What are the most important life skills not taught in schools?

Financial literacy. How to set and stick to a budget and how to avoid debt. Nutrition and basic kitchen skills.

Common Sense.

- Mary Anne Trump

How to use a corkscrew to open up a standard wine bottle. I was surprised when my nephews/nieces needed help with this.

How to build and keep professional relationships. Even when it's someone you hate.

How to drive a stickshift.

How to drive, period.

We had obligatory swimming classes and a test you had to take later in our school.

Do schools not offer Driver's Ed anymore r6?

LIVE BELOW YOUR MEANS!!! Sock as much money away as possible. Financial independence is freedom. But you retain that freedom only if you manage not to spend away the corpus. Spend wisely on everyday things so that now and then you can cash splurge on a treat (but only if no long-term financial damage done). Have long-term savings as well as emergency savings.

Not in California, R8.

How to cook a nutritious meal from scratch.

I'm not R6, but my school only offered driving rules/regulations classes -- never any behind-the-wheel training.

We learned how to swim in gym class when I was in high school

Beat me to it R9 and well said.

How to make a pot of coffee.

How to spot and properly fight your own personal hair-loss

R9 for Secretary of the Treasury! Agreed: Well said. Being fiscally conservative ("tight" as my mother would say) allowed me to retire early after being laid off due to "corporate restructuring."

Earrings

Caftans

How to deep rim a hairy hole and swallow a good load of sperm.

How to role on a condom- how to relax while bottoming- how to chop up coke- how to potty train a dog- how to put lights on a tree- how to edge- how to peel an orange- how to crush and chop garlic- how to eat when you are invited to dine with the Queen- how to get into lobster without making an big mess- how to roll a joint- how to pour tea- how do drive a standard drive- how to carry on a conversation without a smart device handy- how to tie a tie or braid your hair-

I can think of other things I consider essential knowledge by age 18

How to tie a knot for the right circumstance. I love this freakin’ website!!

Manners and civility. Learning how to put on a professional face.

we had an economics class that taught us how to do super sensible things like start our own business. it consisted of all of us pretending our parents were rich and would give us money and we came up with an ad campaign. or something equally ridiculous.

I would have been better served learning about how to budget on minimum wage and realistic credit card interest rate scenarios. also, bank fees and the many ways banks screw over stupid or poor people. for chrt sake, I didn't even get an education on 401k until I asked here (thanks again btw!)

How to change a car tire.

How to weigh evidence (sources, ulterior motives, ect) So many conspiracy theory adults I know weigh all evidence as equal. It's not.

Adding to r26 — media literacy.

Masturbation - where to find the best porn, various methods, cleanup techniques,

Critical thinking skill. Questioning authority. Questioning the status quo.

Critical thinking skill. Questioning authority. Questioning the status quo.

Auto-fellatio - if I could have learned this when my body was more supple and nimble.

We not only had swimming in gym class, but if they ran out of suits, you had to swim naked (obviously, separate pools for boys and girls and separate classes).

Basic civilian and political rights (this is for the US).

Presenting hole.

Back in the Dark Ages, my 5th grade teacher made us learn to read want-ads. Before the internet was accessible, that was how people found jobs, cars, sold things and placed personal ads.

It would be great if schools still taught home ec, but that would probably require refitting school buildings for cooking classrooms.

Humility.

My high school taught "culinary arts," which essentially meant learning to chop vegetables and prepare sandwiches -- but it was the one cool and useful thing they taught.

The most important skill that people need to learn is HOW to learn. After all, no school can teach everything. Everyone has access now to the internet - but people have to learn how to use it. How to do a search. How to narrow down the topic to get the information you need. But in addition to google and other internet resources, there are numerous books and videos (youtube is great for this) teaching you how to cook, how to change a tire, how to put up a piece of sheet rock, how to wire bathroom fans, how to buy stocks, how to balance a checkbook or read a bank statement, etc. I wish it were straightforward, but a person might need to learn how to learn from a video. (How to search for the topic, listening to the video once to make sure that you have all the tools and parts you need, then stopping the video to complete one portion of the task before moving to the next). How to follow written instructions. (Granted, this is almost impossible when trying to assemble furniture made in China from a text that was clearly poorly translated from the original Chinese).

