Dear Next President,

Congratulations on becoming our president! I hope you feel comfortable in your new office seat.

I am a senior at San Marino High School, one of the best high schools in California, but I don’t feel like I have the ability to live on my own in college.

The reason I used the adversative transition, “but”, is because having a good education does not mean I can live independently after I graduate. Most high schools focus on academics, with little emphasis on teaching a student how to live alone. It is not wrong to focus on academics, but students need a lot more need than a degree to support themselves. Our current curriculum forgets that we are untaught about the skills needed to survive without our parents, skills needed to maintain a house and care for our children.

After spending so much time on tests, homework, community services, I feel ready to graduate, ready to get out into the world. But the problem is I have been relying on my parents for food and housing for the past seventeen years. I know nothing about paying bills or renewing passports, fixing short circuits or sewing ripped shirts, my parents do them for me. One of my closest friend, a high school graduate, buys unhealthy food every day because she does not know how to operate a stove. These life skills that are so important are generally not taught before a student graduates from high school, meaning they can’t even take care of themselves, let alone take care of a family in the future.

Is the Department of Education not responsible for “helping communities work out solutions to difficult educational issues?” Or are you denying this is an “educational issue”? In any case, this is not a difficult problem to solve, especially if you were to speak up and/or otherwise encourage school districts nationwide to create a Home Economics class, which will teach us the basic life skills we need to live independently.

I have a dream to be a good housewife when I have children, and I want to have them when I'm young. I think it would be cool to become sisters or best friends with my daughter or son, especially when there is a smaller age gap. I feel the need to pass down the good care that I got from my mom to my children, but there is no way I am able to do that at this rate. With the intense study schedules and no one to teach me, there is hardly a chance I will be able to succeed in being a chef, maid, and teacher at the same time, which is what it takes to be a really good mother. I don't want my children to receive any less than what I have received growing up, therefore I wish there is a class in which I am able to learn these things and reach my dream.

Recently, I am disturbed with two responses I got from my teachers regarding my dream to be “the best mom in the world”. One, “Why do you want to go to college if you want to be a housewife?” And two, “I’m sorry, but your generation will not have children.”

It shows how your generation views the best of ours, honestly, that we are handicapped. You have even decided to choose the future path for us—the path of jobs over family. We are not that incapable. You are forcing disability upon our generation if you don’t start encouraging these classes for high school students because this whole generation would not know how to live a self-sufficient life. Please encourage Home Economics class so we have this opportunity to learn to live independently.

Sincerely,

Yinger Xu
Period 3
U.S. Government