When I was a young tough kid in the London slums we had a teacher who tried this, but it just didn't catch on. We called him Sir. I wish I had thanked him.
Posted on 10/03/2010 7:23:17 PM PDT by Immerito
NEW YORK — Second-graders who can’t tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who have never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.
Are we raising a generation of nincompoops? And do we have only ourselves to blame? Or are some of these things simply the result of kids growing up with push-button technology in an era when mechanical devices are gradually being replaced by electronics?
Susan Maushart, a mother of three, says her teenage daughter "literally does not know how to use a can opener. Most cans come with pull-tops these days. I see her reaching for a can that requires a can opener, and her shoulders slump and she goes for something else."
Teenagers are so accustomed to either throwing their clothes on the floor or hanging them on hooks that Maushart says her "kids actually struggle with the mechanics of a clothes hanger."
Many kids never learn to do ordinary household tasks. They have no chores. Take-out and drive-through meals have replaced home cooking. And busy families who can afford it often outsource house-cleaning and lawn care.
(Excerpt) Read more at thechronicleherald.ca ...
I remember wondering to myself in high school (in the early 70s) why they weren't teaching us the important everyday life skills that would matter most to us in a few short years.
It made me so crazy, that I elected to take the G.E.D. test and get out on my own early.
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When I was a young tough kid in the London slums we had a teacher who tried this, but it just didn't catch on. We called him Sir. I wish I had thanked him.
I think cursive has a definite personal use. You can make notes to yourself, grocery lists whatever way faster in cursive than prtg. It doesn’t have to be that legible, however, since you’re the only one who needs to decipher it.
Making change backwards is still something everyone needs to know how to do - it keeps you from being cheated if nothing else. Of course if you can’t read or count your change you can really be led around by the nose. What constituency does that sound like?
I think digital is much faster...you just read. You don’t have to think okay it is three slashes after the 25 on the minute hand etc.
Analog is much slower.
The lyrics describe the listing of household chores to a kid, presumably a teenager, the teenager's response (yakety yak) and the parent's retort (don't talk back), an experience very familiar to a white teenager of the day. Leiber has said the Coasters’ portrayed “a white kid’s view of a black person’s conception of white society.”
I don't know if the joke's on me or somebody else, but I sure didn't relate this situation to myself, as much as I might RELATE to it, you know. They were black guys singing, and it seemed to me that they were singing about themselves.
Also, BTW, I always thought that "yakety yak" was in summary of the parental or otherwise authoritarian instructions ( maybe from bossy wives, which is what I assumed ) and that "don't talk back" was in addendum. That still makes sense to me, since the narrator would hardly be inclined to characterize his own unspecified responses in this way. I can certainly RELATE this far.
The GRE exam requires you to write a statement in cursive. Considering I had not written anything in cursive since 5th grade, that was a struggle.
I think some of the skills this author says we don’t need are in fact needed, but I must agree fully on cursive.
Seriously, what is the point of that horrible handwriting? You can’t read it half the time because people don’t write it clearly. It takes me two times as long to read a cursive document as a print document using the real alphabet.
I hope it dies for good finally, including from the GRE.
People need to come out and visit ranching/farming kids. All of you’d be proud.They will make it when times get tough. At least the ones in our area will..I love our Wyoming agricultural kiddos.
My seven year old is still learning how to tie his shoes, and I think I’ve figured out why! The laces they sell with kids shoes are way too short. They look fine in the store, but once you take them out and re-lace them properly, through all the holes, there’s only three inches left to tie into a knot. You have to buy longer laces to give the kid something to work with.
Lol! I remember being so proud of being able to tie my shoe laces that I told my teacher! Having grown up with two older brothers, I learned how to change the oil, spark plugs, air filter, etc.
I remember wondering to myself in high school (in the early 70s) why they weren't teaching us the important everyday life skills that would matter most to us in a few short years.
When I was a Senior(1959)our civics teacher(he eventually became principal)spent the last month teaching us how to order in restaurants and many other life skills. He has us studying for finals also but that month taught me many things I didn't know about the world.
Some paernts maybe. My 9 and S year old can load, start, change over and unload the washer and dryer. They unload the dishwasher only because I’m picky about how the loading is done. My 9 year old takes out the trash and though they prefer velcro shoes, they can tie regular ones. Did I mention they are home schooled?
Oh MY!!!
You beat me to the punch...
I couldn’t tie my shoes when I started kindergarten, but I learned pretty fast. All it took was a couple of instances of the teacher saying to the whole class, “Can someone come and tie Huntress’s shoes?”
I remember not being able to tie my shoes at the age of 6 and my stepmother yelling at me about it.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly, specialization is for insects.”
He was obviously a great teacher, and of course, you went to high school in an era when kids still had to learn something, and the teaching profession was determined to make sure they did.
I went to military schools until I was fourteen, so I escaped much of the degradation of the public schools. If not for that fortunate circumstance, I would have gone through the same dumbing-down process that most people my age were subjected to in those years.
Back to your point, I recall that it also bothered my mom that we kids weren't being taught so many of the most important life skills in school. I can remember her sitting me down and showing me how a checking account worked, and how to read and understand the household bills. She was also keen on me keeping up with current affairs via the newspapers and broadcast news.
Unfortunately, this was in a day when the MSM had complete control over the flow of information, and still had nearly every American fooled into thinking that they reported the truth without bias. As a result, I was pretty mixed up about politics for decades.
Susan Maushart is an idiot! It’s her damn fault if her kid doesn’t know how to do these things. Yet she seems to be bragging about it!
I had a friend who said his mother didn’t know how to open the car door till after he was born and she wanted to learn to drive. They couldn’t get a second car till after the war.
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