America's Education Situation
The lack of job skills taught in my school and schools across the nation do not benefit the students going to school and hoping to get a job as we all work for the capitalist regime, so in order to benefit the economy and students, it would be most helpful to include skills pertaining to jobs.
Dear Future President,
Education in the United States is important. It's important to students, teachers, and parents. The education system was wanted by our founding fathers so it should be important to you as the president.
In the past, the education system was centered around farming and child assistance around the house. We had apprentices and different careers that were taught to us students while we were in school. Nowadays, students don’t generally take on apprenticeships during school, yet we don’t have a curriculum with enough substantial changes to benefit the children going into the job market. The lack of job skills taught in my school and schools across the nation don't benefit the students going to school and hoping to get a job as we all work for the capitalist regime, so in order to benefit the economy and students, it would be most helpful to include skills pertaining to jobs. Some improvements include more communication skills and including more financial based courses instead of just a ‘catch-all’ math class.
Everyday of the week I get up and go to school, I learn things that don’t apply to many careers or even general life skills. Because the public education doesn’t prepare students for life, it prepares them for more education. I haven’t learned how to file taxes, how to balance a checkbook, how to pay rent, or how to talk to people and communicate. School teaches us important subjects, I understand why it's important to study the past and why we should learn equations in Algebra, but teaching life skills is also important. I don’t use Algebra in my everyday life. Students aren’t taught why the subjects and topics we’re being taught matter, we just know how they work. What is the use of knowing a skill if you can’t apply it practically? I think that we should either show how our education applies to life problems we have, at the very least, and at the most, we should add to the curriculum to improve the life skills learned by students.
It’s been shown by a study done by the McKinsey Institute (Voice of the Graduate) shows that the education our basic education is preparing us for, college, isn’t even that effective, “A third of graduates of four-year colleges did not feel college prepared them well for employment - it’s worse when you look at two-year colleges.” That is a terrible statistic. This unpreparedness starts at a lower level. It starts at the public school, high school and middle school levels of learning. I would argue that these students aren’t being sufficiently prepared whatsoever. So if the public school system doesn’t prepare students for college or the workforce, what is it good for? I personally would like to get a job in the workforce that I can live off of, so it would be in the best interest of everyone to learn more skills pertaining to jobs.
An argument many people make surrounding the lack of life skills education is that parents will teach their kids how to do them. This is a very flawed argument because of all the ‘what ifs’ that could and do affect students. Many parents don’t have time to teach kids how to file taxes or change a tire, it just isn’t feasible to think that everyone can teach their children about how adult life is. Another breaking point in that argument is that if the parents didn’t learn from their parents, they can’t pass it on to their children. This lack of education about life skills for children can lead to troubles and more expenses later. Not every child has access to the life skills education that should be even across the board.
Future President, please consider that as a student, the current track my education is taking me is very concerning after looking and statistics and the general lack of knowledge about adult life that I have. I implore you to improve the curriculum by mandating more life skills in public education. Shouldn’t every child be given a chance to succeed?
Sincerely,
Zoe W.
