Someone posted online, I think schools should have a mandatory mental health class that you get credit for, where you learn about depression, anxiety, eating disorders, schizophrenia and other mental disorders. And you also learn good coping skills and ways to get help. I replied, yes. That and a logic class. I took a logic class in 1998, and it taught me so much. Using venn diagrams we found that all speech has a logical structure to it. Even if you were writing an essay about who is cuter, puppies or kittens, one person would clearly make a better case than another. And one person would clearly win the argument and make the point. And sometimes even simple words have a complex logic to them. I never knew that till then. And I turned 30 in 1998.
I agree. I taught 40 years. Not enough practical every day material. I've seen friends have mental health issues that I knew nothing about.
We used to get mandatory mental health lessons on the playground, in the form of, "Say uncle." Algebra is a logic class.
Talking about practical things. In the US I believe there's raging controversy about teaching sex education in schools. In the UK and all through Europe, that argument was settled years ago, and now all secondary schools have to teach sex education. This means that when our children become teenagers they're armed with facts about sex and sexual health. Since the introduction of such classes, the incidence of unwanted teenage pregnancies has dropped away to almost nothing, whereas before these classes were introduced, there were a growing number of unwanted teenage pregnancies. The other thing I think should definitely be taught in schools is how to deal with money. Children leave school with no idea of how to treat the money they earn when they start work, and this is an important time for them. For instance, I knew nothing about the National Insurance contributions that were taken from my wage packet before I got my weekly wage. Years later I found out that by pure chance I'd made the right decision regarding whether to opt out of a certain additional payment. As a result I now have a slightly higher old age pension than I would have had if I'd made the wrong decision.
