by Joelle Steele

Lack of education is at the root of almost every one of America’s problems. Ignorance and illiteracy are the primary causes of most crimes, of unemployment and poverty, and of racial and religious prejudice. Want to make any nation great? Provide an educational system that focuses on the long term goal of getting young people employed when they finish school.

In the United States, the basic Kindergarten through 12th grade system is weak and ineffective. It has been on a steady decline since the 1980s. As classes grow larger, teachers have more difficulty focusing on the needs of the individuals who are ahead of or behind the rest of the class. No two students will ever perform to the same standards because every student is different. That doesn’t mean that we should doom the slower students to failure or bore the life out of the ones who are burning brighter. There are solutions for this and for almost everything else in school.

But the bigger picture is the structure of public and private schools. It needs to change, and dramatically so. We need teachers to have their fingers pressed firmly on the pulse of employment trends in everything from blue collar to white collar jobs and to incorporate that information into the curriculum. To make this happen, we need to change the way schools operate and what they teach.

A Better Educational Path to Employment

I think that schools should be designed to accommodate the different goals that students have. This is my personal draft of how that might look:

• KINDERGARTEN THROUGH 6th GRADE (Ages 5 through 11)
• Emphasis: Basic Living Skills
• Academics: Reading; Writing; Basic Arithmetic; Typing & Computer Usage; Foreign Language; Art; Music; Critical Thinking & Decision Making; Communication Skills (speech); and Physical Fitness
• Life Skills: Health & Nutrition; Cooking; Laundry & Cleaning; Smart Shopping; and Money Management

• HIGH SCHOOL, 7TH THROUGH 10TH GRADE (Ages 12 through 15)
• Graduation for those continuing on to mandatory 2-year trade school or community college to obtain a VC or AA.
• Emphasis: Prep for Trade School or VC/AA Degree at Community College
• Academics: Reading (relevant fiction & non-fiction); Writing (grammar & composition); Practical Math  & Geometry (both for use in daily life and most jobs); Speed Typing & Computer Usage (more sophisticated programs and basic programming); Foreign Language; History & Current Events (US & World); Political Science (Constitution & Law); Comparative Religions; Cultural Studies; Basic Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, & Physics; Practical Art (design); Music; Critical Thinking & Decision Making (advanced); Advanced Communication Skills (public speaking); and Physical Fitness
• Life Skills: Advanced Health & Nutrition, Cooking, Shopping, and Money Management; Career Planning; and Basic Job Skills

• HIGH SCHOOL, 11TH AND 12TH Grade (Ages 16 through 18)
• Graduation for those continuing on to a 4-year college or university.
• Emphasis: Advanced Career Planning and College Selection
• Academics: Reading (classics); Writing (advanced composition); Advanced Algebra & Geometry; Advanced Computer Programming; Foreign Language; Advanced Biology, Ecology, Chemistry, & Physics; Art & Art History; Music & Music History; Communication & Public Speaking; and Physical Fitness
• Life Skills: Career Planning, College Selection; Scholarships & Financial Aid; Selecting Possible Majors; Leadership Skills

Why This Curriculum Is Needed

Over the last 30 or so years, most parents have failed their children miserably by neglecting to teach them basic life skills. These include the basics of health and nutrition; accurate sex education; how to manage money; how to cook, do laundry, and clean house; how to plan their lives and careers; how to find a job, interview for a job, and hold a job. Every elementary school student should be required to take life skills classes in fifth and sixth grade taught by teachers who have these skills and are up-do-date on all of them.

In more recent years, most parents don’t really know what’s really going on in the world today. Their information is inaccurate, often due to getting their news from erroneous social media posts. Their information is also frequently out-of-date, often harking back to when they were in grammar school, or high school or, worse yet, based on some nonsense that was passed down to them from their parents or grandparents way back when. Every middle school or high school student should be required to take classes in the U.S. Constitution and basic principles of law; political science; comparative religions; and cultural studies so that they can fully understand the world they live in.

How many students have ever held a job? These days, probably very few. So when they graduate from high school or college, they don’t really have any work skills. They tend to hop around from job to job, having difficulty finding a job in their chosen field. By tenth grade, every student should be required to take classes in finding out about different kinds of careers, how to find their career path, how to fill out job applications, how to find job openings, how to interview for a job, and how to conduct themselves on the job.

Of course, parents could be doing a lot more to prepare their children for independent living and working. Just giving them regular chores to do around the house would be an enormous help. Teaching them to save up or get part-time jobs to pay for their expensive wants would help too.

I can’t begin to describe how grateful I am that my parents instilled the work ethic in me at a very young age, and that I learned all my basic life skills from them. Having chores to do and having part-time jobs before I was out of high school have made me a more productive member of society. As a result, I have never received any kind of government aid, not even unemployment insurance. The longest I have ever been unemployed is three weeks, and I was in the hospital for a good portion of that time. Whenever I needed work, I made looking for work a full-time effort. When I wanted a better-paying job, I re-educated myself by studying at the library or taking a class.

We desperately need an education system that can fulfill the needs of different kinds of students. We can’t simply plan to ship everyone off to college and expect them to succeed. Not everyone is cut out for college. That doesn’t mean they have to live a life in poverty. They may have the potential to work a highly-skilled job that they would love if they got training in an appropriate trade school. Regardless of what many people think, there are actually plenty of jobs out there. What’s lacking is enough qualified workers to fill them.

Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice state that more than 40% of prison inmates did not complete high school. That number is growing every day. It’s time to start thinking seriously about the realities of life: the costs of college versus a trade school, and the availability of jobs to those who pursue academic educations without job skills.

Preparing students for life in the real world is what education should be about. And we need to start renovating our educational system to do just that. And we need to do it now.