“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
I was having a conversation the other day with my friend Beth and we started talking about things they should teach you in school. When some kids at the age of fifteen don't know their two times table teachers are going on about algebra, this is one thing but the rest are the kind of things life throws at us but we're not prepared for. School, with its cold, grey walls and numerous bullies and wicked teachers, are the years we prepare, right?
1. How to Deal with Money - Gaiman's right, they don't teach you about money, most importantly being poor. Students - and I know this from experience - are usually poor, mainly because a lot of us are bad with money and think we can go out five nights of the week (a tenner for pre-drinks, thirty for going out, not including taxis) so they should teach you about managing money, being smart, not whimsical.
2. How to Drive - I don't know why driving is now a money-making business. It annoys me. Here's why: public transport is disgustingly expensive and public transport, they say, is there to encourage people not to drive and cause accidents. So either public transport should be free and driving shouldn't or vise-versa. However, public transport will never be free. Driving is a handy-skill. I don't know how to drive and I wish I did so they should teach us how to drive free of charge and teach us about road safety, yes it sounds boring but if you plant that seed at a young age I'm sure it will work.
3. How to Clean - You watch your mother do it and maybe your parents should teach you this but how the hell do you clean? I cleaned my house today and it still doesn't look like the way my mother would do it. It seems simply. Spray, wipe but it never looks as sparkly clean as your mother's work, eh? Maybe this one should be called 'learn how to be a mother'.
4. Sex - They should teach you about sex. Not in a peado way and not in an awkward 'I'm a teacher' kind of way. My sex education consisted of "yes you're going to have pubes, yes your penis will grow, one day you will start sweating and form BO." It was more an awkward healthy lecture than sex. They don't tell you how the hell you put a condom on without it hurting, or that the first you have sex it's gonna hurt like hell or that maybe, somewhere in the world, men may want to have sex with men and women have sex with women. I went to a Catholic school and I'm not saying all of the teachers were homophobic but the idea that people of the same gender would have sex was completely bypassed. Well, then again, so were a lot of things in the sex classes.
5. How to Save a Life - No, not the song, although it is a great song. No, I'm talking about how they should teach you general CPR. I learnt it when I opted to do a life saving course but I'm not very comfortable about doing it now, I remember bits but nothing major. If someone dropped down in front of me and I needed to give them CPR I would probably crack a rib or something. Start with that in school and then we can opt to be re-taught.
6. How to Read Bills - Last year I was the head tenant in my house, a position I happily gave up - or more said I would never do again - when I moved into this house. I had never read a bill in my life nor had I ever paid one. 'Direct debit', what? So I muddled through and ended up paying a huge motherfucking load of money at the end of the year when I was skint and broke and eating noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Vital.
7. How to Cook - Yes, we had cooking lessons in school but we learnt how to make a cheese...thing and angel delight (yes they taught us how to poor some shit from a bag and mix it and then my poor parents had to eat it and pretend they enjoyed), they taught us how to make crumble and jam. When will we ever want to make crumble? Teach us how to make food we can actually eat and survive on. How long does chicken really take? It browns very quickly when you fry it but is it ready to eat without me dying? Teach us how to make Spaghetti Bolognaise and fajitas and normal things. I made crumble many times ever since that lesson not because I wanted but because I had no idea how to make anything else.
8. Another Language - English is spoken by a lot of people. However, a lot of my friends - me included - want to learn another language. We feel ignorant that we don't know one, ignorant that if I walked into a supermarket in France and attempted to speak French they would immediately switch to English, watching me struggle. We should struggle through the limited French we know but enough to get us by, then the option to be fluent in it should be offered. For me, in school it was compulsory to be taught Welsh, all I remember of it is how to say "can I go to the toilet please" only because if we didn't say it in Welsh the teacher would look over their desk and not allow us to go until we got it right, a wicked "you may pee yourself but I don't care" grin on their faces.
9. How to Get a Job and Keep a Job - I've had three part-time jobs and in each of them I was taught Healthy and Safety, if I had been taught about this in school it could have saved me a lot of time and a lot of forms I had to read and sign. I got my first job because my best friend's mum was the manager, my second through a friend and my current job through another friend. Yes my CV helped but I had no clue how to go about getting a job. Teach me where to look, how to look and how to be prepared for an interview. Now I know but only because I had help.
10. How to Really Love Books - OK, it's not really something you can teach but it's something I think should be enforced. I don't really have a quarm with the way I was brought up in terms of books mainly because I grew up loving them and I completely understand why not everyone loves books, it's natural to not like them just the same way as I don't like football but I guess what I'm saying is we should be taught about all books. Teachers can't obviously teach several different books to several different people just because those people prefer the books but I guess what University has taught me is that everyone's taste is different and that should be thought about. When I read Of Mice and Men I hated it, it wasn't for me. And when I don't like something, I don't do it very well. When I read Macbeth and The Tell-Tale Heart I loved it and wrote two very good essays on it so I guess books should be more enforced to the different tastes of the students. Teach us that.
There are more, just as Gaiman said - how to love, how to deal with un-love, how to deal with death or depression or the feeling of emptiness but I don't think you can teach that nor can you prepare someone for it. The list, however, may be things you are taught in life but I think they are things we can be taught and prepare for.
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