Children only have a certain amount of time in school. We can't just keep adding subjects that everyone needs to learn. Kids already spend a massive amount of time in school and on homework, so something's got to give if we want to add to the curriculum.

Life skills are not completely disjoint from current curriculum subjects. You don't need to dedicate an hour every day to a class called "Life skills" (and if you did I suspect many children would pay less attention).

Why not use that math class to teach personal finance, mortgage rates, basic economics, etc.

Why not couple English with a stronger focus on proper communication (especially negotiation, conflict resolution)

etc.

Teachers are given a document that says in X weeks you need to cover the following topics/units. Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement -- regardless of their parental upbringing.

I get your point, but the issue is that people don't grok the link between the fundamentals and day-to-day life.

> Let's fix that document so that we can ensure everyone who graduates the public school system can confidently understand their credit card statement

I'm pretty sure by age 14 my school math problems were along the lines of "John takes out a loan for $x, with a compounding interest rate of Y%, how much does he pay back in total?"

I agree that we could do better at teaching however!

Right, don't forget that we can remove things too, though

> Unfortunately there is no curriculum for what a parent must teach their children.

I do not believe that having a specific curriculum is necessary to have a good foundation of life skills. In addition I would argue that the curriculum in schools is absolutely disappointing if this is the target.

> Instead of assuming all children get good parents (which is obviously a harmful assumption), let’s just take advantage of the fact that we can pretty much guarantee all students will learn the school curriculum and use it to teach important life skills to children who otherwise wouldn’t learn.

The issue here is that you are basically torturing these students that would end up learning (either due to their parents or to some other resource) regardless in order to improve the life of these that would not. I would understand your point however if school was not mandatory.