Kay Steiger has a smart proposal to add a life skills class to the traditional high school curriculum. Rather than home economics, where you bake some brownies and learn to respect women, you could have a course where you're taught about credit cards and credit debt, how to cook basic staples (pasta! tomato sauce!), nutrition, basic financial literacy, etc. It'd be useful. Yglesias worries that we're doing a poor enough job teaching kids to read and write that it's unclear whether "we should be expanding the scope of the curriculum." Fair enough. Knock out physical "education." I know all us public health types are supposed to laud the thrice weekly volleyball game , but I've not seen any compelling evidence that PE does anything but annoy folks, and you're certainly not learning anything. If half the time that went to PE went to something like Kay's proposal, kids would be better off Oh, and someone should teach them about how that crap they're listening to isn't music. It's just noise.