The second most important skill is critical thinking. Does the story you are being told pass the smell test?. Are there huge gaps in logic? (Correlation does not equal causation, for instance) Are there presuppositions that don't make sense and yet the rest of the story is based upon them? Is there evidence? How credible is the evidence? Is there corroborating evidence? Is there contradictory evidence? How do you evaluate a source?

If schools would just teach both these things well, we'd live in a better world.

I truly believe that human beings are curious by nature, but in the end self-education is key to a successful life well-lived and if schools kill off natural curiosity, a stupid, non-curious adult is the result.

How to read/understand online banking statements.

How to manscape your nut sack.

How to refrain from making false, defamatory accusations against upstanding older gentlemen!

How to admit a mistake, apologize, and move past it. If you don't know something, ask! You will learn something new, and the person helping you will feel good as well. Contributing to a 401K isn't "giving your money away," as I have heard numerous times from the kids I work with. You might also be missing out on free employer contributions. Lastly, don't yield your right of way in traffic just to be nice. You are screwing over everyone waiting behind you and possibly creating a traffic accident.

How. About. A. Nice. Game. Of. Chess?

How to wipe properly.

What do in case of a greasefire. No, really...

How to sew on a button.

How to create a signature personal look.

Basic first aid.

How not to accidentally make children.

R49, "teen living" class taught us all of that with frightful images of STDs and the dreaded Miracle of Birth video.

Nothing for the gay boys though. Not then anyhow.

Mid-Century design.

How to recognize a scam and that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

The best thing i learned in Jr. High circa 1977 was learning how to type. It was tremendously helpful and it got me my first couple of entry level jobs just because i could type of 65 wpm. Today it’s not important because of computers.

I've always said that spotting and dealing with narcissists and psychopaths should be a mandatory class in all schools the world over. So much unnecessary suffering would be spared.

Also, parenting. And this includes instilling in the heads of children that they don't NEED to become parents despite all the social pressure that exists.

Self defense classes starting in kindergarten & they can't quit until they master the art (like black belt level)..

1 out of 4 girls are sexually abused in their lifetime & millions of boys as well.

If pedo adults knew kids could fight back then they would think twice in some cases (not the ones where they get victims drunk/high & then molest them).

How to treat other people with kindness, even when there’s nothing to gain.

Acquiring self-esteem and maintaining personal boundaries.

Realizing the artificial high from alcohol and drugs may be intense, but fleeting.

I graduated in the 1970s and typing is the only class that has lasting value. R53, I find it incredibly helpful with computers because I do a lot of coding as well as on-the-fly note taking. I took Latin which helped with languages in college. There was a class called "Bachelor's Survival," believe it or not, that taught boys (only boys could enroll) how to sew, clean, iron, etc. Girls already learned that in Home Ec, I assume. I think it was an acknowledgement that those of us graduating would get apartments rather than live at home until marriage or joining the service. Rather progressive now that I think of it.

How to find potential friends and develop friendships.

How to listen.

Critical thinking, budgeting and credit skills, compassion and empathy, diversity & as said by R59 how to listen.

I really like R56 suggestions as well

How to drill a gloryhole in a bathroom stall.

Self awareness

How to manage your emotions

That getting on the corporate ladder isn't for everybody. That capitalism sucks big hairy balls.

tuat trades people are more needed than app designers

R8 I’m in NC right now waiting on my 14 year old to come out of drivers ed. We had to register and pay for an after school class that meets for 3 hours every day for 3 weeks. She’s miserable and it seems much more efficient to be part of health/PE like it was when I took it.

When to keep your mouth shut.

[quote]Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Home economics, even if it excludes the cooking segment, for whatever reason. “Home Ec” encompasses much of what is mentioned, above.

There’s a skill to saying “no”, or similar, without being rude, and while being clear. Maybe people need to be taught it because so many are so bad at it.

Home maintenance, car maintenance, cooking, budgeting. Why are these things not taught in school?

