My thoughts on public school and it's reformation

School is considered to be the place where children learn the basics of how to function in the adult world. If this is the case shouldn’t school teach how to lead a healthy and productive life by teaching skills instead of facts? The structure of school today is that of a book; you have different chapters, or classes, that expound facts for the student to memorize. While this structure might inadvertently teach skills like patience and hard work it does not focus on those skills- it focuses on the facts. Skills cannot be learned through a book, they must be learned by experience, and school almost never focuses on the skills that are most universally useful.
One skill that almost no one has, shown by the obesity epidemic, are proper exercise and diet habits. This could be attributed to lack of physical and dietary education in schools. Our schools have become so preoccupied with stuffing as many facts in children as possible that they have lost sight of the health of the students, if this is not a cause for alarm, what is? There should be mandatory physical fitness classes every semester of school, if a good attitude towards exercise is instilled in children at a very young age there is a good chance that we wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about the rising cost of obesity in this country.
Proper diet is a huge issue in America today; almost no one eats a very good or healthy diet. Instead of eating natural food with minimal chemicals and preservatives we stuff ourselves with high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and artificial flavors. Most people don’t realize how tasty naturally grown fruits, vegetables, and grains can be; look at the dietary example schools set for our children. Ask any public school student, school food is awful. There is no care taken in preparing the most essential nutrients for children, you could hardly call the food cooked, it is usually taken out of a can and put in a microwave. There is never fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grain bread, or anything homemade in a public school lunch. It is a sad state when what is supposed to train people for life doesn’t even worry about keeping them healthy.
The required classes in school today are very useful at the basic level; general knowledge of math, language, science, and geography comes in very handy in everyday life. To know these things at an extremely advanced level should not be required of students, instead we should educate students in job skills, financial skills, patience, compassion, and health. There are no required classes to teach how to save money, or how to spend money wisely. Our society revolves around money and we aren’t teaching financial skills at a young age- this is a disservice to our children. We also aren’t focusing on any human interaction skills; school does unintentionally teach us how to interact socially, by immersing people in a school society, but it does not acknowledge that this is one of the most useful skills one can have. A person can go very far in life only by being able to interact with people in a way that is mutually pleasing to both parties, but it is not shown any importance in our school curricula.
Parents are usually assumed to teach their children all the skills necessary to lead a happy and healthy life. In this day and age where people are expected to work an inordinate amount, parents are given less time to teach these things. Often the teaching that parents should give is negated by the actions taken by the school, such as the poor nutrition that school lunches provide and the lack of emphasis on general health. There are many more skills that aren’t being properly taught by parents, such as how to file for taxes, and how to stay out of debt. If our parents will not teach these skills than school should. We must educate people to live a happy and healthy life. The preoccupation of learning facts in school is detrimental to children’s ability to adapt to new and varied situations. The structure of school never changes; someone lists facts for a few months and then there is a test on these facts. This is not how the real world operates, there is no give and take in school, there is no compassion, it is just a cold textbook and a test.