Skills from 100 years ago - Page 7

[mouso]

Subbing, as this is interesting.

I can can, make soap, have some survival knowledge, have built a solar cooker, can crochet.

Would like to learn more about seed saving and get better at sewing- although I can sew, also would like to learn to can using a pressure cooker.

When I taught 5th grade we had an entire segment of math class devoted to writing checks and balancing accounts and such. Not sure if that's common or not but it was in our math books to teach to the students.

[smeisnotapirate]

Re: stupid county laws

I'm a HUGE advocate of "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

[lolar2]

Originally Posted by smeisnotapirate

Re: stupid county laws

I'm a HUGE advocate of "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

True, but the fines they levy for code violations can undo the savings realized by the clothesline and chickens.

[bohmproof]

about teaching 5th graders check writing... (I was taught in 7th grade) why do kids this young need these skills... high school would be much more appropriate.. at this point they should be more capable of handling the responsibility.

With resume building, I learned from college courses designed for marketing yourself, usually at the end of the courses, and it applied only to the field we studdied.

[Alyantavid]

I do think most of the stuff in this thread is important for people to know. We garden, raise our own livestock, hunt and I cook everything from scratch. I can sew, not well, but I can. My plan for this year is to learn to crochet and can. My dh has tons of friends and they all have some little thing they do really well. Besides that, he can fix almost anything or if not, he knows someone who can and will teach him or do it for trade or cheaply.

Honestly, on the topic of things they should teach in school, I think it goes beyond just cooking and woodworking and mending, and such. There are modern skills that are vital too. How do rent an apartment, how to balance a checkbook, WHY to balance a checkbook, how to make a resume, how to get a job, how to set up a bank account (not a credit card but a bank account).... Honestly, all except the last two, I don't really know at all, and the second to last, despite having gotten a part time job in high school, now that I'm trying to find a job to support myself, I'm much shakier on. What kind of job am I qualified for? How do I get the seemingly impossible qualifications for the entry level jobs? How does an entry level job lead into something that I could actually stomach doing for most of my life? How do I really get that job, since it seems much harder now than it was then? How do I deal with the monotony of a boring job for years? That is what they need to be teaching in school, more than calculus, organic chemistry and us history.

I guess I don't see why its the school's responsibility? Most adults at some point, know these things and should teach their children. However, we did alot of this in school. I took Home Ec, Economics, etc and learned more about them. My mother thought these kinds of things were very important (as they are) so we learned them from an early age. My dad taught us to hunt very early on and we grew up on a farm/ranch so we learned all about raising animals.

I know the majority of people didn't grow up this way, but I do think parents have some responsibility to teach their kids things and shouldn't let it all fall on the school.

[not now]

My mother grew up in a field/packing house family that had immigrated from Mexico when she was 9 years old. She worked in the fields as a teen and transitioned to secretarial jobs after taking classes at a community college.

She taught me how to handle money, how to balance a check book, what an interest rate was, how to do my taxes and went over the fine print with me on everything. To this day I call her for investing advise.

My mom also had/has little to no interest in domestic skills. She never learned from my grandmother who cooked from scratch, stockpiled, sewed, knit, crochet, canned and gardened. She didn't want to learn, it reminded her of living on a ranch in Mexico dirt poor.


I don't think it's public schools responsibility to teach kids/teens some skills. Sure it could be offered as an option like home ec/woodworking/auto shop is but most parents should be teaching their kids something. Basic life skills shouldn't be left up to the public school system (except extreme cases), parents need to take responsibility. They need to include their children in day to day life as an adult. When I was 16 I took over grocery responsibility so I could learn how far a dollar went, how to organize meals and to budget. That skill, combined with the cooking/storing I learned from my aunt, has benefited me greatly.

Calculus isn't needed to live day to day but it is required if the kid wants to become a engineer, biologist, pharmacist, ect and most people aren't able to teach calculus at home. That is where school comes in, to build on top of the basic knowledge base that parents provide.