Ask Lemmy

Hide your work and hide it's effects. Anything others can see is a weakness. Government can only tax you on what you earn officially, only things you show can be stolen etc. If you are having a good time it is in your best interest than nobody, except people you are having this good time with, know about it.

Schools are obsessed with academics because they tend to be more easily measurable. Therefore, they are spending less time building character, morals, and thinking skills. Teaching them how to be a good person is more important than ever.

More important than ever: media literacy (and critical thinking).
While it seems the theory and application is taught in school nowadays, i think it's mostly about keeping the critical thinking going every time you hear news or any information especially from friends and family.
We tend to believe stupid things if people we trust tell us. And if you have the foundations of critical thinking since your childhood it's much easier to accept that your thinking is / was wrong and change it. There are enough people whose mind can't be changed even with evidence or good reasoning.

Talking with children about why something is communicated the way it is, which parts can be trusted and which not, which problems it has and so on is very important. And especially not focusing on your own political / moral / religious view in those situations. You love religion X? Don't believe everything they say just because of that. You hate political party Y? Don't think everything they say is automatically a lie just because of that.

How to be kind.

This.

and for elementary school

Emotional regulation and understanding. Most people never learn this either at schools or elsewhere.

That being agreeable is one of the greatest cheats in life. No matter how much you know on something, or how smart you are, if your personality sucks you won't get very far.

So many talented and skilled people I know failed because they just would not work with other people very well. It's extremely rare to be an individual talent skilled enough to overcome that barrier, so at least work on yourself a little bit so you don't die from pride.

I teach all of my kids that "no" is a complete sentence. I want them to be very conscious of consent, but I also want them all to respect their own wishes.

Unrelated, I also teach them all how to throw a good punch and keep their god damned hands up and chin down as soon as I think they have enough self control not to abuse it.

More for people entering adulthood, but one thing school life never taught me was how to deal with uncertainty and structurelessness. How to keep moving when you don't know where you're going.

The importance of savings and investments, especially when you're young.

Do not pay for drugs in advance.

Git

So many daily small thzate kinda impossible to teach a whole class, but are easy to teach a single child (source: I work in a school):

• reading the clock. May sound weird, but some kids get it really early and quickly, some take more time. Thus pretty frustrating to teach the whole class
• tying shoes (I know too many kids with 8 or 9 years old who can't tie a knot, shoes are a good starter)
• generally small motor skills (crafts, crochet, weaving, whatever you want...)

And the one thing that school cannot teach and is also very difficult for parents: questioning authority

In my case social skills. I was the typical nerd. About 10 years after I finished school I figured out I could learn to get along better with people just like I learnt how to do complicated maths.

How life works in general, things that you're required to do or expected to understand as an adult. For example, different types of bank accounts, credit card fees, how credit scores work and what they're used for, how government and elections work and how these impact people's actual lives (beyond just submitting your vote and naming the branches of government), how to read a food label and why they should (this might get a small section in health class), how health insurance works, etc.

Basically just how our society is structured and what that means for the individual.

Consent

Perhaps ethics

Also help them figure out what the fuck is wrong with them before it destroys their life.

Laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted and the police are basically an occupying army.

How to protect your mate from a bear.

If anyone is doing something that you don't like, or that hurts, you yell as loud as you can in your big girl/boy voice "stop that I don't like that"

US history of subjugation of brown people

Food, in a lot of places.

...oh, you meant things they won't learn in school? My mistake.