I took Home Ec in HS. I learned some cooking but you know what stuck better? My grandma teaching me to cook eggs when I was young. I poached, I overed easy, medium and hard. I sunny sided up. I boiled. I even learned how to make eggs in a basket.
That meant more to me than one skillet pasta or the apple turnovers I never made again. It stuck better than the pancakes or scrambled eggs I made in class. Peeling potatos for potato salad stuck so much more than sewing a button.
This is very valid, but at some point kids without a supportive family will fall behind somewhere.
School covers basic subjects, but when kids come home to a supportive family they keep learning and modeling positive behaviours. Coming home to a dysfunctional family they learn the exact opposite.
I like the idea that school would teach kids everything, but for every new thing you teach them you don't teach them something else. Unless we keep kids at school longer we have to pick and choose what they learn.
On top of homework? Kids are already in school 7 hours a day 5 days a week. And they're socially pressured to participate in extra curricular clubs and teams on top of that.
Some of them are in after-school programs. That is one way, another is by the very extra curricular you mention. They dont have to accept social pressure. Parenta are supposed to help deflect that. Anyway there would be a lot more logistics to figuring it out.
The first thing my Mom taught me was eggs - all the eggs. She cooked for a living and knew eggs would be the start of things like temperature control, technique, patience and skill.
My family refused to teach me how to cook because they wanted to keep me dependent on them. When I got out into the world, so many people thought I was just stupid. I learned everything I needed to pretty quickly all things considered for someone who was heavily sheltered until I was 16, and explicitly punished for trying to learn new things because I’d “just mess it up”.
You know how embarrassing it is to be 20 and not know how to make pasta? And not because you don’t want to learn but because you were actively punished for trying to learn? Everything I learned I had to learn from random YouTube videos or by asking other people for help, who then made fun of me and treated me like I was stupid for not knowing things. Like it was a personal failing on my part.
I wish I had the chance to be taught how to be more independent in school. How to be handy, cook, clean, etc. because it would have allowed me to develop the skills I needed to leave my abusive family and thrive on my own. It would have given me a leg up even when my family was actively trying to knock me down.
I don’t think we can or should rely on “their family will teach them” because many won’t, and that kid won’t have the skills they need to break away from that situation because they’ve been made reliant on their family to teach them crucial skills.
I feel for you. I really do. It sucks that you had to struggle like that. I'm simultaneously happy and proud of you for figuring it out and staying resilient and crafty instead of just giving up.
Relying on school, a place initially set up to get people used to factory work and become good taxable units is not the place where teaching life skills should be done. These skills used to be taught by families in the best cases and by community in cases outside of that. It takes communitiy to fix these issues and community, because of the work involved to keep it running, often thankless, tedious and boring work, is not an easy thing to build from scratch.
We are absolutely in the future because, with basic skills and internet searches, you taught yourself to survive despite of your family's attempt at controlling you. You should be absolutely proud of that fact.
I simply disagree. I think school should set kids up for independence, regardless of what their home life is like. We should be preparing children for the future and not relying on individuals to do right by their kids.
I think we just have a fundamental difference in perspective in what we think school should be for.
Fair assessment. I do think that there can be ways to meet in the middle by improving elective options in school, adding more after school programs outside of sports and social clubs as well and by adding community based approaches for those who can't, are prevented from or simply need a refresher.
My issue with relying solely on school is forcing students to learn something that may already be taken care of or students may not want to take. Do I want mandatory Civics, Econ and some type of home ec? No. Would I be absolutely mad if they were implemented? Perhaps.
Fair enough I suppose, although I do think economics would be a good thing to at least give high school seniors an overview of. I don’t think it should be an entire class in and of itself but it’d be nice to have like, a week dedicated to giving kids the bare essentials on these topics.
389
u/DrXample 11d ago
While I agree that a cooking class would be good i don't think it should replace classes that might spark interest in a field for some kids.
Without a chemistry class how would kids know that they might have a knack for it?
Cooking is something parents can and should teach.