Skills necessary to everyday life, a term especially used in special education to identify skills that a child with handicaps must learn or forever be dependent on others to perform, such as brushing teeth or writing a check; sometimes called survival skills. A school program that focuses on such skills may be called a functional curriculum, in education in general, functional skills are those that can be immediately applied in daily life, such as typing or auto mechanics. Functional reading skills means reading ability sufficient for the purposes of daily life reading signs, train schedules, application forms, and the like. People (including nonhandicapped adults) who are unable to read such materials are called functionally illiterate.