Discussion Title: Should life skills be taught in K12 school?

1. Life skills should be taught in school.
1.1. Pro: People will feel more motivated to learn and be engaged if they can apply it later on.
1.1.1. Pro: While children may not have to balance salaries, mortgage repayments and banking interest rates, they can still apply life skills to budgeting money they receive through part-time work or to options available to them if they wish to open a bank/ credit union account.
1.1.1.1. Pro: The 'real-world' aspect of life skills makes the learning more tangible to students, thus making it easier to apply to their own lives \(which they may feel is not the case with academic or conceptual learning\) as well as making the subject one that might be easier to teach \(given its strong relationship with examples and applications that the students are already familiar with\).
1.2. Con: Teaching life skills in school would be ineffective, and thus useless and wasteful.
1.2.1. Pro: Students may not understand the usefulness of the subject at that age and may not show interest, rendering the subject pointless for them
1.2.2. Pro: Classes for life skills would eventually turn into another textbook course \(and additional burden for students\) and would prove ineffective if the students themselves are not interested in the subject
1.2.3. Pro: Life skills may not be one-size-fits-all, so people could still end up learning something that they cannot use later in life.
1.2.3.1. Pro: The needs of a school teacher, a civil servant job, are significantly different to the needs of the founder of a tech start-up. It is ineffective, and potentially harmful, to try standardise what children's futures will look like and the skills necessary for those futures.
1.2.3.1.1. Con: Certain skills are necessary for everyone to understand: economics, politics, personal finance, cooking, and computer skills are all going to be useful for life as an adult regardless of career.
1.2.3.1.2. Pro: By creating an expectation in young children that their lives will become one type of future, we risk limiting their creativity and ability to imagine a full diversity of futures for themselves. They may choose to follow a set career path where they know the skills rather than creating a brand new career.
1.2.3.1.2.1. Pro: Setting out skills and futures for children may inadvertently add an additional barrier to doing something outside the norm as a career or lifestyle in later life because of societal expectations. If it is normalised that children gain all the skills needed for adulthood at school, choosing something different may require figuring out these skills independently due to less information/ training opportunities being available for adults.
1.2.3.2. Con: The same may be said for more theoretical things taught in school, such as mathematics. A future scientist may need to know what integrals and functions are whereas a future kindergarten teacher will not.
1.2.4. Pro: "Life skills" are different for each person based on profession - so it's too diverse to teach in school to have an impact.
1.2.4.1. Pro: Usually schools will teach basic skills that apply to everyone, but it doesn't really work out for once people try to go for a job, as they end up missing skills that companies seek \(like in [electrical engineering](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UuLvTJp-I0)\).
1.2.4.1.1. Con: If schools can tailor education to each person's needs, then it could potentially work.
1.3. Pro: Teaching kids to succeed in life is the original reason why school was made.
1.4. Pro: Divorcing "Academic skills" from "life skills" removes integrity from instruction and risks teaching kids that academics are enough, or worse, that good grades can replace good ethics.
1.5. Pro: Some parents do not teach their children life skills, so having a life skills course would require students to learn important practical skills.
1.5.1. Pro: Many parents are too busy to fully cover teaching their children the life skills they will need in later life. For working parents, parents with children who have additional needs, parents with elderly relatives to care for etc. they may not have enough time to supplement the education received in school.
1.5.1.1. Pro: Life skills set a person up for the rest of their lives.
1.5.1.1.1. Pro: Expecting to throw a child into a world of millions of possibilities without the least of assistance or advice to help them along the way does not make sense. Teaching life skills in school will help with that.
1.5.1.1.2. Con: The life skills that set one person up for later life are completely different than those needed by another person. Life skills may help some students, but fail to meet the needs of other students.
1.5.1.1.2.1. Pro: There is an infinite number of skills that we could consider as life skills. School will only ever be able to focus on a small percentage of these skills.
1.5.1.1.2.2. Con: This is equally true of the regular material taught in school. We cannot predict whether students will need mathematics or philosophy, so school aims to provide an overview of the most important subjects and then allows students to choose, based on their interests or value judgement of the available subjects.
1.5.1.1.2.3. Pro: If life skills in school are highly focused on teamwork and communication, these skills could have limited importance for the life of a manual worker, e.g. farming in remote areas.
1.5.1.1.2.3.1. Pro: Life skills that focus on survival skills or other outdoor skills would be very important for some, but quite unimportant for someone who lives in a city and doesn't do outdoor work or activities.
1.5.1.1.2.3.2. Con: Many schools offer language teaching based on their location, schooling students in national languages and important regional languages. Similarly, schools could choose life skills based on their likely relevance for life in that community.
1.5.1.1.3. Pro: Citizens need to be able to budget, file their taxes, make sure they're registered to vote, and understand state services. These may not be covered fully in existing academic subjects and thus would be very useful skills to teach in school to have engaged and self sufficient adult citizens.
1.5.1.1.4. Pro: Children need to be aware of and prepared for the world into which they will enter once they've left school. Communication skills and attitude are among two of the most important skills to teach in school.
1.5.1.2. Con: It is each parent's moral duty to make the time to learn their children important practical skills.
1.5.1.3. Con: Parents can strengthen the bond with their children by teaching them important life skills they will frequently need.
1.5.1.4. Pro: Teaching life skills in schools puts students with poor families, unstable home lives, etc on an equal footing with students who have families that teach them these skills.
