I somewhat agree that you can't expect teachers to teach kids everything. A professor explained to me once that school should teach you how to learn and a degree is a demonstration of your ability to learn.

The issue I have with what you're saying is that we know that not everyone wins the birth lottery and has two parents with the time to raise their kids properly.

Public school should be an equalizer and it shouldn't matter what kind of family you were born into. And yes, that probably means smaller class sizes, more teachers, more specialization of teachers, or just plain giving the teachers the resources they would need to teach some of these critical things. I know teachers and know that they are underpaid and overworked, we can't ask more of them without addressing that first.

I'm just very concerned about the long term impact to our civilization of leaving too much teaching up to parents who themselves are uneducated. There are no qualifications needed to become a parent, unlike being a teacher. Some parents that I talk to, you can't get more than four sentences into a conversation with them before they start spouting off conspiracy theories or justifying racism and if schools aren't allowed to teach these kids anything to the contrary then I fear for the future.

I'm also concerned about the perverse incentive that corporations have in a capitalist economy to ensure that kids aren't properly educated. Kids who aren't taught anything about finance are more likely to be preyed on by credit card companies, student loan sharks, etc. Corporations are constantly working to deceive us on all matter of topics and kids need to have at least a baseline of understanding of some of these things or they will get screwed over really easily.

Im kind of with you. It's going to come off as arrogant, but in HS and college I feel like learned how to learn new things. I was never taught how to get a mortgage by my parents...nor any financial stuff for that matter. I learned it all myself. I read up on investing, when I went to get a mortgage I read up on that and learned the ins and outs. I learned the basics of retirement planning all on my own...because I grew up in a wealthy area where they could focus on these things due to socio-economic reasons.

On the other hand, other people are not so lucky and these are vital life skills. If we aren't going to be able to teach everyone how to really learn, we should probably be teaching them some of these common and basic life skills.