School Taught Us to Research...

I'm sure you've seen this meme floating around in various forms all over social media. Many people are quick to agree, but chances are they are dead wrong.

People love to bash on public schools, as a rule. What does a school truly owe its students? What is the responsibility of the parent to teach? Oh yeah, my first point is that your parents aren't your friends, they're your parents. It is literally their job to raise you and teach you how to be an adult. They've done most of the things on this list. Why not shoot them a text asking why they never took you to the bank and opened an account with you when you got your first job?

So, what did school teach us?

Well, it taught you how to use Google and to collect information on a topic in order to construct an educated opinion on something. Hopefully, navigating reliable and unreliable sources was in that lesson too. We learned how to research and write papers with the information we found. Why aren't people using that very skill to find out how to get a loan? I mean, if you can get on YouTube and watch makeup tutorials or gaming tutorials all day, why not take five whole minutes to look up that one useful thing? And, contrary to popular belief, I know I personally use Pythagorean Theorem way more than I ever thought I would, along with quite a few other geometry equations, for one of my hobbies. (I make my own patterns for clothes.)

What is school responsible for teaching?

At the heart of it, school is for basic academic knowledge so we can enter adulthood with a better understanding of the world and how it functions. (I know, you're probably saying "But the history lessons weren't correct!" Yeah, you're not wrong there. The American public school system does have a tendency to whitewash and downplay many of the horrific events the American government has committed, and yeah, that should change, but that's a topic for another day.) I mean, can you imagine going out into the world at 18 and not knowing the things school has taught you? Imagine trying to get through life and not knowing how to read, write, communicate effectively, perform basic math, have no knowledge of basic historical events, how babies are made, etc. What job out there doesn't require any of those skills? Even flipping burgers requires you to be able to read someone's order off a screen. All of these basic skills are a bit difficult to expect a parent to teach a child effectively because the parent has to work sometimes.

School also tries to equip those going on to higher education with the skills needed to survive their freshman year. Not all parents have been to college, so this isn't something that can be fairly asked of all parents.

In the End...

When you get down to it, school taught you more than you realize. School tries to level the playing field in terms of what knowledge students have fair access to. Since no 18-year-old is buying a house, they aren't going to teach you how to get a mortgage loan. However, chances are, most of these skills listed in the meme were taught in your school, you just never took the chance to learn them.

• Taxes: accounting classes
• Resumes & cover letters: English class/Business classes
• Banking: Business classes/ elementary school (Anecdotally, I learned how to write checks and basic commerce in 5th grade.)
• Cooking: Home Ec. type courses

If you find yourself saying "But my school didn't have those classes!" there's a good chance you didn't realize those classes were offered, because many of those types of classes are vo-tech type classes. And, yes, some schools don't offer Home Ec. anymore due to unfortunate budget cuts and lack of interest. If a school has to cut their budget, they focus on classes no one or not enough students are taking. It is unfortunate when that happens, but what is stopping a person from researching what they want to know?

Seriously. In your pocket you carry a device capable of accessing the breadth of all human knowledge. Use it for more than just Snapchat, makeup tutorials, and cat videos.