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

[beesandstrawberries]

We all learned so much in school that we haven’t used in day to day life - I mean when have we ever touched a Bunsen burner since school? But none of us was learned the basics of life and how to navigate it - things like:

• Showing how to do basic meals, cooking pasta safety, use of kitchen appliances correctly
• paying bills
• what a mortgage is, how to deal with contracts and paperwork
• how to meter readings
• change a lightbulb, basic tool use in the home
• how to check fire alarms
• credit card education
• managing money, spreadsheets to manage them
• insurances like life insurance and what ones you need
• education on abusive relationship signs
• things like peer pressure
• how to write formal letters/emails

I think we learn so many things that mean nothing when we leave school. If you teach kids basic life skills from a young age, it would make kids a lot more well rounded and less anxious in the ‘real world’ when it comes to managing money and not getting in debt. Even learning things like the warning signs of abusive relationships to young and impressionable teens as I think if I heard the signs then, I would have know what to look out for to prevent myself from getting in one as an adult.

I remember being in the real world and not knowing how to have good money management and I’m 28 and have no idea how to change a lightbulb. Even education for kids to learn about their bodies, that their outie bellybutton is normal and so are their stretch marks - so they don’t go into adulthood thinking their bodies are imperfect.

Children deserve more than Shakespeare or how to play football in pe. They deserve a kick start to life

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!).

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?

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?

@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.

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.

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.

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.

Blimey op were you orphaned as a baby and bought up by wolves in the forest?
Didn't your parents teach you most of these things?

Well not my job as I’m not the manager. But my point was parents should be teaching their kids this.When I was in sixth girl was 16-18, we were told to phone in sick ourselves instead of parents, to learn a sense of independence. Like it’s not hard is it. Most my friends had jobs at that age and at 17 were driving. So no this is Not the schools problem. I mean if you’re old enough to get a job you can answer a phone. We live in a world where we constantly mollycoddle children.

On another thread, a poster wants people reported to social services, for suggesting to leave a child home alone for a week. When she says child.. it's a 17 year old boy 😂

Some kids have no hope at home.

YouTube is your friend of you've any intellectual curiosity at all. Much better to learn it as you need it rather than "study" it in school.

Anyway, it's a complete waste of time for those who already have support at home. Since time and resources are limited, would you suggest an academic stream for supported pupils and a basic skills stream for others?

Or you could parent … and let schools teach the already overcrowded curriculum

We did, 1970's, was called Practical Living.
Everything from wiring plug, writing cheques, even couple of driving lessons.

Well the people who are good parents might not want the curriculum crammed with unessential items that decent parents should and are doing anyway. I'd be pissed off about this. I want my child to thrive so they can get a good job in the future. I don't want the education system dummed down to the lowest common denominator (which is already starting to happen by the way). Learning isn't always about the content, you are learning how to learn. English versus chemistry are using different parts of your brain, and teaching you different ways to think. Not to mention many if the examples you give are obsolete due to technology, Google, YouTube and the like

We all figure these things out as and when we need to

There are all parental responsibilities. We did have some basic life skills taught when I was at school 10 years ago, e.g., how to write a job application, cooking classes, basics of mechanics. But it was mostly extra curricular stuff that teachers agreed to do in their free time.

At my school a lot of these were covered either directly or indirectly via PSHE, maths, IT and English. A lot of kids simply don't concentrate even if you tell them why they're being taught x/y/z.

Compound interest (for e.g.) is part of the GCSE maths curriculum and during lessons we were told that's how credit cards/debt accrues. I didn't do IT at GCSE but we all were taught basic excel functions. Some kids would moan that they don't like algebra or that what we were building in Excel was a waste of time - be honest OP, were you that type of student?

I do think cooking and nutrition would be a good add since these are skills that aren't necessarily passed down well in families and some families have generations worth of terrible eating habits.

At some point in our adult lives we have to take responsibility for our own deficiencies though - we can't just blame schools or our parents when we have the Internet at our fingertips

Funnily enough, as I read this I remember there was a class in the last year school for the kids that weren't doing all of the exam subjects (or maybe it was an option you could select) which was a life skills type class where they learnt how to write CVs etc. It probably was to prepare them for the real world and for getting a job, unlike the other children who were going on to do more education. I'm probably old, but woodwork, metalwork, cooking, sewing and languages were all classes you took in the first couple of years of school age 13/14/15, which as far as I can tell have now been dropped for more digital technology subjects. So schools definitely are not just doing Shakespeare and keeping up with the times. My little nephew is learnring coding and he's only 13.

Wouldnt it be simpler for the the teachers to annouce next year we will be running a class called 'things we need to teach as parents are too lazy too' parents would be down the school so fast crying how dare they dont they know how hard done by lazy parents are and how the schools need to do everything

It wouldn't suprise me to see someone get caught out by interest only mortgages needing a capital repayment and then turning around and blaming teachers for not covering in school.....

Trouble is that more and more people won't/can't and that cause societal problems such as long term unemployment, crime, etc that everyone else is paying for.

We've had decades of endowment holders claiming compo for claiming they weren't told the risks of endowments! (When most definitely were).

Also lots of "Waspi" women claiming they weren't told about the pension age being raised (when most definitely were).

The big question is whether such people are just completely unaware and lacking in any kind of intelligence to check things out for themselves or keep themselves up to date, or whether they're deliberately trying it on with sad compo faces.

Yes, I agree, IN THEORY with all that. But your child who thrives and gets a good job and lives a fulfilling life through interests etc is paying for the huge numbers of other kids let down by their parents, let down by the education system, who lives a life of unemployment and/or crime, subsidised by taxpayers. That's the point I'm trying to make, that it's a societal problem that so many children aren't leaving school competent to live an adult life. Blaming people is pointless, we should be trying to reduce it happening and dealing with it when it happens.

Schools already cover lots of things mentioned There are only so many hours in a day. I do think it’s rather silly to knock using Bunsen burners etc when we need scientists in the world. Just because most of us never touch one again in our life doesn’t mean they are of no use. I’ve never needed to throw a javelin or workout the circumference of a circle but it’s still important that everyone gets an opportunity to learn.