Quote:
Originally Posted by MMM
You didn't learn about cooking and using tools?
|
No, as Robinsmask said, it was mostly only theoretical or highly abstract, which doesn't really work in practical classes like techs. That's why I think it's kind of dumb. We were having 'Woodshop' and 'cooking class', but neither actually taught us working with wood or how to cook. How to design packaging, yes. About the industrial food industry, yes. About industrial manufacture, yes. Nutritional analysis yes. But the only practical examples were, as you quite rightly say, pointless. I think we made biscuits and a salad, which we all knew how to do already.
Woodshop was slightly more useful, but highly focused on tools you'd only get in an industrial setting. Who has a band sander in their garage and tools for polishing acrylic? All the wood working and DIY i know I pretty much learnt from my dad and my grandpa. I'm pretty sure there's nothing I learnt from class that I still apply in use. Except to always chisel away from myself and that I hate acrylic.
But the point is, as much as we can sit back and say "oh but that's the parent's duty to teach", that's rather narrow-sighted. There are kids without parents; there are definitely kids with parents who either weren't taught the skills (wrong gender, for example. My dad never did 'cooking' at school) in their day, or are otherwise just incompetent. And even in my generation, If I hadn't gone out of my way to learn, or been in a family where things like this were passed on (and in that regard, i'm pretty lucky), then I wouldn't have the skills to pass it on to my kids. I do think it's important, especially the cooking as the UK has such a bad problem with an unhealthy population, simply because they don't know about food, or how to prepare it for themselves, and this is a relatively recent development. Within two generations we've gone from a nation of 'growing your own' to not being able to identify a leek.
I do agree though that abstract learning like algebra has it's place in the world. Knowing a little of it does help as it can crop up in many different occupations.