Remember when school felt like a factory for memorizing things you’d never even need? What if, instead, you learned how to do your taxes, how to handle heartbreak, or how to steer clear of dodgy job offers? These are the classes that should have made the syllabus but were crowded out by mitochondria facts and Shakespeare soliloquies. Here is a list of school subjects that don’t exist anymore (or never did)… but honestly, they should’ve.
How to Not Get Scammed 101
From phishing job ads to fake IRS calls, life is a minefield of online scams. Yet nobody ever taught us how to recognize red flags. What if there were a class where you actually learned about phishing, what a pyramid scheme looks like, and how to break the news to your grandma that the Nigerian prince isn’t real.
Mandatory First Aid Class
Why were we never taught how to treat a burn, how to stop a nosebleed, or how to deal with a sprain? First aid is something that ought to have been a general subject of study, something that you do not learn around the campfire. You shouldn’t need to watch five TikToks to know how to do CPR. We should all know how.
Mental Health Maintenance
We did PE for our bodies, but nothing for our minds. No one learned what burnout feels like or how to say “I’m not okay” to someone without guilt. This class would have been all about boundaries, therapy without feeling shame, and not spiraling when someone leaves you on read. Some mental hygiene couldn’t have hurt.
Personal Finance 101 (Because Taxes Are Real)
Why were we learning about the mitochondria and not credit cards, taxes, and loans? A budgeting, savings, and how-not-to-fall-for-payday-loans class would have been so much more useful than geometry ever was in our adult life.
How to Be Alone Without Falling Apart
Time alone isn’t punishment—it’s a skill. This is a class that would have taught us how to love our own company, take ourselves on dates, and make it through Friday nights without texting that one ex. How to be okay by yourself should have been as common as group projects.
How to Not Be a Toxic Roommate
Munching on your dinner, never loading the dishwasher, or hosting their situationship over every night is a rite of passage of bad roommates. What if, however, school did teach you how to coexist and share a space without landing on a Reddit AITA headline? Conflict resolution, whose turn is it to do the dishes, and “your turn to buy toilet paper” etiquette? Please and thank you.
Logic & Critical Thinking
One YouTube clip and half of the class now believe that the Earth is flat once more. A contemporary logic class could teach us how to sniff out BS, diffuse conspiracy, and not be duped by influencers believing that sunscreen is a government scam. Because misinformation has never been more widespread, and no one is immune.
Basic Cooking
We learned how to create papier-mâché volcanoes, not how to prepare actual food with five ingredients and no will to live. This class would have included one-pot meals, supermarket convenience, and toasting without burning the house down.
Basic Home Repairs 101
What to do when the sink won’t stop dripping? Or when the breaker trips and your room’s a blackout zone? Most of us call our dads or suffer silently. But imagine if we’d been taught how to use a wrench, change a fuse, or not die trying.
Social Media Hygiene
They simply said don’t tweet party pictures while job hunting. That’s it. No one taught us how not to leave digital footprints, cyberbullying, or why swiping at 3 a.m. destroys your serotonin. This class would be a third therapy class, a third digital detox, a third “don’t tweet celebrities while drunk.”
Basic Etiquette
No, not the Victorian tea party kind — the real, don’t-talk-over-people and don’t-text-at-the-table kind. Good manners matter more than ever, especially when ghosting people and oversharing on social media is the norm. A little retro civility would be a breath of fresh air.
Renting Without Regret
You finally move out, and boom, your landlord ghosts you, your deposit is gone, and the radiator is from hell. A subject on renting would have had you read the leases, know your tenants’ rights, and ask smart questions like “Why is this rent £100 below market?”
Dating Red Flags & Emotional Literacy
We studied Romeo and Juliet’s drama, not the actual signs of a manipulative partner. A lesson in love vs. control, what gaslighting would actually sound like, and why mixed signals are a red flag and not an agenda item to figure out? That was mandatory.
Life Skills (Laundry, Bills & Not Dying Alone)
Think of a class where you learn to separate the whites from the colors, call a good plumber, or schedule a dentist appointment before your teeth fall out. This is starting to sound like a mythical course, but it could teach us how to survive in the real world.
Respectfully Saying ‘No’ Without Explaining Yourself
We were taught how to just apologize when we did not want to do something. An assertiveness class would have been a lifesaver. How to say no to additional work, odd friends, and favors you owe no one, without guilt and with a period? It could have been so much a lifesaver.
Grief, Death, and the Stuff No One Talks About
Death happens. But we tiptoe around it like it is Voldemort. This class would have prepared us for losing people we love, handling funerals, being a good friend during bereavement, and not saying weird things like “at least they’re in a better place” when someone is grieving.
15 Things Every Kid Knew How to Do Before the Internet
hese were learned at the cost of boredom, creativity, and maybe some near-death experiences. Here are 15 things every child knew how to do before the internet, with no Wi-Fi and zero “Ask AI.”
15 Things Every Kid Knew How to Do Before the Internet
18 Life Lessons Most People Learn Too Late
One minute, you think you have it all figured out, and the next, you’re staring at your bank account, wondering why no one warned you about taxes. Some lessons come easy. Others? You only learn after getting burned, broke, or betrayed. Here are a few life lessons most people learn way too late.
18 Life Lessons Most People Learn Too Late