Written by Savannah Cooks, Staff Writer
In my 16 years of living, I can say that I barely learned anything about basic survival from school. I strongly believe that schools should require a curriculum that teaches students information that we can use to thrive beyond high school.
Indian Trail High School and Academy does teach life skills classes but students are not required to take the classes and not all students can access them.
About 25% of 13-18-year-old high school students may not have the skills to 
manage basic personal finances, according to a 2013 study by EverFi, Inc., a technology company focusing on educating children.
When we graduate, they are basically throwing us to the wolves. They teach us knowledge of the world but not the knowledge of life. Why waste time on useless information when it can be spent on more useful things like taxes, money management, communication, everything that is required to prosper in a normal life?
An average American uses just 37% of knowledge and skills learned in high school, according to studyfinds.org, a research site established in 2016 that seeks out recently-conducted research released by universities, peer-reviewed journals, or established companies.
So out of the four years, we spend in school, about 63% of the information is useless. We have a bunch of requirements to graduate and some of them aren’t that useful. We could replace some of those credits with classes that will prepare us to go out into the world.
Critics argue that it should be left to parents to teach these skills, but I strongly disagree. Some students have a bad home life. According to childhelp.org, “a report of child abuse is made every 10 seconds.” Do you really think that the parents will take time out of their day to teach them anything? It’s not only just abusive households, some kids grow up in the foster-care system, low-income families and some parents just don’t have the time. I’m sure that if we spend 12 years of our life in school, some of that time could be allocated to teach life skills.
If I spend such a large portion of my life in school, I would be disappointed if it wasn’t beneficial in my future. Life skills should be a graduation requirement. We want to thrive after high school and it can hurt us in the long run if we have to do it all alone. Knowing how to manage the basic requirements of today’s world is the key to life. If they made life skills a graduation requirement, they would be helping the country as a whole.