I think they also don't have school janitors and clean themselves.

I took Home Ec and I loved it!

By the way we keep comparing ourselves to HOMOGENOUS countries when it comes to education.

Asians are all about rote learning from 6 am to midnight. They learn to do well on tests but I'm not 100% convinced they understand the whys of the answers.

Right now my friend was telling me that in China it is culturally approved to cheat. You're supposed to do it.

We cannot do embroidery, or any other thing in American schools that will show objective results - that will totally destroy the self-esteem of the precious darlings who just can't turn it out neatly.

I saw this as a thinly disguised bid for better pay for teachers.

You can't get there from here. When "acting white" will get you scorned or worse, do you really think we are going to compete? Look at our culture and tell me we recognize the problem and are solving it. The top few will do well, but the nation is in trouble.

When my niece (Japanese) was a senior in high school, she showed me her math book. I didn't even recognize the problems, and I've taken math through Differential Equations in college. She wasn't going to an elite private school, just a regular public high school.

I lamented about the American education system to a friend from China who come here to earn a graduate degree.

She said that the American system and the Chinese system were very different, but one was not better than the other. It only appears that Chi a has a better system because subjects like math can be compared across countries and China has a very strong emphasis on math and sciences.

On the other hand, the American educational system is stronger in creativity, language, and deeper thinking skills. Not to mention that the United States educated all of its citizens.

The most valuable class I took in high school was Mechanical drawing. Very much a hands on, follow the process, step by step sort of class.
There is a lot to be said for rote learning to teach basic skills which are the foundation for all future learning.
The process classes teach organizational skills, task planning and attention to detail.

I enjoyed home economics for the one year it was required.
Practical skills classes should not be viewed as time wasters for people on an academic track. When most of the academic classes have been dumbed down to the point of uselessness, art, music, shop, and home economics become more important than ever to exercise different parts of the brain.

You know, from what I remember, once we took home ec and woodshop OUT of our schools, that was the beginning of the end. Once schools stop teaching core home economic and practical skills was when all the urban kids started getting lost in the system. That's when all the bs and thuggery started, and it's just escalated from there. We took home ec and woodshop, autoshop, all that, from 7th grade on through high school. Then I guess those classes were deemed "impractical" but those were the only classes that taught some kids, kids who would otherwise never know, how to take care of themselves.
As my older brother says "what is WRONG with kids today that it's more important for them to have a cell phone than a car?? You can't get laid in the back of a cell phone!"

The best practical class I ever took was typing; it was in eighth grade, but I benefit from it to this day. Home economics was required in junior high, but as I was in the orchestra, I was excused. Looking back, I think the world would have been better off teaching me to sew than enduring my attempt to play a violin!

Is There Value In Bringing Back Home Ec And Woodshop?

No. Next question?

Come to think of it, typing, in seventh or eighth grade, changed my life. I always wrote on the typewriter, even my roughs, and used to make 10 cents per envelope and addressed letter (address and "Dear So and So" typed in) working for my dad. The faster you type, the faster those dimes pile up!

(I type very, very fast!)

I do know we need basic personal finance classes in HS.

We took a tour of my old high school when I went back for my 25th reunion. I found it highly ironic that the rooms that had been for Home-Ec when I attended had been converted to a daycare center.

I'm firmly in the Mike Rowe camp. Not everyone needs or wants to go to college, and ignoring the kids who might want to be a mechanic or pursue another trade is pure malpractice. And I'm pretty sure a journeyman plumber makes significantly more than your average college graduate these days.

When I was in junior high, the boys took Industrial Arts, the girls took Home Economics.

As I remember, the boys had the option to take Home Ec, instead of Industrial Arts. But I don't remember if the girls had the option to take Industrial Arts.

No guy that I knew of ever took Home Ec. I'd never even heard of someone doing this. Basically, if you did, it was a clear message to the other boys, "Please taunt and bully me without restraint or letup for the rest of my natural existence."

In much the same way, boys were given the option to take Girls' Gym class, but the reverse was not true. Woe betide any boy that ever dared take them up on that offer.

"You can't get there from here. When "acting white" will get you scorned or worse, do you really think we are going to compete"

For all you out there that complain about this you do realize white people DO IT TOO right?

I've never been ragged on by blacks or Hispanics for "acting white" but white people? One notable example was my white ex brother in law who told my family and I that we aren't really Hispanic because we are too educated and clean-we are really white.

I've seen a couple of black friends get told by white people they act too white.

