The Samford Crimson

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Brittany Raymond moeny and school

As I register for classes next spring, I search for the one class I most desperately need: Life 101. I'm not sure if this would count as a humanities course or a social science, but I do know that this class needs to be incorporated into the core curriculum.

The course description would be one line: Life 101 discusses all the truly practical concepts that your high school failed to mention and your major does not cover.

High schools, especially since the institution of the No Child Left Behind Act, have two goals: 1) getting as many students into college as possible, and 2) having students pass state and federal tests that will rank the school and, therefore, rank the amount of money they receive from the government.

As a result, high schools have a tendency to teach for the tests and for college curriculums.

For example, my high school offered six advanced placement courses that were pushed on every student who was eligible. High test scores exempted seniors from spring finals.

A score of proficient or higher on a federal test was a voucher that could be used to escape a final. My point is that, in spite of this well-intended educational policy, I failed to learn some of life's most needed lessons.

In high school, I could balance a chemical equation, solve a calculus problem and explain the existentialism found in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," but as far as real life education, I had no idea what I was doing.

Now that I'm in college, it is a very real possibility that I will owe the IRS money in the near future because I had no idea what taxes I needed to withhold from my paycheck when I filled out the employment form to work on campus. Did you?

Economics got lost in the curriculum with other areas that were deemed not as necessary as calculus, and unless you become a business major in college, where are concepts like taxes, interest rates and mortgages covered?

High schools and colleges are aimed at producing the greatest thinkers of every generation, but are they creating people capable of navigating the challenges of living in today's society?

When it comes down to it, being able to balance a chemical equation can't help students balance their checkbooks or understand how to file taxes. It seems that the education system is leaving the teaching of these life concepts to students' parents, but these parents are often the products of the same education system that is failing their children.

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