Does a public school education prepare our kids for real life?
I was inspired by an article I read in The Aberdeen Times from 1921. “The state board of education recognizes the fact that “education” is preparation for life work and the aim of the public school should be to fit all the pupils for everyday work in a practical sense”.
The article went on to use that explanation to justify hiring new teachers for subjects such as home economics, physical education and more. The article set a niggling bee buzzing in my bonnet as to whether this is still the view of the state board of education. Their logo has the motto “Education for Life”.
Let’s explore whether schooling required by law actually does educate students for life. By the way, my kids go to public school, I am not bashing teachers, I seek to inspire change in the public school system, and no, homeschooling is not a current option for me or many other families.
When looking at statistics, success of education is often measured by how many highschoolers continue their education at a further level. I disagree that this is a good measurement. If students are going on to higher education, this just means the school has equipped them for higher education, not life. Many students go on to higher education merely because they don’t know what they want to do.
It is odd that students of the past were so sure of what they wanted to do, they often dropped out of school to do it before graduating. Now, practically everybody stays until they’re 18, and they still don’t know what to do with their lives. University is often seen as a gateway to opportunity, but it is important to consider its drawbacks.
The most obvious drawback would be the significant cost of a university education. University graduates are burdened for years with their student debt. If they gained a higher starting wage than a high school graduate, the difference is often spent on their student debt. Many students find themselves in jobs unrelated to their degree, and yet nobody seems to question how often this happens or the value of their investment. In fact, we’ll come back to investments later.
A university education is not essential to a successful career. Many successful entrepreneurs and employees have thrived without formal degrees, demonstrating that real-world experience and self-directed learning can be just as effective. I do genuinely believe that the job market is evolving to place increased value on hands-on training, internships and vocational programs that provide relevant skills more directly aligned with the needs of the job.
There is no doubt, of course, that every child needs writing and math skills. Math teaches more than counting but also critical thinking and problem solving, even a math-hater like me uses it daily. The only math teacher that ever got through to me was the one that taught percentages and asked me how I’d be able to calculate clothing prices in a sale! P.E. is also important in a world that becomes more and more focused around screen time and less on being healthy. Knowledge of science and geography are important for obvious reasons. History, although it may seem unnecessary, is incredibly important for avoiding past mistakes, and understanding social norms and different cultural backgrounds. All these things are taught at school and are a necessary basis of life skills.
Another thing that is not exactly taught at school, but is a happy by-product of it, and also the main reason I wouldn’t consider homeschooling, is the social side. Finding that other people do not share your point of view, your religion, your values, or interests, is a hard knock to take later in life. I am not bashing homeschooling, and the recent increase of homeschooling has led to beneficial things like group classes and homeschooling extra curricula with other students. But often homeschooling is chosen to protect children within the parents set of values. This is a good thing, but it doesn’t help the children to understand and cope with others who don’t share those values.
However, if you look at adult life in general many of the most vital skills are completely absent in schools. Home Economics is being forced out by budget constraints, many students go to university without even the most basic cooking skills. How many students in high school know how to sew on a button? The world trash problem gets so much media attention, but perhaps if we taught more basic skills and re-normalized things like mending and button sewing or repurposing clothing, then ‘fast fashion’ wouldn’t be so appealing.
So, we have students graduating without the ability to feed themselves independently, this leads to university students living on unhealthy food and/or eating out and running up bigger university expenses. We have people who don’t know how to survive on minimal funds, because they don’t know how to fix things (not just clothing but other things too).
Then I come to investing and finances. I left home when I got married and moved here, suddenly I had a household with bills, and no clue how to manage them. If you throw in medical insurance which I’d never had to deal with before you got someone who was completely lost. Where were the math classes on budgeting, saving, investing. Where was the class on how to apply for medical insurance, how to figure out what the best coverage is. How many high school students know what a deductible is? I didn’t! So, thanks to that very patient doctor’s secretary who sat me down and nicely explained why I still had to pay some of my bill even though I had health insurance.
In this area, many jobs are in relation to farming. You have everything from managing laborers, physically doing the work, manufacturing wheel lines, fixing trucks, breeding and planting crops, animal husbandry, how the weather affects crops, the effect it has on the water supply, why we have a reservoir and canal system in the first place. Absolutely none of that is covered by local schools. Animal husbandry isn’t on the curriculum anymore (it used to be), shop class isn’t either. People management would be so valuable for so many careers, also not in the curriculum. Is there a science module on crops, rotations, plant breeding, etc.? Honestly, I don’t know, but I think not.
I’ve seen arguments that parents want the school to do their job for them. I understand this approach as it does seem like many people do. But if you try to teach your child all these things, let me know how it goes. One of the reasons I don’t home school is I am limited in my knowledge. It’s the same reason the high school science teacher, math teacher, geography teacher, history teacher, P.E. teacher, etc. etc. aren’t all the same person!
I don’t know how to fix an engine or cross breed crops; I know hardly anything about crop rotation or people management. Some things are undoubtedly developed through real-life skills, but let’s go back to the original question…does the public school system prepare students for real life?
If we lay aside the basics, let’s take a student in their last year of middle school, is the math they have not yet explored really necessary for the average life? Could we sacrifice some of the detailed algebra and move that into a university program where someone who has a need for advanced mathematics could study them and make more room to teach kids to cook or fix a vehicle? This may be irrelevant for America, but we learned about the Nazis for about five years straight, maybe more. This is a great example of educating the younger generation so that the same thing doesn’t happen again, but do we need to learn it for so many years? Learning about the great depression might lead to students being more thankful for what they have, but if the same thing happened again, would they know how to make bread from a crop of scrawny wheat and feed their family on food they grew in the back yard?
So, what can I do about it? Yes, I should teach my children budgeting, farming, cooking, and other basic life skills, but somehow, we have allowed organizations such as the State Board of Education to require so much time in school, that there is no time left for parents to teach the students. We have let society make us so dependent on two incomes, that many parents have even less time than I do.
If there was a petition to shorten school time. I don’t just mean shortening the school day and go to school more days in the year, I mean just shortening the required hours, and/or bring back the practical subjects into the schoolhouse. And the first way we could do that is by eliminating homework. Don’t let the worksheets take any more of our kids’ childhoods than they already do. (p.s. did you know homework is not a legal requirement – I’ll leave you to look that one up on your own.)
If there was half as much support for real-life skills as there is surrounding sports, and the prestige of “having a degree”, school and family life for families with school-aged children would be very, very different.
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