Adults may be kids who think they know everything but they still know more than me

I received my first legitimate paycheck the other day, and was entirely too confused about all of the government acronyms that were written up for taxes.  I could only identify "SS" and "MED" and even with this magical information bounty we call the Internet, I still could not find my answer.

My point is, aside from my horrid Google searches, as citizens, we should probably be informed about this sort of thing.  And as people, there are a lot of other things we should know about.

Adults cannot expect children to start working for a living, go to college, and meet people without knowing at the very least the basics of all this.  Learning on the way up or from parents or from some role model type figure is wonderful, but not everyone has that option.  Most adults don't have the time to teach their own children math and English, and that's why we have schools with teachers who are paid to.  So why would they teach us the rest of it?

Information is power, and technology has certainly opened a lot of doors.  But it makes the way we learn up for grabs.  That means it can be learned and interpreted in a lot of different ways.

But there aren't many different ways to interpret FITW (which is apparently the Federal Income Tax Withholding) or that in sexual intercourse between a male and female bodily fluids are exchanged.

Nobody explained sex to my little brother and he looked it up online.  Most of what he stumbled onto was porn.  Not trying to bad mouth porn or the Internet, but he was barely out of elementary school and he didn't know how to take the things he was seeing.  It's not like he was about to tell Mom "Hey, I found these girls licking whip cream of a guy's pee pee online.  What's that about?"

We need classes on basic, adult things.  There are so many different uncertainties with dangers that can be measured or just avoided with a little bit more knowledge.  I'm about to turn eighteen.  If I move out within the year, I'll be responsible for my own health insurance, for doing my own taxes, and I'll be at the age of consent.  I know next to nothing about personal finance or what bills I'll being paying.  But I still have a job.  I know kids that started becoming sexually active and smoking cigarettes in middle school.  We start doing adult things but we don't understand the repercussions of unless an adult tells us, or unless we get in trouble for doing them wrong.

Choices should be made knowledgeably and with cause.  I'm not downing the concept of spontaneity or risk because I know I certainly overthink and then act on impulse in different moments.  But I should know where my money goes when it gets taken off a check, and my brother should know the science of a basic, primal act.  We shouldn't get downed with opinions on what to do though, especially if we don't really know what the opinion's about.