clubgop wrote:de officiis wrote:BjornP wrote:In the barbarian wastelands of the America after "The Decline", as it came to be known,
parents would be taking responsibility for their kids not getting fat and learning to cook. Civilization never recovered.
Well I only ask because I had heard that they taught kids about household budgeting and how to balance a checkbook, that sort of thing. Useful stuff.
I learned to sew in Middle school and then was reinforced in the army that was helpful.
Now that you mention it, I remember learning how to fill out job applications and stuff like that. Maybe how to write a check.
Life skills and vocational training should probably be a big chunk of education, especially in the poorer schools.
We talk about "parents," but in inner city schools that's not the term you use. You say, "whoever takes care of you." At one middle school where I subbed, 40% of the kids were in foster care. This wasn't a special school, other than the fact that it was in a terrible neighborhood.
Even if you have parents, it's far from certain that they give two shits about you. I remember asking a couple huge classes, 35-40 students if they'd seen the new Harry Potter. This was not in a terrible neighborhood. Lower working class, but not ghetto. Zero. You'd think that someone, an aunt or uncle, and older sibling, would occasionally drop $20 to take one of these kids to a movie. No way. Also, living 12 miles from the beach, none of them had ever been.
Having just 1 parent in the picture is a win. And they probably work at least 40 hours a week. Someplace like LA, tack on 5-8 hours commuting. And odds are, they don't really have great lifeskills either.
Even if you're middle class, there's no guarantee you have interested parents, who have good life skills, who bother to impart them to you, etc.
At the same time, it is hard to absorb that stuff as a kid because it all takes place in a hypothetical reality that seems alien to you.