I hate reading this kind of shit. Schools are meant to provide background knowledge on how the world works. Some responsibility in educating children actually is the parents’ job. Pushing everything towards schools and pretending kids would listen for even 5 minutes when talking about insurance, taxes or job applications is mind bogglingly naive to me and completely leaves out parents and their part of education their OWN fucking kids.
But yeah, it’s all part of the “system” that parents are too fucking lazy to spend even 10 minutes a day with their kids and prepare them for life.
The problem occurs when the parents aren’t smart enough to teach their kids how to do taxes and whatnot.
Should we resign those kids to their fate because they were dealt a hand which involves stupid parents?
Tax forms have the instructions on them.
If they’re smarter than their parents, they will be taught how to learn it on their own, bare minimum. If they’re equal in intelligence or dumber than their parents, they can’t learn it anyway right?
Since wages haven’t kept up with inflation, both parents now need full-time jobs, and most need an hour or two to mentally separate from work before thinking about teaching their kids things they asked for help with. It would take an amazing human to get done with their stressful 8 hours and immediately think on the way home ‘hey, I want to try to talk my kid into learning to do taxes tonight, and for the next few nights!’ K-12 is glorified government babysitting at this point, a way to try to keep kids from getting into trouble. But read my other comment, most of this stuff is taught in most American schools already. Bitching before doing your own self-reteaching is just something that comes naturally for people and this bitching point has become a meme (looks up oh, literally I guess, hah)
Exactly. If there’s anything I’ve learned from school, it’s how to learn on my own and that not everything can be learned in class.
It’s also frustrating to hear people gripe about this shit when it’s the same people who I know wouldn’t have paid any attention in class anyway!
So ‘don’t bother even offering real-world, helpful information to students, and if the parent is a piece of shit, well little Timmy can get fucked’?
How exactly does that help anyone?
I fucking hated school both because I was held back while everyone else reached a decent level, and also it didn’t actually teach me anything fucking useful, especially during high school. I don’t need to know about science or mathematics beyond a middle-school level, I needed to be fucking prepared for this shithole that adults called ‘the real world’. Now I can code in a bunch of different languages, and I know computer hardware and modern software/OSs in and out, but fuck me for bringing up the fact that nobody helped me with resumes or job interviews or how to do literally anything beyond buying food from the snack bar. I would have appreciated the opportunity, but nah fuck me, here is woodworking.
I fucking hated school both because I was held back while everyone else reached a decent level, and also it didn’t actually teach me anything fucking useful, especially during high school.
held back
Any chance you dropped out early? We were taught all the things you mentioned starting at a Junior level (10th grade). Of course most kids hated it and didn’t pay attention or give a shit.
I stayed through graduation; I honestly didn’t learn anything new from 7th grade on. I took all the tech classes that were available at my hs, and I knew all the material except AP Comp Sci which was just Java coding. I then TAd in those courses because I knew everything so the teacher could screw around, and when they were away screwing around I turned the classes into hangout hour, with the most laid-back atmosphere ever; easiest credits ever. All my required classes were review for me. I wanted to test out of everything but it wasn’t an option, ffs.
American here and my comment speaks only about America. I don’t have the faintest knowledge of the school system in other places.
My high school DID have a mandatory class for Juniors, all the way back in the mid 2000s, that taught all this stuff. How to properly write resumes and cover letters, balancing your checkbook / managing your finances, doing your taxes, how to properly read a contract and always reading the fine print and how you can nullify or change certain parts of the contract and have the other party agree on it, all the important adult stuff. I don’t even remember the name of the class because I was too busy thinking about getting stoned after school with my friends, but I do remember it being interesting enough to remember what they were teaching. We also had a mandatory Government class that taught about the branches and how they all work, all the basics, what lobbying actually is and how you can do it, etc.
The truth is, when you offer this information to moody overworked teenagers – 80% is taught already – there is almost nothing they give less of a fuck about at the time, save for maybe the nerdy A+ across the board overachiever kids. The ones that partially cared remember it as well as they do binomial fractions. Basically, that it exists. Maybe. It’s only later on when they now have to do the research themselves and it’s not hand-curated for them that they bitch why didn’t school teach me the important things?!
They did. You were busy not listening or caring.
Anyone that wants to challenge me on this, don’t just downvote me. Name your high school and this week I’ll pose as a reporter from a small paper calling to ask about the “important life skills kids need to know after high school” - the aforementioned topics, and ask if they have classes that cover it and how long they’ve had the class, and also whether they’re elective or mandatory. I’ll give you the name of the person(s) I spoke to, and proof that the call took place and then you can call for yourself to verify.
The point of school is to give you a large amount of background knowledge that you can later recall the name of and look up yourself even if you don’t remember exactly what they taught you. AND to train you as a good worker in the capitalistic system, yes, but I’m not arguing that they don’t – we do live in a capitalistic system, after all. But they also teach you about all the other types of economic systems.
And you wonder why some of your teachers aren’t the kindest people to everyone with calm demeanors, even though they purposely chose – maybe decades ago – that they wanted to help kids learn.
This is all retrospective from someone in his 30s of course. I hated school too and said all the same things. I’m just trying to drop some knowledge for those of you that are young enough that this might apply. Pay attention to the material, and check your electives. I’m positive some American schools don’t teach any of this, particularly in poorer areas, but if you go to a school that isn’t rated horribly, they probably have a class about this stuff for you, if you want it.
My school taught us how to create a resumé and apply for jobs. They also taught us how our government works, what political parties are associate with what end of the spectrum, and how to budget. This was compulsory education. This was 20+ years ago.
My parents didn’t fill in the gaps. Yeah, the system needs to account for lazy parents. Kids are not really owned by their parents, by the way.
Kids are not really owned by their parents, by the way.
