Life, Skills
In junior high school, everyone was required to take Home Economics class, which the oh-so-modernized school system referred to as Life Skills. In eighth grade, everyone took cooking class. I only vaguely remember learning how to make pancakes, but I remember Mike Duke, who sat behind me. He used to wear rock band T-shirts and corduroy pants.
I thought Mike was hot in that thirteen-year-old-way, though his family moved the following year and a mutual friend told me that he’d “decided to be bisexual.” I’ll never know if that was a polite “don’t waste your time on this one, Mar” or if he had realized that he actually did prefer men, but I digress.
In eighth grade, we cooked and in seventh grade, it was sewing. We learned how to sew buttons and patterns and as a final project, sewed a large, pink stuffed animal - choice between a pig and elephant that Mrs. Jinks (a lovely teacher in her thirties who wore floor length floral skirts and just looked like a sewing teacher, if that makes any sense) graded for precision and detail.
Now, Life Skills was fun and all; it was certainly a novelty to walk to your next class with your hands still mildly sticky from maple syrup and flour on your pants but really, we can hardly call the skills we picked up in these classes “Life Skills.”
Okay, cooking is important, yes. Clearly, we know that I think so. And I will never argue with any activity that merits mid-day pancakes. But to think that my parents tax dollars paid for the big yellow duck that my brother sewed and the big stuffed pink pig that I constructed as pre-teens just seems unnecessary and antiquated.
I have no idea if they still teach such skills in schools today or I’m really JUST THAT OLD but why not teach kids skills that they’ll actually use and might not discover inside the home?
Personally, I would have liked a class in high school or middle school that taught you how to read a map (and not one of those BS ones in your history textbooks but a real, genuine, oh-crap-I’m-stuck-on-the-side-of-the-road-where-am-I map). Or a class that teaches you how to deal with life after your heart is broken for the first time. How do you fight back tears when you have to go to school or work and put on a happy face? Where is the Life Skills class that teaches you how to hold your head up with pride in an uncomfortable situation? Or the class where you learn how to gently but firmly let someone know you disagree with them.
Superficially, I’ll always love that pink stuffed pig, but I certainly didn’t retain any of those skills and in the grand scheme of things, there are bigger fish out there to fry.
What do you wish you’d learned in school that you were never taught?
June 24th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Schools should most definitely teach students how to talk crap. I mean let’s face it. Most of my day is spent telling people stuff I sucked out of my thumb. If I had a head start in High school, I would have been a gazzillionaire by now.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:43 am
I really think there should be a class called “Interpersonal Interactions”, and it should cover:
Relationships: including long term relationships, dating, sex and contraception, interacting appropriately with the opposite sex, how to break up with someone, cheating, having a life outside your relationship.
Friendships: including loyalty, how it’s OK to have more than one best friend (you don’t have to dump the old one), not stealing your best friend’s boyfriend/girlfriend/long-time crush, and balancing friendships with relationships.
Interacting with Adults: ie. they’re not scary or boring, they’re actually interesting people who deserve your time and conversation. If more kids knew this, the world would be more pleasant. Also, smiling at people you pass on the street, looking people in the eye, offering to help someone, and giving up your seat on public transport if necessary.
Also, the value of volunteering in your spare time.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Finances! I wish they’d taught the importance of and how to create a budget and balance a checkbook and spend less than you earn!
June 24th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Hmm, great point. I’d have enjoyed a class that taught us that the real world is NOTHING like they say it is. And maybe one of the lessons could be how to successfully navigate through a workday without wanting to lose it on a few co-workers.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:58 am
I agree with Sylvie - they definitely need to have a finance class! Start young!
We wouldn’t be in the position we are now if they had taught everyone about not spending more then you earn!
June 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am
I agree with all of the above, especially the finances part. There’s a reason so many people are in debt and that’s because no one talks about proper money management anymore.
