I can only regard with incredulity this new adventure in education:
A renowned Canadian university has launched a bizarre ‘Adulting 101’ crash course for pampered students who can’t perform the most basic life tasks like changing a tire, buying groceries or doing laundry.
In an era dominated by digital innovation, Generation Z – or those born between 1997 and 2012 – are in desperate need of practical knowledge that older generations might otherwise consider ‘common sense’.
Adulting 101 is designed to teach basic life skills that Gen Z often struggles with, including cooking, budgeting, basic nutrition, laundry and even navigating a grocery store. The course covers everything from maintaining healthy relationships, practicing fire safety in the kitchen and changing a tire.
For many, the course has been a saving grace – not only helping them personally, but also boosting their daily confidence in navigating the ins and outs of adulthood.
Well, I guess that once a university stoops to deliver courses in Remedial English because such basics somehow escaped the grade-, middle- and high school curriculum, why not the equivalent of 8th-grade Home Economics?
The difference is that “life skills” belong not in secondary school education, but squarely in the “parenting” remit, as the article suggests:
Jean Twenge, a researcher and psychology professor at San Diego State University, suggests that prolonged adolescence and ‘helicopter’ parenting have delayed development among Gen Z.
You don’t say.
For all the mud slung by “educators” at homeschoolers, I defy anyone to come up with examples of such helplessness among the homeschooled. We started giving our kids an allowance as soon as they reached an age we deemed appropriate, said budget to cover their clothing, toiletries and entertainment. We took them shopping all the time, whether for toiletries, groceries or clothing, but let them make their own decisions, staying well back as they navigated their way through the stores — although we did show them basic stuff like comparative pricing and value judgements. Hell, I think the Son&Heir learned how to shop for produce from the age of five, because he always accompanied me on the weekly supermarket trip; and when he bought his first car (at age 19, cash, from his own savings), I showed both him and Daughter the basics of car maintenance — checking the oil, the radiator, how to use a gas pump, and so on. Their allowance, by the way, ended at age 17 and they all went out to work, at restaurants, movie houses, drugstores and so on, and they were solely responsible for managing their savings and expenditure.
I’m not holding us up as ideal parents, but FFS, any parent who doesn’t do this kind of thing is setting their kids up for failure.
But thank goodness for the universities, who will make up for parental neglect with a course that probably costs $2,500 per quarter. That cost, by the way, should not be covered by public subsidy or student loans, but by the fucking parents.
Fat chance.
I’m stunned at the amount of remedial classes offered at colleges now. How do you get accepted to college if you need to take remedial math and remedial English once admitted?
As Mark Twain remarked, “Never let school get in the way of your education.” Not everything needs to be taught in school or college.
We homeschooled our son and the experience was similar to what you described. He was with my wife and I every day and automatically learned what we were doing, and was given responsibility and accountability all along the way. Now, he and his wife are doing the same with our 10 year old grand daughter.
As I’ve been saying for more than 30 years, the public schools are nothing more than very expensive day care centers as a convenience for the parents that don’t really care about their kids.
We are all about to find out what life will be like on Discworld when no one goes out any longer to repair the fences and warning signs at the edge.
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Amen. And amen.
I spent the bulk of my professional life on the air in radio. At one of my early gigs, we did a weekly public service segment with the local school superintendent. One week, the supe brought an elementary school parent with him to highlight the district’s literacy initiative. Overall, mom was encouraged at the progress her 2nd grader was making, but frustrated that it wasn’t going as easily as she had hoped. I shared an experience of my own.
As a youngster, I had a devil of a time learning to read. My parents bought flash cards with simple words on them. Every morning the cards would be arrayed on the coffee table in simple phrases & word combinations. I’d be required to read them before breakfast. Mom was there to help me sound it out, but I had to do the work. It took about a month of hard slog, and then it was water downhill.
I suggested to the mom I was interviewing she might give it a try. Her facial expression can best be described as horrified. “That’s what I send him to school for!”
At the end of the day, the people are the problem.