This is something my dad, says, "There are no survival skills, just life skills." He uses this in relation to lots of things, but I tend to think about it with respect to cooking. But when I was in high school, I was thoroughly annoyed that my economics class was mostly concerned with nations and wide sweeping theory rather then how to calculate compound interest on a car loan or balance a check book. These are truly life skills and I think at least half the semester should have been spent on it. Instead all we learned was Keynesian theory. Big deal, I'll never be leader of the World Bank, but I definitely will have a check book and credit card and probably a car and house loan.