However I also think that the cooking & simple sewing skills were really important–especially in this day and age. So many kids grow up eating stuff heated up from a box, and throwing out their slightly worn clothes because they were never taught how to cook properly or sew the basics. It’s because THEIR parents were never really taught these skills. They’re simply not passed down in the home any longer. So it’s up to the school system to educate kids on this stuff.
I think that it SHOULD be the parents teaching these sorts of things, but over the years people have lost their skills to the conveniences of a consumer culture, which is a real shame.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I also echo the finance/budgeting sentiment… clearly that’s a skill every young person could benefit from being taught.
I think the whole home-ec/cooking thing is actually a pretty valuable skill, but I think it’s taught too early. Who remembers anything from a 7th grade home economics class? Why not offer it in high school when students actually have a shot at retaining some of it?
Here’s an idea, not for what life skills to teach, but what NOT to teach. I wish so much time hadn’t been wasted trying to drill the concept of professionalism into my head. For years we’re taught how to interact in a “professional” work environment, only to enter one and discover that it’s largely a load of shit.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
This is a really great post. the practical aspects of life
June 24th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
True story:
In my high school home ec class they had us make pillows. I decided instead, to hollow out my pen and stuff needles into it and use it as a blow dart. I accidentally got a pin stuck in between my friends nose and eyeball. He got pissed at me and cut me with scissors he was holding.
We both got suspended for one week, but we remained friends until college.
June 24th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I wish my high school had Auto Shop and that girls were required to take it.
1) So I could have stared at all the hot guys in the class
and 2) So I could know what the eff is wrong with my car sometimes.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I always found home economics a bit rubbish. Do you know the first thing we learned to make in the “cooking” segment of the class? Corned beef sandwiches!!! Seriously!!!
Apart from the ever practical “art of flirting 101″ class, which certainly would have came in handy if it had existed . .. the thing I was gutted to have just missed out on was Classics ie. Latin and Greek Mythology. I missed out on it by a year and it may not have taught me anything i could have used in later life, but that’s the only thing i REALLY wanted to know about!!!
June 24th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
LOL Paula, that was how I felt about making pancakes. How about teaching us something that we might NOT have learned by the time we were seven?
June 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
I so agree on this one– I’ve ranted about the silly things we learned in Career and Personal Planning. Yeah, the resume part was good. But would I could have used is… how to apply to college, find an apartment, apply for a loan, file my taxes, look for a job, manage a monthly budget, etc.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I learned how to balance a budget, balance a checkbook, cook, (skipped the sewing section), parent, etc. in high school. Problem is, I was a teenager and thought those large-pored smelly old teachers didn’t know what the hell MY life was going to be like so I paid attention long enough to get As, then forgot everything. So, what I really wish I had learned was TO REALLY, TRULY LISTEN TO AND LEARN FROM MY WISE PARENTS AND TEACHERS! Imagine, those grown-ups actually knew how to run their lives, offered to share their wisdom, and I ignored them! What an idiot! Did I think I would have “staff” or magic elves? Hah! Enough. I need a nap. I hear the gardening elves only work when we nap in hammocks.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Many of the things you talk about are things that should be taught at home…but, unfortunately, are not. Too many parents are putting the burden of not only teaching their children everything, but raising their children as well, on teachers…and then complain about how it’s done (i.e. discipline when necessary).
Too much importance is wasted on academics when students need to be learning real life skills…how to budget, file your taxes, cook a simple meal, sew a button, change a tire, put a bookcase together, administer CPR, take blood pressure, problem solve, etc…
And no, I’m not saying academics isn’t important…but they aren’t everything and I’ve yet to be asked about Shakespeare or the Pythagorean Theorem on a job interview. Nor have I seen anyone with a job in “English” or “Math”…yes, those are majors but they are I’m-a-career-student major.
I’ll get off my soap box now.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
I think schools need to teach kids how to LEARN, and not just facts and figures for a test.
December 26th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I always thought it’d make sense to teach High School aged kids how to do their taxes.
Similarly, how about a finances class that perhaps gives students some insight as to what they’ll be up against in their future.