LIF101 Drugs LIF102 Sex LIF103 Money Get their attention with marijuana, first topic first course. Spend one day on the chemistry, then one day on effects in

LIF101 Drugs LIF102 Sex LIF103 Money Get their attention with marijuana, first topic first course. Spend one day on the chemistry, then one day on effects including how to recognize people under the drug’s influence. Then do tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, same two-day format. Then move back up into pharmaceutical opiates, street opiates, then cocaine. First midterm exam is on the science of drugs as chemicals and their documented effects. Then move to drug laws and public health issues for awhile. Briefly touch on drug use in other cultures, historical drug use, and drug use by animals. Have them write a paper on drug policy. Move to a section on mental health to explain some common problematic reasons why people use drugs. Then spend the remainder of the course on wellness, exercise and cooking to offer doable, sensible alternatives to unhealthy habits. Have them do a group project on one of the healthy living subjects. LIF102 Sex. Just copy Al Vernacchio’s “Human Sexuality” class at the Friends’ Central School, Philadelphia. LIF103 Money. By now maybe you’ve convinced people these courses are real life skills worth knowing. Keep going. LIF201 Prediction LIF202 Perception LIF203 Atoms The real, rubber-hits-the-road reason to have knowledge is to make accurate predictions. You might not think of skilled work as making predictions, but if you design a bridge a certain way so it’ll stand up, you’re actually predicting that the bridge will stand up if you construct the supports a certain way. How do you even get the information you base predictions on? The study of perception is pretty interesting, surprising and sometimes non-intuitive. There are some core ideas that have proven really, really useful for making predictions that work. Some of them are not obvious at all, and you’d never think of them yourself. One of these is the atomic theory: “All things are made of atoms - small particles that repel when pushed together, but attract when they’re a little way apart.” By this time the kids ought to have some faith that all this stuff is important to their lives.