You are right about the high school thing. I would add, a bit off the subject, that home economics should also be returned so the graduate understands, if nothing else, how to boil an egg.

Home Ec was a means to teach women how to be successful wives. Shop class was a means to teach men the skills they didn't teach in Home Ec. I think we are screwing up if we are not teaching both to both sexes. We also need to teach them how to manage a checking account. How to save money for big purchases and retirement. How to buy a house. How to drive a car, register it, finance it.

I would also teach both boys and girls how to be adults, how to please somebody else, how to be responsible with sex and reproduction, how to get along with people, and how to stay on the right side of the law. A lot of these things were things your parents would teach you, but these days those parents may not know themselves. Just watching a single daytime conflict show tells you we are doing something horribly wrong.

This has always been a paradox for me.

Parents should be the ones who teach all of the things necessary to manage ones life, but the flaw is not every parent knows how to do that.

So do we indoctrinate students in how to be productive citizens for the state or do we leave that to the vagaries of incompetent parents? Or make up your own take on this conundrum.

These days...

So you imagine sometime in the past that parents and schools taught all these life skills better than today? And if we just Make America Great Again™ everything will return to normal?

I have experience from the post War2 era when the middle class in America rose to its ultimate glory...nobody taught me s***.

Maybe all that was happening during the war? Or perhaps during the depression years? The Roaring Twenties? World War 1? Maybe religion took care of all that back in the days before rock and roll.

But I don't think so. I think we're looking at a long string of chaotic history where people did the best they could to survive with what little information they were given up front.

Kids are drowning in information these days. They don't need to be taught to farm and f*ck and pray. Shop class isn't going to help kids enter the robotically controlled and computer operated world of today.

Home Economics is not going to prepare women to be better housewives. Who the f*ck even has time to be a "housewife" in this day and age?

What we think we know and what we think is best for today's youth is entirely bullshit. The world has passed us by and we haven't improved on it much as it did.

Obviously you know how to cook well enough to feed yourself very well. Some of these kids have no idea and end up just eating fast food and prepackaged snack junk. That may be the main difference between productive adults and welfare recipients. I know how to cook and I do quite often. My little sister the welfare grifter knows how to buy a bucket of KFC.

Just go to WalMart: Nobody's buying carrots or celery, but they have a huge Little Debbie's section.

So your parents taught you all the right things but failed to do the same for your sister?

When I got married at 26 I couldn't cook for sh*t. My wife was a little younger and all she ate was canned green beans and Cambell's Gumbo Soup. I had no idea how to manage a checking account, buy a house, or anything else.
We learned together how to be adults, the same way kids are doing it now and the same way they've always done it.

But they've got Youtube tutorials to show them everything they need to know. All the world's collected knowledge is right at their fingertips. I expect great things to happen once they finally take over.

Essentially, yes. That's what happened. I left home at 17 when my little sis was 7. As soon as I moved out, my mother left and took my sister with her. So she did not have the same parenting experience at all. My father was a professor of Education. He had me solving quadratic equations at age 10. I worked and got a BS at the same time. My sister was a high school dropout who has never worked a day in her life.

I have often had similar thought. We spent so much time in high school... what did we learn? It is not surprising that many kids wind up screwing up their lives... especially if they do not have parents who teach them this stuff. And the sick part is that, so often, kids do not want to listen to their parents... so it would be much better to have a “life skills” class
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After a long time i just dropped by to say hi
Ardy

Hi Ardy, welcome back.

1. Place egg into a pan of cold water.
2. Place on heat source.
3. Turn timer to 21 minutes.
4. Turn heat source on high.
5. When timer goes off, remove egg(s) from hot water.
6. Immerse egg(s) into an ice-water bath.



The prefect hard-cooked egg with no green ring.