That’s not what they said…
Well by saying it’s the parents responsibility to spend this time teaching their teenagers and young adults how to do taxes… This is so divorced from reality.
I agree and disagree. I feel if a school - especially a publicly funded school - has any responsibility to teach children anything, it should be how to navigate society’s requirements. I would much rather have been taught basic finance and taxation and career planning and political systems and stuff than the same exact span of World War 2 history 4+ years in a row (this was my high school). Parents should absolutely have a responsibility in teaching their children too, yes, but that’s assuming ideal parents. In reality, today’s parents are struggling too much (in part due to never having been taught how to navigate society properly) to impart actual beneficial lessons to their children on these topics, then our schools are neglecting to fill in the gaps before ejecting the kids into adult life with demands and expectations that were never communicated to them.
So how do we decide which stuff should be formal education and which stuff is the parents responsibility?
Also there are a lot of factors that play into whether a student pays attention in class or not.
In my 12 years of school, you’re telling me there was no time at all to go over stuff like this? I think it’s totally doable.
No!!! I don’t want to learn addition, I want to learn taxes.
Yeah, because addition is never done in taxes!
Easy. Just read the instructions on the form.
Also, we’ve come full circle now. Gen x and older doesn’t know how to find information on Google. Millennials search for information that they do not possess. Gen Z and younger doesn’t know how to use computers/search engines along with their parents and grandparents.
Those things can’t be taught in school because the methods hve changed by the time you’re done with school.
The new method:
Tax brackets have been the same system for a century yet 3/4 of people still don’t seem to understand that taking a raise / OT that will put you in the next bracket won’t make you earn less money.
Also writing resumes has been pretty consistent the past few decades.
Compare that to biology which changes every 2-3 years in some cases.
I did have some classes for writing resumes and professional emails but we were like 13 and too dumb to care.
Also the class was really boring and lackluster. Telling children “you have to write down your past jobs and stuff…” and making them write a mock resume isn’t very engaging
So you want them to teach you how to write a resume, but at no point do you want to write a resume while learning to write a resume because that’s boring?
I’m not saying that, I’m just saying teaching it to 12-13 year olds is probably not super useful
A lot of folks are going to be writing their first resumes at 15 years old. Maybe 12-13 is too early, but if we let curriculum be decided by what teenagers care about, we will be teaching them vanishingly little before long.
People do a lot of growing up in the fee short years between 12 and 15.
I’d say that teaching kids those sort of skills at ages 15-17 could maybe provide some utility, but earlier is a waste of resources imo, maybe other than a very cursory look at how people get jobs?
It just makes the fact they don’t teach it that much more inexcusable.
Also writing resumes has been pretty consistent the past few decades.
Ehhh kinda. How you write and tailor a resume has changed quite a bit, but it doesn’t look like it from a glance. But the more important thing is that applying for jobs has changed drastically. 15yo I handed out resumes at my college’s career fair and that was antiquated even then when everyone preferred online applications. It’s only changed more since with job social media sometimes being required.
I don’t know why it requires an entire class to teach. It’s a piece of paper, with your education and job experience on it. It’s not a dissertation on the mating rituals of deep sea arthropods.
It doesn’t need an entire class. That’s a strawman. But they could cover it over 1-2 days in 1 class in the last month or so of high school.
I’ve seen resumes that people submit. It can be 50/50 as to whether it’s decent or absolutely terrible.
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It’s funny on an unintended level because basic arithmetic is required for all of those things. 🤔
You know…they teach you trigonometry, algebra and calculus for building critical thinking and problem solving. It’s not meant for solving puzzles with pen and paper.
Idiotic. As if you’re learning addition/subtraction in the same window of time as learning about jobs/taxes. Most high schools DO have resumé/job search skills workshops.
Also, you don’t need school to teach you how to do taxes. The instructions are literally on the form you fill out. Or there’s always H&R Block.
They teach you how to get a job in school. You buy a house like you would buy anything else. Taxes are included in almost every purchase and if you didn’t pay any sort of taxes the government will let you know.
It’s not that hard cmon.
They teach you how to get a job in school.
Citation needed. Nowhere in my HS education was there info on how to apply to jobs. I learned what I did watching fucking TV. especially with how the job market had changed. College didn’t even really teach us this.
You buy a house like you would buy anything else.
What class teaches how a mortgage works and other common financial questions? Home Ec didn’t. Pre-Calc didn’t. They may teach you how interest works, but nothing about how that applies.
Taxes are included in almost every purchase and if you didn’t pay any sort of taxes the government will let you know.
Taxes are included without action on the customers part. You literally need to know nothing about it, just pay the surcharge. Income taxes and deductions are entirely different and not taught. It’s why bullshit like Turbo Tax exists. Other countries (from US perspective) don’t have to bother with this. And in the US, government will absolutely NOT tell you that you didn’t pay taxes. Generally it’ll be years before they bother because not everyone needs to file. And then they won’t “tell” you, they’ll charge you back taxes or tax fraud and you’ll owe thousands in penalties or go to jail.
It’s not that hard cmon.
Turbo Tax wouldn’t exist if it was easy-peasy. This meme wouldn’t exist if this stuff was self-evident or as simple as you want to make out.
It is easy though. The tax form itself tells you how to fill it out. Tax software exists because of digitization and sales tactics of the late 80s and early 90s. Why would you do taxes on stinky paper when you could do your taxes ON THIS $3000 COMPUTER WITH AN 8086! Like, okay, you don’t have to “know” how to do taxes anymore, now you need to learn this software instead.
Cause critical thinking and problem solving are useless, right? I agree that life-skills courses should be in the curriculum, and at least in my schools they were, but it’s not like the usual school topics don’t have any purpose. Education during development is critical and the population only improves the better we do with that.
When you assume you make an ass out of you
