Letter: Job 1 -- real-world skills

Steve Galasso


Our priority and focus on curriculum from high school to college needs to be revisited. The amount of time being spent debating whether cursive should be taught highlights the problem that we spend an extraordinary amount of time worried about teaching skills and subjects with very little relevance or real-world application in today's modern society.

High school and to a large extent, the first two years of college continue to expose students to subjects they will never use. What they will use finally gets taught in the junior and senior years of college. While exposure to a broad of range of subjects is important, its content and length should be re-evaluated to determine what is most useful and just enough for a student to determine whether it is something they would like to pursue more of later in their education.

It is a tragedy that we have high school students who can tell you about the color wheel, but cannot tell you how much interest they will pay on a loan, how to write a resume, how to prepare for an interview or basic economic principles. Unfortunately, we have chosen to focus our efforts on teaching cursive.