I’ve always felt like school didn’t really prepare me for real life. Sure, I learned how to read, write, do some basic math, and picked up a bit of social experience. But when it comes to facing actual life problems — emotional struggles, financial independence, finding a career path — I felt totally unprepared.
We spent years studying subjects like chemistry, physics, and geography, yet most of us left school without truly understanding or appreciating them. And even worse, none of it seemed to help when life got real.
Looking back, my biggest regrets are:
– Not learning English earlier
– Not developing any marketable skills, like programming
– Not focusing on my mental and physical health
– Not questioning the belief systems I was conditioned to accept — many of which just weighed me down.
If I had been taught things that helped me avoid those regrets, I think school would’ve made a bigger difference in my life.
So I’m curious, what do you think we should have been taught in school instead? What should have been emphasized more — and what less?
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Probably at least some bit of time on stocks, how to open investing accounts & the differences between them, what things like mutual funds are, what indexes are, risk level of each etc.
Music. Dance. Art. Auto repair. Cooking. Economics.
Pretty much everything they used to teach before schools realigned themselves to game college admissions at the request of the parents.
It’s cultural too. In Japan, for instance, primary school is also a mechanism for teaching you how to interact with other people and to fit into society.
As a criminal defense lawyer, I definitely advise my clients how to dress, but apparently most lawyers do not. We should teach children how to appear in court. It could literally save them days, months, even years of their lives.
Databases and Spreadsheets
I was in high school in the 90s and the internet was nowhere near as integral to daily life. But we did have computers. We were taught to type and use a mouse. We had 3 different years where we learned different word processors.
Then I started an office job and had to learn Excel and Access. Could have used those in high school and college.
Devil’s advocate: if you teach kids boring stuff like finances, they won’t listen. And most of the “character development” stuff is too controversial to teach in schools.
Parents don’t want kids learning about meditation in schools, or how to “be a man” because any stance is going to be somewhat ideological. You have to learn that stuff elsewhere.
I’ll be honest, I think I was very lucky in my catchments and schools. They did a good job of providing a rounded education for the era
I wish we learned more about how career building works in terms of education and pathways,and it was a time before the internet was full swing, so while my xennial crew managed to pivot mostly, I wouldn’t say our education was proactive.
I think the current generation finally understands that stocks aren’t just a rich people thing to do with disposable income and everyone should be investing in the stock market. I don’t know if schools are teaching financial literacy in any capacity these days but they should have.
The average 20yo should know how the cost of living will change in 40-50 years, how to afford retirement, how tax rates change with income, how to save on taxes etc.
Kids also need to learn actual practical lessons on preventative medicine, fitness, nutrition etc. My 90s education on nutrition was 90% focused on micronutrients (basically vitamin deficiencies) and had nothing to say about carbs, good fats, bad fats, protein etc.
This is an often talked about idea / meme but it doesn’t hold water well.
The things I wish school covered better. (I should note, I’m early 30s, to put a time frame for when I went to school).
Interest rates and nutrition.
How many college students sign up for screwed up college loans having no idea how interest works or what percent it is? Only to be screwed later down the line when they’re out of school. If they knew in advance, perhaps they would alter their career path and save up a bit first.
Nutrition. I remember being pretty bored during health class so I’m not sure how well this class would work but a whole class of people knowing what’s good to eat and what’s bad to eat and why, would make a class full of healthier people, saving them thousands of dollars in the future, and extending their lifespan by decades.
Life and trade skills in general and what life after high school is like. No one ever challenged my views as a child and I never thought about college or knew how it worked until I was in my early twenties. No one ever questioned what kind of career I wanted or taught me how to set and achieve goals.
How to handle stress. Learning to detach from your emotions and analyzing them instead. Asking “why am I feeling this way, and what can I do to objectively solve my problem”.
This would have saved me years of making decisions in an emotionally reactive rather than logical state of mind. And it would teach people how to resolve conflicts peacefully rather than escalating them (often to the point of violence and death) without even realizing that’s what they’re doing.
But nah, we got to memorize a million different useless facts instead to the point of killing any joy a student could have for learning. And that protecting yourself against a bully makes you just as guilty as the person hurting you. So thanks for that..
I always roll my eyes hard at the “everything we learned in high school was useless, where was my ‘how to pay bills’ class????” attitude.
the public school experience varies so much between not just each state, but also each locality and district. Not everyone has access to the same quality of education, and unfortunately a lot of it is tied to socioeconomic status. Wealthy people live in wealthy areas around other wealthy people. So even if they don’t send their kids to private school, the public schools in wealthy areas tend to have a much higher quality of education and better resources. They will likely have higher quality faculty and lots of opportunities for student engagement. Poorer people in poorer areas don’t tend to have as much of this in their school districts. Most teachers with good credentials will avoid low income schools due to student behavioral problems and lack of moral support from parents and other faculty. Of course exceptions exist, but we are a very segregated society at our core and different environments have a massive impact on what and how one learns.
