After high school graduation, students leave with little or no practical skills that will help them function on their own in the real world.  Even I don’t know anything about balancing a checkbook, or how to pay my taxes, or how to register to vote.  These tasks are things that someone trying to live on their own needs to know. Duncanville High should offer classes that teach these skills to help reduce this problem.

Today there are kids who don’t know what they want to do career wise, because they have no experience with anything other than the classes they take. Students do not know what career they want to pursue until they are already in college and have changed majors 2, 3, or maybe even 4 times.  People believe that we should spend the valuable time we have in high school learning our normal core subjects such as Math, History, English, and Science. However, these practical skills classes don’t necessarily need to be a requirement to graduate.  

Duncanville could simply offer them as an elective.  

Although students wouldn’t want to sign up for these classes, at least this way they have no excuse for not having known these skills seeing as they had an option to learn while in high school.

A few people may argue that parents or guardians should be the ones to teach these skills to their children; however there are students that may not live in an environment where that option is available. The sad fact is, some adults either do not care enough to sit down their child and teach these things, or simply do not know about practical skills themselves.  Offering practical skills classes and making it known that we offer them can get rid of this altogether.

If our school board changed the curriculum just a little bit to incorporate “real world” skills, Duncanville High School could be preparing students to lead more progressive lives, and lead us to a better future.  The classes should teach things such as caring for a home, interview skills, maintaining a car, balancing a budget, education on credit, etc.  This would teach us to be more responsible earlier allowing us to lead our own lives sooner, instead of depending on our guardians after high school.

As a senior who hasn’t been taught any of these skills, I find it important that the underclassmen following me and those following them, have the opportunity to be taught these important skills.  Teaching basic skills to be successful in life will allow our youth to take more initiative and help create a more idealistic community. The school should bring back the valuable classes it once had to teach skills students need to be successful not only  in school but outside of the school setting.