by Tom Calhoun

Created on: October 05, 2009   Last Updated: October 07, 2009

The question is which high school subjects should be taught.

The interesting thing about this question is that it is never asked to the correct people. This question should be brought up to the teachers in high school that deal with what should be every day. The answer to this question seems obvious to most of them. The thing that makes the world go around is business. Everything in this world revolves around some kind of business, retail sales, shipping, manufacturing, and networking you name it and there is a business out there for most anything we do as a society. However we never teach such things in high school. It is expected that these kids will get this kind of training in college. This of course is not the case.

The fact is most students when they graduate high school could not tell you the difference between a manufacturing company and a company that deals in goods for sale. They actually believe they are one of the same in most instances. Most of these kids can't even balance their own checkbook or reconcile their checkbook to a bank statement. Granted most states now have in place what they call a personal finance class that is mandatory for all high school students to take by graduation. The problem with this class is that by high school it's too late for such a class to be very effective at all, it's boring, there is not enough information too keep the interest of the students, and it's at such a low level most think it's juvenile and stupid. It would be more effective if they taught such a class in middle school, and taught economics in high school, and make both mandatory.

Other classes they should be teaching in high school should be management, sales, accounting I and II, Micro Econ, and Macro Econ as separate classes. Others would be Business Math, Consumer Math, Psychology of Business, Business Ethics, and Basic Ethics. A class on how to apply for a job would be very helpful. How to interview for a job should be a class every high school student should have to take. Also basic laws of employment would be a helpful class as well. On the flip side of this schools should be teaching not just how the political system is supposed to work, but how it actually works, so students learn to question government officials and control what they do instead of the other way around.

High schools are just teaching the same old things to students that they learned in grade and middle school, nothing new, nothing more or less useful. We are not behind in our math skills and reading skills because we fail to teach such skills, we fail to teach students how to use those skills so that they can use them effectively and efficiently. What we need to teach is how those skills they learned in grade school and middle school should be used in the real world, the business world this is what should be taught in high school.

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