I have a deep appreciation for my education through high school. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate in the International Baccalaureate program and blessed with incredible teachers and staff members who put forth incredible effort so that myself and my classmates could succeed. I have very few complaints about the way my school went about making sure I was properly prepared for college and a possible career in education, STEM, or business- and these are things that deeply interest me! I am considering numerous possible careers after my college experience in aforementioned fields.

However, after suppressing, depressing budget cuts and restrictions, modern high schools lack shop classes, home economics, vital components of the arts, and many facets of mechanics, plumbing, and electrics. The careers that stem from these fields should not be looked down on, and have proven essential, vital parts of modern society. For what would an engineer’s work be if not for the bright mechanic who assembled it and understood how the connections could be most easily and artfully made? What cultural standard could a society that stifles music and art possibly hold? Depressing the desires in young people to study these skills by denying them learning opportunities in their these fields is an effective way to decimate self-esteem and make kids despise school and learning, leading to any natural talent, or any skill learned in childhood to fade away as the student’s education makes their value seem obsolete.

In my personal experience, I can recall tutoring a student who struggled massively in reading, but was a deft and understanding car mechanic, and he suffered low self-esteem because his true talent went unrecognized by his educators. I can recall speaking with friends about how none of us truly understood our financial situation going into college, how to take out loans, establish credit, or have a job and pay taxes. I recall comforting a friend who was thrust into parenthood quickly after high school because there was no experience in school that prepared them for having a home, a job, and financial responsibility. These issues are so profoundly significant to a functioning society, and it is so easy to see how a simple shop class, a home economics class, or a simple acknowledgment by the education system that people of alternate talents, skills, and needs to exist, and are just as significant in society as a person who wants to go to college after high school.

Despite these simple solutions, in the grand scheme of things there are enormous changes that I’d like to see or ignite. I’d like to see the opportunity for kids to enter into schools of their trade or interests at a young age, so a high-school-freshman-age mechanic could utilize his or her talents, so young independents could learn how to function financially on their own, and so artists, musicians, and literary geniuses could be placed into areas of expertise and fertilize their confidence rather than being thrust into high-level STEM classes which were not pertinent to their intended position or their basic understanding of society and the world.

Changes like these are a slow and laborious project, but it is my hope that as a society we can grow toward this by slowly building more in-depth financial support for the education system, veering away gradually from standardized testing, and building up a higher respect for the geniuses of art, mechanics, and all significant and beautiful skills that are ignored by modern education.