School children in B.C. never failed.
- Thread starter JLM
- Start date
jlm, i tend to agree with you.
In grade 10, i was taught a 'life skills' course that covered a wide range of topics:heigene, nutrition, resume writing, bait and switch scams, stock market, compounding interest, mortgages, mock labour negotiations, etc. I see no reason why dish washing shouldn't be added to the list.
In grade 10, i was taught a 'life skills' course that covered a wide range of topics:heigene, nutrition, resume writing, bait and switch scams, stock market, compounding interest, mortgages, mock labour negotiations, etc. I see no reason why dish washing shouldn't be added to the list.
Looks like you got short changed on your education somewhere along the way. Have you not heard of cooking school. There's many kinds of knowledge but I can't think of any of them that can't be taught. You say "we don't train children for jobs". See what kind of job they can get if they can't read or write and add and subtract, besides washing dishes, cleaning tables, chambermaids etc. Where the learning potential is low I believe you have to teach them anything that will help them through life.
Children don't go to cooking school.
Primary school, elementary school, whatever you what to call it, doesn't prepare children for work/jobs, it prepares them for higher learning, for high school. In high school, secondary school, one begins to see the elements of preparation for work/jobs, sometimes more literally if they are in a trades school for example. But mostly it is in preparation for yet more higher learning at the college or university levels.
But completion of high school would give anybody what they need to be able to follow instructions to wash dishes, it doesn't need to be a course for credit.
I think this thread has morphed into a good discussion that I didn't foresee at the time I wrote the O.P. Perhaps it's time all knowledge was put on a more equal footing. I think the basics of the "three Rs" is as important today as it ever was but perhaps "the basics" should be expanded. If we are going to insist that all children should be schooled, which I agree with, but not in the way it's been happening. First I think we have to have some idea of what each child is capable of learning, at least at the onset of his/her education and tailor their education to what they can learn, so time and effort isn't being wasted on what they can't learn. If it takes a week to teach a child how to wash dishes, sweep the floor and make the bed, that is a week, a hell of a lot better spent than trying to teach him/her differential calculus. I believe there is very little knowledge that is "bad" knowledge.