Things That Schools Don't Teach but Should
Budgeting/Finances
One thing everyone must learn to do is budget their money. How to pay bills, what things are more important, what kind of income you need for your lifestyle, how to save money, how to find a job that pays well. A big problem with our society is we don't know how to manage our money, I mean we caused a recession over it. I wish I had learned how to figure out how to manage my money more effectively at a younger age. I also wish I had learned an easy way to help build my credit without going into debt by over spending on a credit card. which I still don't know how to build credit to this date without resorting to finally getting a credit card. If schools taught more of these things I think our economy would be a lot better off and less people would be in debt.
I understand that schools briefly cover sexual heath in schools, however they only use meaningless scare tactics on teens so they won't have sex rather than enrich them with lots of valuable information. Don't get me wrong they should still study STD's and their prevention. I just believe that what is taught is too limited. First off they should pass out numbers to a planned parenthood so that teens know a confidential place to go get std checked, sexual health check-ups, protection, and more sexual health information. They should also cover more on how sex works. They never taught me this part and skipped to all the bad things. I didn't know what sex exactly was til I experienced it for myself, which is a really scary thing to learn on your own. I believe they should teach what losing your virginity is like as well. Many people always wonder if what they are doing is normal or not, so teaching it to teens would be good so they know when to worry. They should teach you the dos and don'ts of sex, we all have made mistakes when we were first learning and caught up in the moment, some still might not realize what they are doing wrong. Tearing is another subject. What should teens do if they have sex and the girl is torn? Is it an emergency? They won't know unless someone tells them. Braces and oral sex another topic looked over, they should teach the dangers of that. The list goes on.Teens will always do some sort of sexual act,it is in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so they need more knowledge on these experiences so they make less mistakes.
Drugs and alcohol
Another topic briefly talked about infused with scare tactics. They should continue teaching the dangers of drugs and alcohol, but also include what to do if something does go wrong when doing drugs and safer ways of doing drugs. They should teach students how to know what their limit is when drinking and teach them that just because you don't throw up or get a hangover doesn't mean that you couldn't have gotten alcohol poisoning, in fact if you don't know your limit and you drink over it and don't throw up you can be in huge trouble. Students should also be taught that there are legal forms of some drugs that they are already using that are safer. One is that there is a legal form of extacy, a drug that is very popular in recent times. They should also teach how getting a medical marijuana card works and the controversies of its legality in CA. I understand we don't really want teens or young adults doing these things but the fact is most will so they may as well teach legal and safer ways of getting high.
Communication/ Relationships
Most people don't understand how relationships work and how to communicate effectively with others. In fact the reason why most relationships fail, whether with a bf/gf, family members, or friends is do to lack of communication skills. If everyone in my school district years ago learned some of the things I recently learned in college back in middle school or high school a lot less "drama" would have happened. Many people would have probably realized the misunderstandings they had before they were too late. Communication skills are one of the most important things we need to learn in our society, we use it for everything we so. Effectively learning how to get your point across without fighting is essential as well as learning to understand another one's point of view.
