Things that should be taught in schools:
- all the major world religions plus the indigenous one(s) and any others common in the area, all from an academic standpoint.
- all official languages, plus local indigenous and signed languages even if they’re not official.
- politics, from an academic standpoint. What actually is socialism? Communism? Nazism? Fascism? Capitalism?
- financial literacy, as its own subject as well as integrated into the math curriculum.
- basic law - local human rights, consumer law, renting, voting, disability law… the stuff everyone benefits from knowing. Also integrate with the financial literacy program
.- basic life skills. Cooking, sewing, fixing stuff, building basic stuff, growing food, basic programming and computer literacy, basic electronics, all compulsory and non-gendered.
- local indigenous history and mythology (acknowledging that you often can’t draw a line between those), including all the bits that make white people and other colonisers look bad.
- comprehensive sex ed with consent, minority genders and sexualities, and intersex identities integrated at every level.
- basic scientific literacy with an emphasis on finding stuff out for yourself. How to research stuff, how to fact check, how to spot logical fallacies, how and when to change your ideas about things. Should also be integrated into english (or equivalent) and social studies.
- project management. Let kids organise their field trips. Have a school market and let them organise stalls and sell stuff. Get them planning and teaching lessons. Assign leaders for group projects and make sure everyone leads at some point in the year.
- basic medical stuff. Anatomy, basic mechanics of common infections (bacteria vs viruses vs fungal infections etc), how to talk about health problems, how and when to seek help, how and when to get a second opinion, first aid, CPR and how/when to find and use a community defibrillator if those are available locally, info about local common problems and stigmatised illnesses, how to find out which specialist works with which conditions, disability rights, healthcare rights, and integrated with the sex ed curriculum.
- free time as a compulsory thing, with adult supervision and expertise and the school facilities and resources available.
- local environmental hazards and how to navigate them. Learning to swim, how to navigate the outdoor environment, sun safety, radiation safety, environmental toxicity, unexploded ordnance management, anything else applicable locally.
Seriously, how different would things be if all of that was standard? Or compulsory?
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