What should we learn before to become an adult?
In the beginning of human history, people were living in little shelters and finding the food by the way of hunting. Mother was feeding and caring the children while the father was hunting. Children needed to learn about hunting, protecting and defending themselves and family was in charge of it. In time we evolved another kind of society so that the needs were high likely more different from modern society. The education is general name of learning survival information from lesson learned of human being until now. But is that really enough for a child?
Let’s think about a little kid who starts to the school, becomes a member of the class with his classmates. After primary and high schools, becomes an adult who has to adapt to live without help of the family and others. So basic life skills such as cooking, cleaning, doing laundry supposed to be learnt when the school is finished. But in these years, during the education life, how many skills could a person acquire to become an adult? If it is not taught in the school, families are responsible to teach their children. But is it possible to create this education in the house as much as needs of a child? In the primary and secondary schools usually students learn about literature, maths, science, history and some classes about art. They are thought very important by the people who create the education system, so it is automatically necessary for a citizen. At the end of secondary education, people start a collage or to work and these classes are only important if we are using them to make a living. So a painter doesn’t need to understand maths deeply to become an artist. But at the end like everybody, people need to clean, cook, recycle, pay for electricity bills to be integrated to the society. To become a citizen, every people who votes need to learn how to identify fake news. Or to protect their digital data from stealing or copying, they should know some basic computer skills. So that in general, an adult regardless of his occupation needs to learn basic life skills as important as other lectures.
The life skills what needs to be learnt from education system is related how much it facilitates the life. How an adult lives independently can lead us to find necessary skills for the future of a kid. In my opinion, they have to be included to life skill classes to cook, to do laundry, to fill tax return, to recycle materials, to learn home economics, to understand the consequences of overconsumption. I suggest that new generations should be very aware of global warming, so that apart from the list some farming skills such as planting, livestock farming, caring the animals, and learning about gardening with small workshops could be effective to take attention. Additionally, in primary schools of Turkey, there is another subject which was a kind of handcraft education. Students have to learn how to paint a glass, to create little sculptures by plaster, to shape a copper sheet, to make a carpet and so on. In time, after understanding the meaning of these abilities more, this kind of classes can give another perspective to the children.
When it comes to live in modern world, called also information age, it is necessary to protect personal data and learn basic computer skills. New generations have a lot of option for applications in social media, but do they really know how to use it? When they start to use smartphones, does anybody teach them how to protect themselves from risky situations? In information age, it is also common to effect and even to manipulate of the opinion of citizen for that reason it is essential to learn about information pollution. In this point of view, to inform them about cyberbullying, consequences of their actions in social media and to identify fake news would be important part of the education.
When a little kid starts to the school, becomes a member of the society. To have a smooth transition to adulthood, life skills should be taught. In that way, they can be part of a healthier society.
