Create two body paragraphs following TEMIRP and using evidence from reliable sources. Schools do not prepare students for the real world because... Topic Sentence that covers ONE supporting detail
Evidence (Quotes): Evidence consists of MLA-formatted quotes from reliable sources.
Meaning of quote or specific piece of evidence is explained.
Inference: Student infers what the evidence means or why it is important in their own words.
Relevance: Student discusses how this particular quote/detail is related to the Topic Sentence
Purpose: Student explains how the evidence connects to and supports the Thesis Statement.

What we learn in school is different for all of us, but it is meant to provide skills and information that serves as a base for almost any career or life path. Although this is the idea behind education, the system doesn’t fully serve this purpose. It provides students with a concrete base of knowledge, but doesn’t really prepare them for meaningful work in the real world.

South junior Tiger Worku said, “Our education system wasn’t founded on teaching kids… how to be the next leaders of our society. It was founded to teach kids discipline and obedience.”

Many of the skills that we learn in school such as critical thinking, writing, speaking publicly, and the ability to discuss important topics in groups are very useful for careers in the real world, but much of the content we learn is often times not.

The skills we learn are useful for almost any career and in daily life. For example, you have to use writing skills when writing a formal email and when communicating professionally. Formal communication skills are also necessary for making calls, participating in meetings, conducting interviews, and much more in the working world. This is another use of the skills we gain through school.

Critical thinking is an especially important skill that schools teaches. It is applicable to almost all jobs, especially those that require problem solving. In addition, critical thinking is extremely useful when forming political and social opinions, which shape our world and laws. It challenges us to reexamine the lens through which we’ve grown up seeing the world by learning different perspectives and stepping out of societal norms. English teacher Mary Manor explained that “critical thinking [is] paramount — not just for “21st century jobs” but so that the workers of the world can consider their plight and begin to organize against the ruling classes… We are a country that can support billions, but we are instead pandering to billionaires. Only when we exercise our skills in analysis and synthesis — critical thinking — will we be able to come together as a nation and demand equity for all.”

However, in school we don’t always learn why these skills are important. We are mainly just given tasks in school without much explanation about how we will use them throughout the rest of our lives. For example, we learn how to do theoretical problems in math, but they often don’t connect to real life applications students care about.

While skills are useful, the content is often times not. For example, knowing the date of a certain historical event has no bearing on most career paths. While some historical knowledge is necessary for forming our ideas about the world, much of the specific information simply is not. Knowing the details and specifics of many subjects can be easily accessed online.