> manage a budget, understand how to vote, keep themselves fed and clothed

You'll be shocked to find that there are people all over the world and throughout most of history who learned how to do all of these things without any school at all!

I intentionally kept reading the newspaper off that list, because that typically does require some formal education process.

I'm not a radically anti-state person, but its strange and concerning to me that there has been this increasing trend of critique public school for not teaching you basic life skills.

Maybe we need less school and not more. Extending the definition of "child" to be 18+ and keeping students so busy with homework that they don't even learn how the world works through their family and peers seems like a problem that more school won't fix.