There was a time when High Schools had a class known as “Home Economics.’ This class was primarily for females and was designed to teach women the basics about cooking, sewing, budgeting, and childcare, and pretty much the things that a wife ought to know to develop thus the necessary social skills to become a good housekeeper and parent. Sure, the times have changed and the expectations for females are obviously quite broader than they were back in the day, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is that those who are soon to become young adults truly do need assistance in the navigation of the real world. That is to say, all High School students should be mandated to take a course entitled, “Practical Living,” which would cover the whole gamut of bills, insurance, good nutrition, apartment rentals, scams, online social media dangers, student loans, credit cards as well as credit reports, financing, interest rates, taxes, budgeting, as well as any other items of this general ilk that would be of interest. In other words, while it isn’t so much that High School students are “thrown to the wolves” upon their graduation, it is fair to state, that there are plenty of things that they need to know so that they will be better able to adeptly deal with real life and the consequences, so of.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that there are plenty of High School students, even very intelligent ones, who truly aren’t prepared for how they are going to be marketed to and are susceptible then to being taken advantage of when they haven’t developed yet the necessary preparation skills to defend themselves from being manipulated, and taken advantage of. After all, in this capitalistic society, those who are selling goods of all types, typically don’t care about whether or not the person they are trying to sell their goods or services to, really understands the financing or their commitment to such. Instead, they mainly care about making that sell, and the responsibility of paying for this is thus left to the consumer.
Indeed, there are plenty of young adults, who learned their lessons the hard way when they first entered into society no longer having their parental safety net, and thus regret that they had to pay a price by being taken advantage of, in the learning of those lessons. It need not be that way if as part of our educational system, we did more to educate our students with the practicalities of how best to not only protect themselves but to navigate through life in a manner that would be of better service to them, and at least this then would give them the chance of being able to hold their own against those that are trying to get over on them. That is why, we need to do more to take the theory of education and distill it into practical lessons that correlate well with real life, so that young adults, will become more adept in understanding the value of knowing mathematics, as well as in reading comprehension, and in those areas that they have trouble in, requesting then the aid of trusted friends or family.