# Skills Your Child Needs to Know That She’s Not Getting In School

By Murray Bourne, 12 Jun 2007

I agree with much of what this article proposes: 27 Skills Your Child Needs to Know That She’s Not Getting In School (by "zenhabits".)

I have written before (see Useful Math - Annuities) about the problems of teaching algebra for its own sake, and neglecting essential day-to-day math skills.

Some of the skills that zenhabits suggests include:

Financial

• Saving.
• Budgeting.
• Paying bills.
• Investing.
• Frugality.
• Credit.
• Retirement.
• Charity.

Other sikills include Thinking, Success, Social and Practical.

The suggested way to teach these skills?

A note on how to teach these things: These subjects should not be taught by lectures or textbooks. They can only be taught by setting examples, by conversation, by showing, and by allowing the child (or teenager) to do these things on their own.

Amen to that.

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