Before they Graduate

Someone posted on Facebook, "What should students actually learn before they graduate from high school?" That person answered that students should learn how to budget. Since I've been taking my young son to physical therapy to address bulging disks in his spine, my first thought was that students need to learn how to keep their bodies in healthy alignment. That would have been very usefull knowledge for me to have learned before I graduated from high school.

I discovered a picture of me, standing with my grandmother and brother, when I was in the 9th grade. My ribs were shifted far to the left of my hips, and my head and neck were shifted far to the right of my ribs, as though trying to pull me into a healthier alignment. No one seemed to notice that it needed to be fixed, and I certainly didn't realize it was anything to talk about.

People have become much more conscience of how to protect their physical health since then, and the school where I substitute is pretty consistently focused on getting the kids to move their bodies and telling them about yoga and other exercises, but I'd still like to see students learning how to keep their bodies in healthy alignment before they graduate from high school.