The role of parents in education cannot be understated. It goes hand in hand with my first point above. Wealthy parents tend to take a strong interest in investing in their children’s education. When they get a job somewhere and have to move, they tend to seek out the best school district in the area when looking at houses. They want to make sure they are picking the right district where their kids get a good education and opportunities for extracurriculars, especially sports. And they put a lot of emphasis on education and good academic performance in order to get into a good college and eventually a good career. There parents are likely to teach their kids a lot about financial literacy and how to invest and manage their assets as adults. Poorer people, on the other hand, usually have to settle down wherever they can afford and that often tends to be in lower income districts where schools are maybe not as good. They also might not take as much interest in their children’s education, either out of a genuine lack of interest or because of being burnt out and cynical from working long hours at low wage jobs. These kids often grow up in an environment where financial literacy is lacking and people just do whatever they need to do to make ends meet – working multiple jobs, doing side gigs, etc. And unfortunately these parents probably end up with lots of debt due to having to rely on credit as a secondary income to make things work. Their kids then grow up not having a completely healthy understanding of finances.
taking away any impacts of socioeconomic status, teenagers in general hate school and find the subjects they learn dull and uninteresting. If every school suddenly mandated a minimum of two years of “financial literacy” courses to graduate, most students would hate them and gain nothing from them. They began requiring a year of personal finance courses when I was in high school. Guess what – no one paid attention and put in any effort in that class and complained about it the entire time. That’s just teenagers for you.
the traditional academic subjects – language, history, science, and math – are incredibly important and were placed as the focus of primary and secondary education for a reason. Honestly, few things annoy me more than people who say “oh I don’t do math” or “oh I hated science in school”. Because these are usually the same people who fall head first into the vast wasteland of woo, hucksters, conspiracy theories, alternative science, and all other forms of bullshit. These are the people who parade around and where their “I hated high school” attitude as a badge of honor, while adamantly pretending that they know more than qualified experts because they “do their own research”. I personally want to live in a place where people have a basic understanding of all subjects and have the ability to acknowledge where their understanding ends.
Also, I just can’t buy into the “they should have taught us finance in high school” argument in 2025 given the completely ubiquitous nature of information via the internet. There’s a bajillion resources out there to learn about finances and bills – blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, books, articles, etc. if you really want to learn more about finances and other “practical” things, nothing is stopping you from accessing these resources and learning.
Tl;dr not all education is created equal – some people just have a better start in life due to privilege, and that privilege is often self perpetuating. And even beyond just looking at the privilege of being in a better position in life, high school students in general won’t start loving school if all of a sudden they were required to take “practical” classes. In fact, I think we need to do a better job of cementing the core fundamental subjects because there’s way too many people out there who are proud of their ignorance and are doing lots of harm by role playing as experts and spreading misinformation. The internet is a vast resource and there’s never been a more convenient time to learn financial literacy and other life skills – there’s a YouTube video for everything.
School isn’t really about education—it’s about training you to accept a lifestyle. You wake up five days a week, show up at the same place for eight hours. Sound familiar? That’s a job.
Your teacher? That’s your future manager: always right, even when they’re wrong. You’re not allowed to challenge them, because they’re “the authority.”
The school security guards? They’re not there to protect you. If they were, they’d be armed. No—they’re there to maintain order, to escort you to the Dean’s office when you step out of line. The Dean? That’s your stand-in for a judge, deciding your punishment.
The Principal and Vice Principal? Think President and Vice President. They represent the top brass. The chain of command is already in place—you’re just learning how to submit to it.
Still think school is about learning? Try this: go dig up all your old homework from every year you attended. If you can remember even 5% of it, congrats—you’re the exception, not the rule.
If school really prepared you for life, you’d get a small “paycheck” of fake money each week to budget or invest in. Shop class would be mandatory so you’d know how to fix a leaky sink or patch a wall. You’d learn survival skills, how to do your taxes, how to ace a job interview, and how to write a real resume.
But you’re not taught that. Why?
Because school isn’t about empowerment—it’s about obedience. It’s about grooming you to be a silent cog in the machine. A worker ant who never asks, “Why?”
