To think schools should have a class to teach basic life skills

Exactly, I said originally you can’t do anything. It’s pretty much expected that if you choose to have children you teach them to be independent in life, why have
even have kids if you can’t be bothered to do even the basics. So there’s an option, if you can’t do the basics then don’t have children.

Why should teachers be used teach kids stuff their parents should be doing, it’s also not fair on the children who can do these basic things. We already have a teacher shortage crisis, can’t imagine that the teachers we do have would be happy teaching basic skills after doing 3/4 years at uni. What lessons would they reduce for these basic life skills lessons? What if the teachers themselves don’t know how to do these life skills? Plenty of say history teachers that can teach history but might not be able to manage money, or check change a tire.

That's your job as a a manager. Definitely not for teachers to go through the vagaries of employment etiquette beyond what they already do. If you're working with junior staff it's expected that you'll need to train them. When I started as a part timer there was a rule in place that you had to call in sick yourself, unless it was an emergency. That's part of work training. Not school.

A lot more goes on in schools than Shakespeare and football, as someone who also thinks schools have too much of both.

Much of this is already required in PSHE in England and PSHE is already too full of requirements to the point none of it is being done well at many schools. Topics are lucky to get one lessons and not smashed together with several others.

Abusive relationships, already there, and in secondary, some schools have it discussed yearly in different forms. Healthy relationships? Not so much. I've had a head of PSHE tell me that the lessons on abusive relationships and gangs and similar are enough for kids to know how to have a healthy relationship. I strongly disagree, I find the hyperfocus on abusive relationship tends to get many things put under abusive that are just 'this is interpersonal conflict and makes me uncomfortable'., but there also isn't space for lessons that aren't at least theoretically multitasking.

I think schools need to do less, across the curriculum, and especially in PSHE. All subjects need refinement rather than what has happened in many countries of trying to shove as much into every subject, leaving so many behind.

I also think we need to encourage on-going, adult education rather than treating primary and secondary schools as the only places people can learn. My local college and adult learning programmes used to run DIY courses and courses on these types of finances, but then austerity meant funding for these types of courses disappeared and they've sadly gone to the wayside.

@Youstolemygoddamnhouse

What do you think needs to happen to the parents that aren’t teaching their kids basic life skills?

What can you do to them? There are no laws which say parents have to teach kids how to manage normal "life skills". We'd clog up the courts if such a law was brought in, and then presumably the punishment/sanction would be taking kids away in extreme cases which is something we can't afford as it would be foster care, adoption, etc.

Far cheaper just to find ways of "teaching" them outside of the family and the obvious place is schools, at least for the ones who regularly attend. Either by "tweaking" the national curriculum to include a bit more "life skill" within each subject, or reducing the breadth of curriculum in some subjects to make room for a new subject entirely, or making better use of "dead time", or more after school clubs/societies?

It just all seems a bit disjointed that we put so much effort into, say, rote learning of historical dates and the periodic table, yet don't teach how to, say, change a fuse, wire a plug or how to change a light bulb (i.e. different fixings, different sizes, etc) that could either be taught in Physics as part of electrics or tech lessons.

Well there’s nothing you can do. The children are the ones that will suffer in the long term as will society as they will not be equipped with basic life skills. Which you already see. I’ve had 19/20/22 year olds too scared to answer the phone at work. Or who get their parents to phone in sick for me. Plenty of parents in the past don’t parent, this is not a new thing. And no don’t think putting social workers in schools to teach would help, as that isn’t what their jobs are. What do you think needs to happen to the parents that aren’t teaching their kids basic life skills?

What do you do if the parent's don't though? You can lead a horse to water and all that. This is nothing new nor recent. We're probably suffering second and even third generations where parents havn't properly "parented". Can we, as a society, continue to just keep parroting "parental responsibility" when it's clear that for ever increasing numbers, it's just not happening.

Should we be putting social workers and care workers into schools to "teach" the things that parents should be teaching to relieve the teachers from wasting teaching time?

My mums friend (both in their 70s) went to school in Scotland. She said they had a section of classrooms that were like rooms in a house; kitchen, bathroom, bedroom etc. They were taught how to make beds, clean baths, cook simple meals.

