There's an article at PJMedia about millenials and the skills they have and don't have.
We've all seen this commercial about the kid who can't change a flat.
First time I saw the ad, I thought, "How can someone drive a car, and not know how to change a tire?"
But, as it turns out, we're not teaching our kids (or grandkids) very many life skills. They live in a digital world and they're very good with devices, but simple things like frying an egg, or building a fire with tinder and kindling elude them. My grandson, Zach, for instance, was over at the house (he spends a lot of time with us), and didn't know how to start a lawnmower, or how to cut grass.
He knows now, by God. I'm going to have to start working on his other skill sets. He'll be going away to college in a few years, and we need to make sure that he picks up some life skills, like basic cooking and basic laundry, and how to work a broom.
4 comments:
Old joke: A liberal arts college graduate is hunting for a job and gets hired by a hardware store. The first day the owner catches him as he reports in and hands him a mop and tells him to mop the front entrance. The new hire says "but I'm a college graduate." The owner replies "okay hand me the mop and I'll show you how to do it."
There are just so many things that our young people don't know how to do, not the least of which is balancing a check book. How to plan a menu for the week and shop for the food to make those meals and how to cook that food.
How to make at least the most basic of car repairs such as changing a burned out light bulb, windshield wipers, check the oil and tranny fluid, how to put air in tires and check to see if needed.
Why did the two World Wars start? A little about the Vietnam war, and the peace movement here at home. Martin Luther King did a lot during his life to try to promote peace between the races. What and how.
These kinds of things that used to be pretty much common knowledge for anyone who didn't even have to have a high school diploma, but just had to pay the slightest attention. It makes me so angry that teachers are not allowed to do this kind of teaching, but are stuck with teaching to standard tests, and we end up with kids who are not ready to start college, but have to take the first year of remedial classes, that they have to pay for. I actually know my IQ, and while not genius lever, it is fairly high. I took an entrance exam to one of the colleges and I was the only student that they had who never missed a single question. This is just to show that I was prepared to start college.
Once I learned to read, that is all I did. I don't know what kids do not, as I don't have young kids at home anymore. But there time would be spent doing the things that I thought were important, not learning so they could pass some common core test. An education s much more than passing the test that some moron in Virginia or D.C. thought up and pulled out of his or her ass.
I raised 5 kids (4 girls, 1 boy), none of them biologically mine, & made damned sure they knew the basics, or what I consider the basics. Tire change, oil change, jump-starting, making fire & basic woods survival, safety & correct use of firearms & edged weapons--hell, a lot of things, now that I think of it, though I didn't consider it nearly enough. Their fathers (the 5 is counting those from 2 relationships) had neglected all of that.
I considered myself paid in full the very first time one of the girls came to me to tell me she & some friends had had a flat, and she was the only one in the car who knew how to change it, while the others were near panic. She said the driver was actually crying, since they were "stranded"--this being before cell phones.
--Tennessee Budd
College and laundry in the same thought process? SURELY you jest. On the other hand, if he knows how to do laundry he may be able to pick up some extra cash doing laundry for those to much in a hurry to wait for the next trip home with a suitcase full of dirty clothes.
Go for it. You will have one grandson who will have quite a few lost skills and he won't even realize it.
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