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.
