Is Anyone Else Concerned About the Lack of Skills Many Students Have When They Graduate From High School?
Why do you think I have this image of a fisherman for an article like this?
When I was in K-12 public schools, I was taught what I need to function as an independent adult. This was deemed more important than the school report card with the state and what it looked like on paper for the school.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to cook from scratch. Do you know what that means? It means I would follow a recipe and add each measured ingredient to the mix at the correct time. How to prepare and cook the ingredients safely.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to thread a needle, mend a rip, attach a button, and I could follow a sewing pattern.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to think critically about the information I was given. I evaluated the source. You know that just because someone says “research-based” doesn’t make it so. What is the research and are there biases? What does the person gain by making the claim? The term for this is bias.
· We didn’t have a course called personal finance, but we learned personal finance in our math class. I knew how to balance a checkbook, figure out the cost of a sales item, multiplication tables by memory, how to use a basic calculator (but I could add, subtract, divide, and multiply without it).
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to take care of my hygiene and how to care for younger siblings.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to type on a keyboard without having to watch my fingers and using all my fingers.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to problem solve. I didn’t expect everybody else to take care of my problems.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to do my own laundry.
· When I graduated from high school, I knew how to recycle and reuse items in a new creative way to keep the items out of the garbage.
· I learned that if I forgot my lunch, I sucked it up and ate it when I got home.
· I learned to watch out and keep myself safe.
· I learned that it is not the job of others to carry me.
· When I graduated from high school I felt like I could choose whatever path because I had the tools to walk those paths as a self-sufficient adult.
We seem to be raising a second generation of people with the idea that community and society should provide for them. This makes the matter more complicated because we can’t rely on parents to help turn this around because they think we should take care of the needs of their children too.
I am not against helping people to help themselves. I don’t believe it is my job or the job of my tax dollars to endlessly support people unless they are unable due to disability to care for themself.
A wise person once said, “Give a man a fish and he will have a meal. Teach a man to fish and he will feed himself” I have to add that he will also be able to teach his children.
Once I asked a classroom of kids to write about what they would be interested in doing that could support themself. One kid said she was going on welfare as her mom and grandmother did. This was the example she grew up with. What!? This makes me sad.
What do you think? Do you feel we need to get back to teaching our students the basics of reading, writing, and life skills? What should we do now?