I went to school in the ‘90s and took Food Studies for GCSE. One parents evening my mum mentioned to the teacher that I was disappointed at the lack of actual cooking involved. The teacher replied that you could do the whole 2 year course without doing any cooking at all! It was all focused on labelling, advertising etc. (from memory!).

We need to find the reasons why this is not happening? Like is it due to parents being time short? Not having the resources? Single parent household? We have more resources these days and you can access anything via your phone. Could be parents not having enough time? Could be a single mam/dad struggling to survive. There are probably lots of reasons why. Public spending has also been cut for example some skills you could learn at youth clubs, guides. Or after school clubs. But we don’t really have anything like that where I live. I agree in children do need to learn all those things mentioned but I don’t think schools need to be the ones teaching. My answer is for parents to take accountability. You also don’t need to be taking kids to 3/4 activities after school which I see a lot of on MN. In an hour you can teach the basics of what a pension is. Obvs depending on how old the kids is. Prioritise your the time.

not school

(I KNOW they in theory teach everything at school anyway)

but it will be even more of an incentive for lazy parents to do nothing.

I agree, but what's your answer to it?

What I said earlier in the thread still stands. Even if it's not taught by your parents - because they can't do EVERYTHING either - you just figure it out. We all did!

If someone hasn't got the most basic intelligence to catch up on basic life skills, no extra school lesson is going to help that.

Never said anything about forcing parents to do it I said this is the parent’s job. Some parents don’t parent at all these days. And their kids end up not being able to live in the adult world. It’s lazy. Why even have kids if you can’t do the basics in preparing your child to become an independent adult. Always someone else’s fault.

at least keep it separate. It's helping no one to dumb down the entire curriculum, which is barely enough at it is.

You would be penalising everyone.

A semi decent school education should not be reserved for private schools.

Which subjects would you drop in order to find the time to teach?

How do you force parents to do it? Maybe take their kids away? It's one hell of a lot cheaper for the state to try to stop the rot and the only feasible place that can be done is schools.

No. That’s what’s their parents are for. What are parents exactly doing if not this?

So what do we do about the poor sods with useless parents. We can't ignore them and we can't afford to subsidise long term unemployment, social costs of poor lifestyle choices, etc.

What, more boring than rote learning the periodic table or dates in history?

I suspect the ones "moaning" are the ones who moan about other subjects too, not the more motivated/able students.

No, probably not. They'd have viewed it as being like school (which they didn't like), or if it was done through their employer they'd have viewed it as being forced to do unpaid overtime, and so on.

A good question, and one with no easy answer. I mean, I was thinking more in terms of TV ads and that sort of thing, and maybe classes organised through workplaces where you do it within your usual hours. But I think we have to try. It's like sex education; people say the parents should do it, but some of them don't, and their kids are the ones who are pregnant at 14. Sometimes by the time you've learnt through life experience, you've ruined your life, or at least put yourself at such a disadvantage that you'll be playing catch-up for most of it. I don't think those who aren't going to have these sorts of problems should just shrug and turn away.

Would any of the people you mentioned have gone to adult “life skills” or financial classes?
Also where do you draw the line? At what point does something become stuff you learn through life experience or are responsible to learn for yourself (if your parents didn’t teach you)?

100%…. trouble is anything really useful was squeezed out of the curriculum but I live in hope that the penny will drop and the importance of life skills recognised again. The assumption that they will be learnt at home is false as many families neither have the time or the skills to ensure this. Basic money management would be so useful including how loans work would be so much more helpful than algebra IMO

I understand people saying parents should do this. I also understand those who say not everyone having loving parents to help them with this stuff, but in all honesty, schools can't do everything that a parent or family member should do. They just can't.

My school teaches life skills lessons, we do money sense lessons etc., but can't be expected to do every little thing. We just can't.

Yes, it's definitely one of them - half of my family are from this world, so I see it.

However well people can read, there remains the "you don't know what you don't know" problem - they don't know what to look for, they don't know what they're missing. They might see words like "interest rates" in black and white, but they don't know what they mean. They see what seems like a wall of jargon and they don't know which bits matter and which don't.

I did point out the problem of getting teens to believe that one day they will be old, and suggested that aiming more education at adults is the answer.

Schools are not there to make-up for useless parents.

Many kids dont have the luxury of loving parents who will teach them. So yes, it should be taught in school.