EDIT: A lot of you are reading into the tweet while still somehow agreeing with the overall message. No one is saying we should eliminate music programs or that we should teach toddlers about healthcare plans. The tweet is making this thing called a --checks notes-- joke, that also conveys the message that schools could teach more practical skills that young adults will need going forward.
Kids should learn about taxes and other important life lessons. However musical studies help kids a lot. It improves memory, hand eye coordination, increases grey matter in their brains, improves fine motor skills…all sorts of benefits come from learning a musical instrument. Plus once they can actually play you’ll have a live in classical jukebox.
Have you heard hot cross buns? The tune has three notes, everyone plays the melody because that's all their is, and it's like 8 measures long. Maybe even 4 and we just played it slow, I don't remember. It's the beginner song. Elementary school kids can handle it, especially since we had to sing and dance every year up until then (also simple stuff for kids).
It's also important to expose kids to a major facet of human culture. If they don't come from a musical household, they may never get exposed to the intoxicating phenomenon of making musical sounds.
The Recorder in general isn't a bad instrument, though. If you hear a flute from the Baroque period, it's most likely the Recorder. It requires sophisticated technique, but since it's cheap to make, teachers use it as a teaching method without even knowing that they use the tongue to stop their breath, or that air pressure varies depending on the pitch being made. Also, there are many types of Recorders. What the children use are Soprano recorders, which have a high pitch (duh).
The IRS gives you a 100 page step-by-step manual, and only requires addition, subtraction, multiplication and (rarely) division. For someone who just has a W-2, you fill out one field for income and do the math for the tax bracket.
Schools teach mathematics, reading comprehension, and how to follow instructions. With those 3 skills people can do their taxes. We used to do it with a paper form and a paper book full of instructions. Now there are programs that do pretty much everything for you, all you need to do is answer questions. If you can't figure out how to do taxes then you have a bigger problem than the schools not directly teaching you how. As far as understanding all of the intricacies of US tax law, that is a much larger, more complex issue than they would or could reach in general education. There are entire university programs for that education.
Schools teach mathematics, reading comprehension, and how to follow instructions. With those 3 skills people can do their taxes.
Sure, and since laws are just writing you don't need lawyers at all, everyone can just represent themselves. In fact, why do specialties exist at all? Programming is just typing, and everyone can type, so everyone can program. Surgery is just cutting things, so if you can use a knife, you can be a surgeon.
I mean, how could someone not easily know what to do when given such clear instructions as:
"Refigure your depletion deduction for the AMT. To do so, use only income and deductions allowed for the AMT when refiguring the limit based on taxable income from the property under section 613(a) and the limit based on taxable income, with certain adjustments, under section 613A(d)(1). Also, your depletion deduction for mines, wells, and other natural deposits under section 611 is limited to the property's adjusted basis at the end of the year, as refigured for the AMT, unless you are an independent producer or royalty owner claiming percentage depletion for oil and gas wells under section 613A(c). "
And none of those examples that you gave are taught in elementary school or highschool. They're taught as college careers because there's a breadth of knowledge required to specialize in those fields. We also have tax attorneys, and accountants who specialize in personal tax filing. They learned those skills in college.
It's meant to be absurd. Buried in the absurdity is a grain of truth.
The problem is, neither the arts nor home economics are valued in the education sphere and we don't base education policies on science.
As an example, an elementary music teacher I know said "in a school year I will have seen each child for 24 hours. That's not enough time to reach them some music theory or how to play an instrument."
Never ever replace arts, its why most kids enjoy school. but instead, create a semester long class called life that is required every year.
year 9, we pay bills, get paid work for the 45min classes to earn wages.
year 10, you’re now paying bills AND trying to buy a house.
Year 11, yeah, shit gets real: we OWN a fuckin house! and shits breaks, but you also have kids and your dumbass never went to college… oh and you somehow decide randomly you belong in WSB.
Year 12, Retirement, learning how to live on a measly $3000 a month for $5000 of bills.
clearly, we’d reward kids for taking college levels, but also trades. but you’d learn how to buy a house, trade stocks, pay bills with what you have…
I had to take a "home economics" class in highschool. However, you could test out of it. I was unaware that you could do this, so I had to take it. They taught us the very basic us tax form, how to write a resume, how to write a check (yes I'm old). It was very remedial stuff that can easily be learned if you need to know it. The 1040EZ tax form is for someone with a regular job and it has a set of instructions that goes with it. In fact, all us tax forms have a separate instruction sheet unless you have a very niche problem such as repayment of unemployment income or something like that.
School also doesn't teach you how to get dressed or wipe your ass but you still learned how to do those things.
Some things are supposed to be taught to you by your parents. There was nothing stopping any of us from sitting down with our parents and learning how to do taxes which is exactly how I learned about it.
To be fair, at the time you’re learning the recorder, you’re doing basic arithmetic. You gotta wait to get into advanced arithmetic before learning to do your taxes.
When I was in school, that was just the first song they'd teach us on the recorder so I assume it's meant to be the teacher pushing on with the lesson instead of listening to the student.
districts in some parts of the country do have classes, senior seminars, or workshops, that cover things like this and other 'life skills'. it was a graduation requirement at my public high school, waaaay back in the 1980s in minnesota.
“Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do.” (you don't learn the last two words of that poem until later, long after you are done with school)