Reinventing English

Of all the things I've read thus far in my education, this one has hit me the hardest. (Weird to consider, right?) After reading this first chapter, I went ahead and purchased the book online because I honestly cannot wait to continue reading the rest of it. I feel like these brief ideas that are presented in Chapter 1 are exactly how I want to conduct my future classroom.
First and foremost, I do want to prepare my students for life. That's all that occurs after high school anyway. Even while the majority of students will go on to post-secondary education, it's nothing like the previous twelve years of their schooling. They need to balance the real-world life with the educational life. If I help them prepare for life in my classroom, as this chapter describes, the skills they need for future schooling will come along with the process.
Let's face reality for a moment. How often are we ignorant to things happening outside of our own lives? While all of this global turmoil is going on, most us don't understand it unless we've experienced it first-hand. It comes along the lifelong process of "getting older" and "having experience." So no matter what points we are trying to show to our students, we have to make sure they can see how it will affect them directly. Teachers should always address student problems because eventually it'll be their society they are living in. The problems of society can be greatly impacted if only we educate the youth that will one day be taking over the society.