How to lick the penes. In my country lady must go to architecture school to learn it.

r71 because they should be taught at home. Most people today hire others to do maintenance work, eat out and live off credit cards.

Jesus, just do away with parents. Most of these skills are the job of mom and dad. Of course, they are just too busy.

The simple Oral Rehydration Solution formula which might come in handy for the potential apocalypse.

r74, way too busy staring down at their phones and Instagramming their lives when not binge watching TV from the man cave and binge drinking from Mommy's sippy cup.

Shit to do with taxes. Those things are unreal and frightening.

How to cope with failure or mistakes, or the end of a relationship.

*In ways that don't involve aiming and/or firing gun at other people

You Queens act like kids would be interested in any of the subjects listed. My school recently made the decision to bring back the Home Economics class and the kids are already complaining.

Well kids, at least it's not an additional period of math....

Why should I bother teaching/talking to you about taxes when while we are studying percentages you ask me "Why do we need to learn this?" And I give you a reasonable answer, your eyes glaze over or ,you tell me I'm wrong to the amusement of your classmates.....Please

How to deep throat

How to properly swallow a load WHILE the cock is down your throat. This is an important life skill.

How to escape a serial killer and not meet them in the first place.

How to roll a joint.

How a mortgage works. If you borrow money for a mortgage, what will make up your mortgage payment (includes taxes and interest)?

Look up PITI, r85

anal hygiene

Logic, actual formal logic.The kind that was taught by Jesuits, and you memorized the fallacies until you could call them out by number.

There are companies making big bucks teaching millennials who have corporate jobs basic social skills, including table manners and how to interact with co-workers and executives.

He always says he loves you right before he cums. Don't believe it.

blowjobs

Be very nice to your 7 maiden Aunts who will leave you as their only heir very wealthy when they die.

Learning how to execute an estate and do probate is the best thing I have ever figured out how to do.

How to pay your bills. Saving. Basic financial skills.

Work Ethic

basic manners.

Humility

How to change a tire.

How to shake your thingy when your done peeing.

How to shave.

How to wash your hands before eating etc.

How to be a skilled and convincing liar.

Diplomacy -- don't burn bridges.

All the above, plus:

-Learning to stand up for yourself, instead of waiting for others to have your back about it or until everybody else in the world treats you the way you believe that they should be doing.

Picking and choosing your battles. Don't sweat the small stuff.

Common sense. Oh wait, you can't teach that. You're fucked.

That knife and fork go at 4:00 when one is finished.

R79 Most of us who graduated before the 1990s can remember taking classes/courses that we had no interest in taking/learning because it was expected of us .

I went to a private school & they told me I couldn't take Spanish & French at the same time because "it might confuse me" (on top of the required English).

Bottom line is I ended up taking courses/classes I had 0% interest in to replace them (because the classes were already filled up with other students & one more kid was one too many), ended up with bad grades in classes that didn't benefit my job futures & now I only speak one language as a result of my "wonderful private school curriculum".

Some kids would take 0% English or science if we allowed every decision up to them (which is why we as nations don't do that).

Not to drain your pasta.

How to take a screenshot.

Schools in PA offer driver's ed. You must complete 30 hours of theory instruction as well as 6 hours of behind the wheel instruction. That's when I hit the baby deer -- in the driver's ed car, no blood or any damage to the car, only thing I've hit ever.

A lot of things mentioned in this thread are things PARENTS should be teaching their kids. Schools should teach them skills and facts so their not idiots but parents have to teach them how to be decent human beings.

R106

[quote] That's when I hit the baby deer

What happened to the deer?

R107, I'm the OP and I didn't mean for this to be a thread listing [italic] more [/italic] things that teachers should be responsible for teaching. Education begins at home, so parents should be the most responsible for teaching most of these things.

basic first aid and nutrition

[quote]What happened to the deer?

Dead on the side of the road. :(

All of them.

Government schools aren’t concerned about education, only indoctrination. The consistent decline in math and reading scores in the United States versus the rest of the world should have caused massive re-organization of education two decades ago.

