I said important things needed for adulthood should be taught in grade/high school. Unless you think you can teach everything required in less time than K-12, then sure electives are fine. What is learning extensibly about black history going to teach kids that they can use as adults in the real world outside of teaching to that for their career. Even band allows kids to have a possible future career in music.
Out of interest, what's your position on teaching of history
broadly? I, personally, have zero interest in it. Don't care about the dates, the kings, the queens, definitely not the wars or any of that depressing stuff. I'm just not interested enough in it to keep that info in my brain (and that's not an insult to people who are, I'm sure my interests (Torx screws) are equally dull to some of you). But I appreciate that it has a place in education (those who forget the past are doomed etc.)
So what should education look like? I don't need to know the angle to lean a ladder on a wall, because I'm not a fucking idiot and I can tell if a ladder will fall when I get on it. Oxbow lakes? Who cares, the lake is there or it's not there, me knowing that a meander led to it doesn't change anything (you'll not find a British schoolchild who doesn't know how oxbow lakes are formed, it's part of the syllabus
for every subject).
I'm (now) aware of my ignorance in many areas, and I do wish my education had been broader, including things like black history and other religions (even in my non-Catholic secondary religious education was basically Christian Studies) and worldviews. I honestly think if I'd had a more rounded education, and seen the world through others' eyes a little more, I might have been a bit less of a dick in my teens and twenties (this may not be the case though, I maybe just be inherently a dick).
Anyway, what important skills for adulthood do you think are getting, or would be, missed? (You do not need to reiterate that all young people are thick, I've already explained that your parents' generation think you are thick
and shit at practical tasks. What
provable lack is there in the younger generation?)