How did you learn to make a budget, save money, spend it wisely, plan for your future, buy your first home, choose a bank, invest, pay your bills? You probably learned by a lot of trial and error. Why couldn’t that be taught in school? The whole course could be made into a game where the student who best masters the concepts wins both the game and the high marks. How much more prepared would kids be to go out into the world if these basics were taught in school?

Communication and Problem Solving
Schools should be teaching children how to solve life problems. Problem solving and communicating could be taught with age-appropriate methods beginning in kindergarten and evolve to more sophisticated methods as the children progress through school.  Life is filled with problems and the one who leads a prosperous life is the one who learns how to solve them. Why not teach this to children when they are young?

These things are so important that it’s amazing they are not being taught in school. Schools need to teach kids about the most important thing they have to face once they leave school. Life.

Are these things being taught in schools in your area? What did you wish you’d learned in school rather in life itself? What else would you add to a school curriculum?

photo credit: Alamosbasement