Charter schools and private schools always have far higher standards and scores, from children far less privileged than the average student in these studies.

Non-government schools consistently report higher scores no matter the race, religion, or economic class of the children.

[quote] Charter schools and private schools always have far higher standards and scores, from children far less privileged than the average student in these studies.

Private schools have far less privileged kids than public schools?

We had to swim in my high school gym class.

I think some of the elective classes taught about financial stuff, but it's true that at best we had this "mini economy" thing in fifth grade. Nothing very complex.

R113

Every private school has openings for gifted students with limited financial means.

Scholarship opportunities for those schools are one of the few ways that young black men that refuse to embrace “thug culture” can escape the ‘hood.

I am going to assume you are a white liberal and are just ignorant about these things, like almost every white liberal I’ve ever met.

Fuck private schools! We're in this shit together.

R115, that doesn't sound like any private school I've ever heard of. Certainly not private Catholic schools in my area. My sister and her husband enrolled one of my nieces into an expensive private school, and after spending plenty of time around my niece and her gaggle of friends, I can't say I was impressed. Those kids didn't exactly seem any brighter or more worldly than public school kids.

The rest of your post sounds like you have some strange, ulterior agenda that I have no further interest in participating in. Goodbye, bitch.

Kindness. Empathy.

Using basic tools like screwdrivers and wrenches.

[quote]Kindness. Empathy.

These are things that should be taught at home by the parents.

Emotional intelligence.

For guys, how to wash your damn stinky feet.

Yes Natasha-Boris R112.

R119 I had an Uncle who'd now be 80 now (been dead 15 years) that couldn't change a plug or put a light bulb in. He wasn't mentally deficient and had a good job as an accountant.

Not sure It's anything he wasn't taught because I was showing him how when I was about 9 years old, some people aren't interested in learning anything.

How to behave lawfully both in private and in public. Most importantly, how to not do shit to get arrested, like incite violence while in public and how to stay calm while being approached by cops. You can have simulated drills and play-acting scenarios. Say pretend you and your classmates are Popeye's customers and workers, and fight is about to start because they've run out of chicken sandwiches. How do you stay emotionally regulated at that stressful point in time from both perspectives of customers and workers? How do you do that while preventing fights and getting arrested for being violent, no self-control imbeciles? Discussion to ensue after said simulated exercise.

I'm being serious about this, I had in the past during my mental health training, worked at an inner-city elementary school where a lot of the kids were feral, meaning they had poor family support structure due to absent parents or parents in jail. Every day we (the school counselor I'd worked with) had to deal with kids physically attacking teachers or cussing at teachers, and this is aside from common stuff like kid-on-kid violence. So sadly, it's up to the schools now to teach how to be a good person-citizen, and at the most basic level e.g. how not to injure or attack other people so that later in life you don't get arrested for real as an adult.

[quote] How do you do that while preventing fights and getting arrested for being violent, no self-control imbeciles?

I guess they could always go on DL and make an EST about finding a lost kitten on one thread and then post racial stuff in another thread?

R124, that reticence to do manual labor is class based. That your uncle was an accountant is an important clue.

It's a mark of being higher class that one has enough money to hire people to do maintenance and labor tasks. Many people feign ignorance of how things are done as a way of signaling to others that they are of such means that they've never needed to concern themselves with manual tasks.

[R125] My kid is doing that now, through Teach for America. I wanted to go in the school and visit, and she said I couldn’t. I asked why and she said the security doesn’t allow for visitors to go in and out during the day, because of the parents. I assumed that they were demanding helicopter parents who insist on safety, but no. It’s to keep the parents out of the school because they try to beat up the teachers. One of the panes on the front door was broken by a dad who had called the principal a “punk assed bitch.” So we should all be grateful to those who enter the teaching profession, because they do a lot more than we know.

R127 You are probably correct, He and my Aunt were so reticent to do anything that they never had children either.

As he was an only child with no surviving family it left my Brother & I as the sole beneficiaries of their estate (they had also named us in their will/ trust documents also). That was a Win, Win for us.

