What didn't school teach you?

Autumn has arrived. Leaves turn to golden hues; the air is crisp as we swap t-shirts for sweaters, bidding farewell to the summer humidity. Hints of cardamom and cinnamon invade our palettes as cider mills open their doors, and Starbucks releases everyone’s favorite (or hated) flavor. But the biggest harbinger of fall? Back-to-school season.

I’ve spent a lot of time in school. Five years in undergrad since I refused to talk to counselors and did a poor job planning my schedule. Another two years in grad school—poor planning and indecision again to blame (my master’s was only a one-year program). My learning journey didn’t stop there. I’m fortunate to have a job that values continual education, providing free Coursera licenses and allotting four hours every week for up-skilling. And then there’s my favorite learning, the kind you do outside school or work purely to satisfy your curiosity. 

If I’ve spent this much time after school and outside work in the pursuit of knowledge, it begs the question: What didn’t school teach me? I was inspired by this post that I came across on Substack about the current state of American education and the following series, asking writers that very question. Their responses covered everything from:

• How to work hard
• It would help if you lost control
• Fear is good for you
• How to succeed
• Perfectionism can destroy you
• Your place in the world

All are accurate, if not clichés. These are clearly topics that you learn in the real world, not the classroom. At 16, toiling away in my introduction to calculus, I never once thought I’d find an answer to my place in the world on the next textbook page.

The accompanying discussion about how to fix the state of American education was also uninspired. It quickly reverted to political debate about teacher’s unions, woke culture, and gender and race theory being taught in schools. Issues, maybe. Would any of that fix the abysmal statistics summarized below?

America is one of the richest countries in the world. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked at our education statistics. We’re 16th in science globally. In Math, we scored below the average and well below the scores of the top five countries, all of which were in Asia. And in 2018, we ranked an astonishing 125th in literacy among all countries according to the World Atlas. 

Two topics immediately stand out if I try to answer the titular question more concretely than the previous responses. Heard directly from friends and echoed all over the internet for years now, these two are taxes and personal finance. Not learning how to file taxes might be frustrating, forcing everyone to rely on parents or the internet, but it’s not that big of a deal. That’s what CPAs and TurboTax are for. Personal finance, however, is a bigger issue. It seems it would be a logical investment in a curriculum. Teach people how to handle their finances early on, and the economy as a whole benefits from more efficiently managed resources later.

I was fortunate in this regard. In college, an elective was offered called “The Economics of Life” or something to that effect. The class covered topics such as basic rules of budgeting, the use of banks and the credit system, retirement plan options, student loans, and much more. One class obviously does not make an expert, but to this day, some ten years later, that three-credit elective was one of my most important courses. I’ve long since needed to solve a math proof, but the knowledge of the simple rules of our credit system remains relevant, helping me cross the 800 mark in my 20s.

I’ve spent so much time learning the stereotypical “left-brain” quantitative side of things I’ve noticed through years of neglect an atrophy of the so-called “right-brain.” It’s part of what this writing endeavor aims to improve—a way to rekindle the creative side. Plus, as I get older and meet more people, I realize the conversations I find most interesting rarely center around the math and science topics I dedicated myself to in school. Instead, they almost always have elements of art, literature, and cinema—areas where my exposure fell short.

We barely scratch the surface of these topics in high school, and if you go to college, you often rely on a sparse collection of electives to delve deeper. And then there’s the fundamental flaw in how we are taught these subjects—only ever to answer questions on a test about the year something was painted or who the author was. We’ve lost sight of the value of a well-rounded education. We’ve forgotten that, not long ago, access to such knowledge was a privilege reserved for the elite. Learning about art, literature, and cinema goes far beyond trying to pass a test. It cultivates an appreciation for beauty and creativity while sharpening our critique of the world around us.

…medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society (1989)

School taught me a lot. But it could never cover everything I wanted to know. If, in some Freaky Friday-like fashion, I woke up tomorrow in a younger version of myself, would I choose the same degree? If money were no object, would the same fields of study still appeal?

Am I asking too much of our education system? It’s unrealistic to expect schools to teach us everything. But if they’re supposed to prepare people for more than just rote memorization of facts and figures, they’re failing many of us spectacularly. 

What didn’t school teach us? For now, the better question is: What do we want to learn? There’s only one wrong answer here. The benefit of being out of school is that the curriculum is now ours to write.