Top 10 Things They Don't Teach You in School but Should

Your parents may have raised you to care a lot about telling the truth, but school can be a rough place. Between being excluded or bullied and all the peer pressure, it's easy to lose sight of honesty and start lying about who you are and what you believe in order to fit in.

Schools should teach the importance of honesty with hands-on exercises and ways to make telling the truth cool again.

Life is going to knock all of us down. Not all of us have the community support network, relatives, or belief systems to help us get back up. Schools can play a more central role in bringing in motivational speakers, experts, and heroic individuals to inspire and regale students with stories and philosophies that will empower and energize them.

Never give up is easy to say. But when you show it in person, it can be much more powerful.

This is a tricky one because people will say that education isn't in the business of instilling morals and that it's up to families to impart the wisdom to their kids that they want them to absorb.

I sort of agree, but at the same time, given how broken many families are, a lot of moral wisdom is going to have to come from teachers and schools.

Doing taxes properly, understanding budgeting, and learning about banking and other simple topics are vital for all of us. If schools taught greater financial literacy, perhaps we could also begin to make more of a dent in the debt and financial insolvency that's wracking our societies.

Learning more about cleaning and household organization would be an excellent course to teach in school. It could start with organizing your sock drawer and extend all the way to minimizing paper waste and garbage.

This could include lessons about how to shop for products that will stand the test of time, as well, since broken yard tools and home appliances often comprise so much of the waste and mess that builds up around us in our homes.

We don't choose our families, and sometimes they can present real challenges to our mental and physical wellbeing. Whether it's parents, extended relatives, siblings, or even family friends we have an issue with, nobody really explains how to deal with family conflicts.

Schools should do more to teach students about how to coexist productively and harmoniously in a family.

Not everyone wants a family. I get that.

But for those of us who do, and even those who want to live in a non-traditional structure that's a sort of new style family, school could play an important role in educating us.

There's probably nothing harder than starting and keeping a family.

Basic physical survival skills are something that should be taught in school. Under this category, I would include outdoor skills like building basic shelters, starting a fire, using a compass, learning to conserve body heat, identifying edible plants, and using the stars for orientation.

We may feel invincible, but there are no guarantees in life. When a school focuses too much on high-tech skills at the expense of practical skills, it makes us weaker and puts us all in danger.

Basic First Aid should be a thing all students learn as soon as they're old enough to pay attention and remember detailed instructions. This includes CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, bandaging wounds, recognizing signs of common medical crises, and so forth.

First Aid isn't always something that can be left to paramedics or adults. Students should know the basics.