"There are companies making big bucks teaching millennials who have corporate jobs basic social skills, including table manners and how to interact with co-workers and executives."

What companies?

I know of a few in the UK, not sure about the US. Try Googling 'Etiquette Schools' .

The kids these days behave like pigs.

I know of a few in the UK, not sure about the US. Try Googling 'Etiquette Schools' .

The kids these days behave like pigs.

The art of speaking up assertively or declining something directly to someone, even when it can be a little bit uncomfortable. I would say this is a little bit more of an issue now because a lot of kids just want to be agreeable, especially shy or passive ones. It took me a few years to develop that ability myself, but it beats the alternative -- agreeing to something you don't want or going behind their back somehow.

r109 it's difficult for a girl who became a parent at 15 and never graduated from high school to teach a child anything, she's still a child.

R134, thankfully as that scenario has reached historic lows in the country, that particular scenario is becoming less of an issue.

In kindergarten, I remember lessons that included learning to tie my shoe and remembering my phone number. When I was in third grade, my teacher taught us something that she called "common courtesy". It involved things like holding the door open for the person behind you.

The schools need to teach basic civility that many kids obviously aren't being taught at home, mainly anti-bullying. The schools should also teach kids the difference between good touching and bad touching, and to report any type of abuse by parents and others. Maybe they're already doing this.

^Why don't you just say "the schools should" raise people's children entirely? It isn't the job of teachers and school administrators to correct all the family dysfunction in the world. That's an impossible task.

R137 right?

Ever since they made the screwy kind of lightbulbs they stopped teaching gays how to get light bulbs out of their ass.

They still need to teach that.

They no longer teach tone deaf people not to sing.

I have the happiest dipshit singers at work.

How to diffuse a situation. Or at least, how not to exacerbate things and make them worse.

Unfortunately I am seeing -- more and more with people my age and younger -- a trend where people exaggerate things and make them more traumatic than they actually are. Just chill out.

[quote] How to deep rim a hairy hole and swallow a good load of sperm.

My high school taught me that.

Acceptance of all races and sexual orientation. Maybe it would change some of the hate they learn at home.

r136, what year were you in kindergarten? In 1970 I practiced tying all summer to get ready for kindergarten; it was the only thing I had not mastered on my kindergarten readiness list: Know address and phone number, able to use the bathroom without assistance, knowing alphabet, tying shoes. Most kids today wear slip on and velcro sneakers so I wonder what age they actually learn how to tie.

The very basics of cooking.

How to make bread from scratch, how to make everyday meals from scratch. How to shop for food bargains.

You can get through some hard times with a bit of kitchen skill that doesn't involve "reheating in the microwave"

^That's all on Youtube now.

That you NEED to "clean out", and HOW to "clean out". Douching 101.

Santa Barbara area high schools are taking the cooking program seriously. I think this is a great idea. For those interested, it seems like a well-organized trade school.

How to leave bathroom as clean as you found it.same as leaving a table with food all over it.God i think some lazy idiots have been raised in a zoo.basic manners ,please ,thank you

R148, there are too many Mexicans and other immigrants desperate for under-the-table work to make a culinary education financially worthwhile to the student, AEB the near total folding of the US branch of Cordon Bleu schools. Food service trade schools are cheap to create, and the students (in reality they are employees) provide free labor making food that is sold. Trade students need to be trained in more highly compensated jobs such as construction, plumbing, auto mechanic, HVAC and others.

Eye contact

Small talk

Writing a cover letter

Interview (without a parent helping or JFC, following up with an email to the hiring manager)

Write a paper that is coherent

Money can indeed buy you happiness however fleeting it might be.

Basic safety, security and first aid. These issues are taken for granted by 18yr olds when they leave their parents. Most of them have no clue about the simple stuff.

On the other hand I commend parents for instilling in their kids a sense of dignity and self-worth. Maybe complaints about young people focuses on an exaggerated sense of self-worth but I was so inured to abusive and unkind behavior because I was taught to obey and defer. Some middle ground is needed but younger colleagues are unafraid to speak up and defend themselves, and I learn a lot from them.