Dear Editors,

High school is all about preparing you for college, which is ultimately preparing you for the real world. While many students know how to factor a quadratic function or identify the organelles in a cell, they lack essential life skills. Skills like learning personal budgeting and doing laundry are not covered in the current curriculum. I believe that if Grady were to add a life skills class to the course offerings, focusing on essential skills like financial literacy, home management and soft skills, many students would feel more prepared for what lies ahead after leaving the comfort of high school and college.

Ideally, part of the curriculum would focus on financial skills to teach basic money management to help students with future financial decisions. Skills such as creating goals, career preparation, spending and credit, consumer protection, income, money management, saving and investing, and risk management would be covered in this financial skills portion of this class. Although Grady requires students to take an economics class before graduating, the course doesn’t thoroughly cover personal finance.

The next part of this class would focus on home management. This would include skills like planning healthy meals, grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, time management and good cleaning habits. Home economics used to be mandatory in high school but has since evolved into a more healthcare and nutrition-oriented class, losing some of the basic, much-needed home skills. I think the modern progression has been productive for the most part, but I believe that this course would be even better if it included more hands-on activities like cleaning and yard work. This would give students yet another taste of what skills are needed in everyday life, but in a more engaging fashion. Through this section of the class, all students would get the opportunity to learn these necessary skills while in school instead of having to figure it out on their own.

The curriculum would also cover soft skills. This would include basic interaction skills such as communication, cooperation, positive attitudes and leadership. In the technology-centered time we live in today, it is increasingly more important to teach what should be basic communication skills. These skills are not only essential to interacting with people on a day to day basis, but are extremely helpful when it comes to getting jobs, since many employers consider soft skills a major factor when choosing job candidates. Learning these soft skills would be giving students an extra edge in the job market and in life in general.

Overall, I believe a life skills class that offers assistance in these three crucial skill sets would truly benefit all students. While people might think students wouldn’t want to take this class or that the skills it teaches are better learned at home, I believe the pros greatly outweigh the cons. By taking this class, students would be learning valuable life skills, which is arguably better than learning about vague and abstract mathematical ideas or scientific terminology that won’t be needed in the real world. I believe this proposed class would really help the student body, and I hope that a class similar to this will be added to the Grady course offerings in the future.