As seniors head toward graduation, some of these soon-to-be independent adults find they don’t know many of the skills necessary to lead a productive life. Some examples of these commonplace tasks include paying taxes and bills, growing credit history, comparing insurance providers and registering to vote.

With the lack of vital life-skill knowledge, many seniors are being set up for failure. Lots of companies that provide services like credit and debit cards know this and actively work to manipulate uneducated teenagers early in their adult lives.

Specifically, credit card companies go to college campuses with the goal of convincing these young adults to sign up for their credit cards by enticing them with sign-up bonuses and 2-liter sodas. These innocent-seeming deals are really devious schemes by the companies to encourage the buildup of massive amounts of debt, which has been shown to happen most often in young adults who received little to no education on how fast debt and interest can build up.

Another issue is the lack of knowledge about filing taxes and forms. Many people are never taught how to properly fill out important documents such as electricity bills, insurance claims or 1040A tax returns.

To prevent the preying on of recent high school grads, it’s crucial that the education system offer and requires the implementation of adult-life-based courses nationwide.

Currently, at AHS, there are courses such as Principles of Business, Marketing and Finance, Accounting I & II, Dual Credit Accounting and Financial Math that work to educate students with rudimentary knowledge of the basics of personal finance.

These courses are a great first step toward teaching adult life, but they simply aren’t enough. All of these courses are optional CTE classes and over half the student population will never take any of them.

I believe that these crucial life skills should be implemented into the curriculum of school districts nationwide as required courses. They could be embedded into a current course or become a new course for secondary students.

This education is needed for everyone, so more than a handful of students should get the proper resources necessary to succeed post-graduation.