All of the time I hear kids my age talking about how “the stuff we learn in high school is meaningless” and that they wish we “had a life skills class for learning to do taxes.” Teenagers say a lot of unintelligent things, but I think that this is by far one of the most unintelligent things high school students say.

Schools are responsible for teaching you core subjects for seven hours a day. If relying on the school to teach you everything about life is what you think should be the usual, you need to reevaluate your standards for the public education system. The school teaches you to refine educational skills, because you are getting an education.

Seven of 24 hours each day a week are spent at school, so that leaves more than 70 percent of your weekday spent outside of school. Parents or guardians should be the ones responsible for teaching their kids how to “balance a checkbook” or “do your taxes.” Parents or guardians spend the most time with their kids and should be the ones responsible for making them functional adults.

To also say the things we are learning in high school are meaningless is ignorant. No, not everyone will be using trigonometry after high school. However, engineers, registered nurses, chemists, boilermakers, machinists and medical service technicians, to name a few, do use trigonometry in their professions. Just because you do not enjoy math class does not give you the authority to claim it is useless and irrelevant to teach. That is wrong.

Learning the types of skills that are offered in schools is important to becoming a well-rounded individual. Maybe someone does not think they will ever be in a math based career, but then they get to college and change their major (which happens approximately 50 percent of the time), to a medical career that uses math. If that person had replaced all their math classes with classes dedicated to sewing and changing a tire, they would not be able to properly pursue the career they realized was their dream halfway through college.
The state of Michigan requires us to take these classes for a reason. Becoming a well-rounded, educated young man or woman prepared to enter college is what the school is supposed to prepare you for. The life skills portion of life is what parents or guardians are for. If you want to learn to sew or change a tire, ask your parents or guardians to teach you.

If learning to prepare taxes are really that important to you, ask your parents or guardians. Grow up and stop blaming the public school system for your inability to be a functioning human being.