1.5.2. Pro: While many think parents should have an active role in teaching their child skills and values, the education system should involve students receiving information and decision-making skills needed to become good, respectful, responsible citizens.
1.5.2.1. Con: For parents who are more skeptical of the role of the state in the raising of their children, they could strongly object to the idea that the government wants more input on the teaching of values and skills to their children.
1.5.2.1.1. Pro: [Homeschooling](https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20180305/parenting-homeschooling-gaining-popularity-in-us) is already a very popular option in the USA, and this could fuel further increases in families removing their children from the state education system.
1.5.2.1.2. Con: Families who agree with the values the state is promoting through life skills could have renewed faith in public education due to the introduction of a life skills curriculum.
1.5.2.2. Con: Values are subjective, so it may be difficult to gauge what to teach.
1.5.2.2.1. Con: The 'Curriculum for Life Skills' could be labeled under the Arts department and should be tailored towards the legal and public ideology of a successful individual. There are many academic courses that are also subjective, this doesn't justify whether it is teachable or not.
1.5.2.3. Pro: With so many people creating problems in society due to being devoid of values, society would probably save money and destruction just by teaching this to students.
1.5.2.3.1. Pro: People aren't taught to be environmentally conscious from elementary school. It would be beneficial to teach this to them to prevent environmental destruction.
1.5.2.3.2. Pro: People aren't taught financial skills to be financially independent. Teaching this would prevent people relying on the government for money.
1.5.2.3.3. Pro: If people were taught about preventative health, then they could be healthy and not cost the health care system as much.
1.5.2.4. Pro: Life skills would help them be productive and contributing citizens too.
1.5.2.4.1. Pro: -> See 1.5.1.1.3.
1.6. Con: Life skills could replace the courses currently taught, which would lead to students missing out on classes they should be learning instead.
1.6.1. Pro: When everyone has the same, base level of knowledge in the same classes, then people could utilize each other's knowledge and skills based on similarity.
1.6.2. Con: Many life skills, such as personal finance and home economics, require knowledge of science and math and can give useful hands-on experience in those areas. Thus, it avoids the need for the subjects that students would potentially miss out on.
1.7. Con: When individuals face the real world, they will be taught life skills 'in-vivo'. School cannot replicate, only prepare, for that environment.
1.7.1. Con: If life skills are integral to later life, they shouldn't be left for people to discover/ learn through experience or later training. These experiences, or training, are optional, unlike school which is mandatory, on the basis that it teaches crucial tools and information for adult life and every citizen needs, or has the right, to learn.
1.7.2. Pro: -> See 1.2.3.1.
1.8. Pro: -> See 1.5.1.1.
1.9. Con: Parents have a moral responsibility to teach their children practical life skills, as most can be taught by parents anyway. Schools have it busy enough educating children on more theoretical and cognitive areas.
1.9.1. Con: Some parents don't teach their children practical life skills \(for various reasons\), so the children of those parents should still receive teaching in that area from schools to create consistency in what students know when they leave school.
1.9.2. Con: Most parents work full time to feed and clothe their children and there is very little time left after cooking, housework, and homework to teach them life skills.
1.10. Con: Revamping the education system would be more hassle than it is worth to put in relevant courses.
1.10.1. Pro: Many of the existing fields already cover things that are considered life skills - domestic science, or home economics, covers many life skills including nutrition, cooking and food safety, accounting covers budgeting, biology covers reproductive health etc. A specific life skills curriculum is not needed.
1.10.2. Con: Our current educational system is [not helping students improve](https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-12-03/us-students-show-no-improvement-in-math-reading-science-on-international-exam) so the system needs to be revamped anyway.
1.10.3. Con: The best way to teach is to innovate, we are currently using same teaching methods as we used for thousands and thousands of years. The big hassle now is because nobody updated the system, let leave it for a thousands years to become major problem. So revamping is worth it.
1.10.4. Con: One change done by a few people can impact 100s of millions of people, if not the world, for possibly hundreds of years \(if not indefinitely\). So the effort put in is well worth the influence it makes.
1.11. Pro: Children spend a lot of their waking time at school so we owe them a proper education not a mere stuffing of facts and processes. So yes, life skills should be taught at school, but other sources should complement that learning too.
1.11.1. Pro: Most education contains skills for life already. Teachers and other staff interact, with each other and students, often enough where they model good \(or at least not 'bad'\) behaviour for the students. All studies and interactions pose opportunities for teachers to discern gaps in their students' life skills and then help fill them in, so separate specialist lessons are not needed.
1.12. Con: People eventually get life skills courses when they pursue higher education past K12.
1.12.1. Con: Learning life skills in K12 allows for better focus and being less overwhelmed to achieve more success in graduating, as many college and university students struggle out of having to pick up life skills away from the safety net of their family home while studying for their degrees.
1.12.2. Con: -> See 1.7.1.
1.12.3. Pro: Many Arts and Business degrees include a basic introduction to politics, economics, sociology. This would cover a lot of the subject matter under voting, citizenship rights and responsibility and finance that are proposed within a Life Skills curriculum.
1.12.4. Con: Education is not free in all countries, especially further training and college education. It is very harmful to leave the learning of important life skills to further education.
1.12.4.1. Pro: It could worsen wealth inequality and class divides if those who go on to further education get taught life skills but those who are not financially or academically able to go on to further education are not able to learn these skills.