I have to wonder, were your parents around to help you with these life skills? I ask not to judge but to let you know that I think parents need to step up and pitch in. Other than that, I feel I got a great education. For those classes where I didn’t pay attention, well I take responsibility for that.
In the U.S., how to do your GD federal income taxes!!!
For non U.S. folks, in the U.S. they don’t tell you what you owe. You have to fill out pages of fine print, answering only the information that pertains to you, although there will be MANY semi-vaguely worded questions on the form that will not pertain to you. You just have to know which ones they are.
Then you take those pages & your answers and follow a formula they put on the last page and come up with the amount you owe. They already know how much you owe, except for a few items you can list, but they don’t tell you what they think it is. You just have to write a check for the amount the formula spit out, send it all in and wait until the tax authority calls you in to an office. Or doesn’t. They might call you within the year, or maybe 3, 7, or 10 yrs from then. Then they fine you if your number isn’t totally correct. On the plus side, if you pay them too much, they will send you a check. Or at least they send some ppl checks for overpaying. Since you don’t really know if you got it right, maybe they don’t send checks to everyone who overpaid. But they send enough checks to make you think they do it for everyone who has overpaid.
And, you learn the why of federal income tax in school, but not one single thing about how to do them.
It’s maddening.
We should leave school with a basic understanding on how computers work and how to use them, also learn about the pros and cons of apps and search engines. We should be able to cook and clean up after ourselves. We should have driver licences. Learn how the banks operate and how to deal with them. Learn about the economy and housing markets etc.
Get therapy and learn that it is useful and not embarrassing.
School taught the basics, but it skipped over what we actually need in life. We should’ve learned about mental health, emotional intelligence, how to manage money, and how to build a career around our strengths. Real-life skills like job hunting, setting boundaries, or dealing with failure were never covered. Instead, we memorized facts we forgot after the test. Learning to question belief systems and think critically would’ve helped many of us avoid years of confusion. Marketable skills like coding, communication, or financial literacy would’ve made a huge difference. School should prepare us to live, not just pass exams.
I think one of the most important and misunderstood things across society is the nature of logical relationships. People not understanding logical relationships is behind at least 75% of bad public policy.
Specifically, if most bleeps are blorks, it does NOT mean most blorks are bleeps. It doesn’t seem controversial when stated in abstract terms like that, but change the nouns and adjectives and things get a lot more dicey for most people. For example, saying most criminals are x race does not mean most x are criminals. Those are two entirely different and separate things.
Not understanding directionality causes people to be unable to understand that correlation does not prove causation. The number of pirate ships sailing the high seas is highly inversely correlated with anthropogenic CO2 emissions, but I assure you that pirate ships were not large carbon sinks. Famously, margarine consumption in the US is highly correlated with the divorce rate, but it’s extremely unlikely that people are getting divorced over margarine consumption.
How does not understanding directionality have the effect of not understanding the difference between correlation and causation? Because they understand that something that causes another thing will necessarily be correlated. After all, if something causes something else, you cannot have that something without the something else. In other words, all causal relationships are also correlated, but not all correlations are causal relationships.
Not understanding this leads to erroneous thinking, like “if a disproportionate number of y ethnicity students are suspended, it’s proof of discrimination against y ethnicity.”
My theory: school prepared you for real life you just didn’t pay attention and never critically thought about why they taught you specific material.
If you know how to study and learn then you can acquire any “practical skill” you want to learn. If you can do basic math and read you can file your own taxes (I did my own taxes from 16-23 bc of this). If you took algebra and trig then you should be able to understand how a retirement account weird because you were taught about exponents which is just compound interest. If you know basic history then you should be able to identify historical parallels as they’re happening in real time and understand references in media. If you can read then you can learn about careers paths and personal finance.
The most marketable skill out there is being a life long learner. Let’s say they taught you programming and then the day after graduation they make a robot that can do programming perfectly, you’d complain that they didn’t teach you anything marketable. No one knows what the future will be like or what skills you I’ll be in demand but we do know change is the only constant and those who can grow, changed, and think have all the skills they need to adjust for tomorrow.
Watch out for the narcissists, psychopaths, and other high conflict cluster b types. There are people out there in the real world that will reduce your humanity for their utility, they exist, they aren’t just movie villains.
That the vagina only has about 6 inches worth of nerve endings (otherwise, childbirth would be unbearable) and that most women do not orgasm from vaginal/penile intercourse.
One can’t complain about being conditioned to accept the status quo, when one sits waiting for someone to lead them their goals. Once one realizes this, everything begins to change.
Civic engagement: the structure of state and local government, and how to access those structures. How to engage in and run a civic meeting. How to petition and testify. When and how the US Census occurs.