Where Might I Be, And What Might I have Achieved If I Had Been Taught These Life Skills at School?
I'm fifty years old this year, so I haven't been at school for a wee while now, but every now and then, I look back at my time at school and think about what sort of lessons I was taught and how useful they've been for me, and what I wish I'd actually been taught, that might have made my life easier, or more fulfilling as the years passed by.
Obviously, life's a bit different now since when I was at school; I left school in 1990, and the world and, more importantly, technology has moved on, which has changed the goalposts somewhat, and I'm sure the curriculum.
When I was at school, we had BBC computers, the internet and email were unknown, the supermarkets weren't even using barcodes, and the only online learning I knew was being taught how to catch a fish, so the information and technology that students have these days for learning and research is mind-boggling compared to the resources available to me, and I'm pretty damn jealous!
So even considering the change in technology, here are five things, not in any particular order, that I wish I had been told then rather than having to discover them myself, sometimes with disastrous results! There are far more than this, but these immediately come to mind!
Politics - I had no clue what the difference was between Conservative and Labour, I didn't even know that other political parties existed, and my entire knowledge about politics was listening to what family, TV, and friends said about it, and I just going along with the general flow of what everyone said, rather than be taught about the parties, their values and history, and talking of politics, it would have been good to know about what the EU stood for and what we gained from it, rather than being swayed by numpty politicians when Brexit was first talked about, who glamorised the benefits of leaving the EU, rather than being already clued up on the whole situation and being able to make a more informed choice!
Budgeting and financial literacy! I took maths and home economics (and went on to train as a chef and worked in that industry for some years), but I'm 99% certain budgeting was not mentioned at school! How much easier would life as a new member of the working world have been if we had been taught about how to plan our spending property, how to stay out of debt, how to budget for household bills and how to save, and what sort of savings accounts were out there. I think when it came to savings accounts, we had a bank come into school and talk to us in assembly, and we were all recommended to open an account with them, and as we saved more, we would earn a new ceramic pig money box... and that was it! How rubbish was that! I had no clue about savings accounts and current accounts, nor how interest worked, which was especially important when I got my first credit card and almost got myself into financial trouble, and I was still a teenager!
Speaking of banking, one thing that was most certainly glossed over was mortgages! I eventually bought my first property, having realised I had absolutely no clue there was more than one type of mortgage! My partner and I were both utterly oblivious to how it all worked, the length of time, the type of buildings you can own, service charges, deposits, solicitor fees and other expenses! We were lucky that my partner's uncle was a mortgage broker, and he did the work for us; we just signed forms, but I have no idea still if we got a good deal or just got slapped with a mortgage that made him the biggest commission! Just having spent one day at school teaching us how it all worked might have made all the difference! We were never taught about pensions; this was just something that older people got, right? Again I had no clue; if I had, I would have paid into a private pension or, at the very least, started saving early so that my later life would be more comfortable and would allow me to be able to enjoy my retirement. Currently, I think I'm going to be working till I'm about 95, and although I joke about that, the sad reality is my retirement income is going to be shocking, and yes, I know teenagers probably aren't that interested in talking about pensions, but if we had been sat down and properly spoken to about what a pension actually was and how it worked, I guarantee I would have started a pension when I got my first job, and I might not be worrying about my old age finances today!
The importance of a healthy lifestyle, including nutrition, exercise, mental health, and the pitfalls of unhealthy eating and doing little exercise. Sure, in home economics, we touched over it, but that was it; we weren't taught, in any great depth, about things such as obesity, diabetes, and heart health, and most certainly were NEVER told about depression or stress, both at work and home, ADHD and all those smaller medical issues that affect us all! If we had, I think many people, including myself, might have been better at noticing symptoms and had been able to seek help much sooner than we did. How many more people would be alive today if we had been talked to properly about depression and anxiety, even my doctor told me, when inquiring about depression, that I should just get a massage and get on with it... with that sort of advice, and a massive lack of advice about the subject, its no wonder that many people became casualties of the conditions. There was a big stigma about not talking about your feelings, that big boys don't cry type message, which I'm sure has damaged so many lives, and it's only now I look back I can see the signs of mental health issues in myself, friends and relatives, that with some kind of education, we might have been able to deal with better, or been able to diagnose sooner and get better help. I know education is very different these days, luckily, and there is much more help; it's a shame it came so late in my life!
The importance of having a good work-life balance! I grew up with parents that worked their butts off, frankly. My mum was a very busy newspaper editor/journalist, and my dad was a travelling salesman and was a great little side hustler; he always had some sort of extra income job going on; I like to think that's where I've got a lot of my entrepreneur and side hustling skills from, and I certainly respect how hard my parents worked, now I'm an adult, and know first hand how hard it is to run a house, look after your kids and work full time, and more, but the downside to such busy parents was they were always busy and had a pretty poor work/life balance, and as I didn't know any different, I did pretty much the same as them, and it cost me family time, time with friends, doing things I've always wanted to do and be a better dad, but I didn't know, I just went along with what I had seen my parents do, and so assumed that's what I needed to do as well. It didn't stop them from being great parents, as they were and still are today! If I had been taught more about time management, life skills, communication, relationships and relationship building, and how to set and reach achievable goals at school, I suspect my life could have been very different indeed, but it just wasn't something that was talked about in detail, I always assumed that adults knew what to do and so I should do what they do, without realising that many adults, and indeed parents, are winging it big time, they are learning on the job, and often don't have a clue either, about what they should be doing, and how! Having had more of this sort of life skill education would have been so much more helpful to me than learning how to make a cushion from an old shirt, being taught about Henry The Eighth, or the battle of 1066; I can hand on heart say that none of these 'skills or knowledge' has helped me in my adult life, short of maybe getting an answer right while watching a game show, and for me, that feels like an absolute waste of my education and I wonder if I had been taught just a percentage of what I now know to be invaluable information, where I might be today, and what more might I have achieved. I'll never know, of course, but I'm certainly going to be checking that my children are taught what I've learned over the years to be invaluable knowledge, so they have the best chance of a better future and a happier life.