I think this is totally spot on. I've always wondered what a high school for the real world would look like and sometimes I dream that if I ever get really rich, I'll start one.

As an adult these are things I think would have been immensely valuable:

*Personal Finance
*Cooking
*Shop Class with an emphasis on basic household maintenance (my parents taught me nothing about this and I'm still totally in the dark)
*Typing
*Basic programming/website maintenance
*Business Writing - focused on how to communicate your POV effectively
*Human Relationships - a practical psychology class how to interact with other people effectively
*Media Literacy - this could probably be incorporated into a history class or something, but understanding how the media manipulates conversations etc is critical these days.

Anyone else got anything they would have liked to have learned or see kids learn today?

I would say, as a complement to your media literacy,
how about a basic law course?

A course that teaches you a citizen's basic rights under the Constitution. This should not be considered a pre-law, just the basic working knowledge of what their rights are, for instance, what the police have the right to do, etc.

I would include history and civics but those are standard.

No guy that I knew of ever took Home Ec. I'd never even heard of someone doing this. Basically, if you did, it was a clear message to the other boys, "Please taunt and bully me without restraint or letup for the rest of my natural existence."

All boys and girls were required to take both shop AND home ec in my middle school. Both classes were super useful.

What was interesting to me is that BOTH genders loved shop (we learned some mechanical drawing software, engraving, woodworking and also basic home repairs).

But the guys actually seemed to enjoy home ec more. On the first day, our teacher explained that any young man caught saying that cooking and cleaning were "a woman's job" would have to spend their lunch hour cleaning up after the entire class. And, yes, during the first day, all the dudes joked around like 14-year-old boys do.

But, once we started cooking, they got super into it -- planning a meal, experimenting the recipe, and then working on the presentation of the food.

Perhaps they simply figured out that whipping up an excellent meal was a good way to impress the girls... and that asking a girl to taste-test the sauce you made was a good way to flirt.

Is There Value In Bringing Back Home Ec And Woodshop?

Yes ... and no.

Parents should be the ones teaching their children about home repairs, budgeting, cooking, etc. The fact that many are not doing so is not a valid reason to add the expense of additional classes, liability insurance, maintenance for kitchens and shops, etc. onto the school system.

However, home economics teach applied math (six teaspoons = ?), social skills, and personal budgeting and finance (macroeconomics); while shop classes teach spatial reasoning skills (inside and outside measurements), problem solving, and applied math (measure twice, cut once). So, they are valid exercises in applying the lessons students learn in other classes.

One won't become a carpenter just by taking a high school wood shop class (one won't become a doctor by taking high school biology), but one might discover an interest in the industrial arts that can be further pursued at a local community college; which could turn one from yet another unskilled layabout whining that he can't find a "good" job into a skilled artisan who pays taxes and potentially, as a business owner, employs others.

I was fortunate that my mother is southern my grandmother is southern and I was raised in the south. I was taught to sew and cook at home! I was taught to balance a check book and how to make a budget from the time I was 5. I had great parents. As much as I enjoyed home ec and my husband enjoyed shop I can understand the American public not wanting to pay for "extras" because some people can not be bothered to raise their children properly. My grandmother calls this "bad breeding". I am beyond grateful I was taught home management skills! My daughter who is 5 is learning now about saving money and cooking basics. We are sewing and crafting for her new baby brothers room and the Living room. All of these are practical skills (especially if you dont make a lot of money to be able to just purchase everything premade)

the problem is... you can't compare the US to pretty much anywhere else, because of the astounding diversity.

We are nothing like Japan in temperament or goals... so while it is instructive to look at other systems, just to see what's going on... the direct comparison is impossible.

Would it be good to teach lifeskills? Yes. The problem is that everything is seen as a zero-sum game... time put toward lifeskills MUST be time taken away from reading or somesuch. IT is THIS IDEA that is a broken part of the system...

Education is seen as a bottle of water, rather than a river to be consumed.

The fallout of this is that we have to act as if EVERYONE is college prep material, and we have to push everyone in that direction.
That is why "non-essentials" are cut back so that no-one "loses focus".

Additionally you can't teach the very people who might use these lifeskills, but never go on to college, because SOMEHOW that might demean them, or appear as if the teacher feels that they are lesser or incapable.

Because that's the overriding POV in the educations system, they vastly underserve some groups in school, while being able to say that they treat everyone equally.

The idea that everyone SHOULD go to college is a crock, and believing it is what causes us to devalue the Journeyman Plumber or the seamstress, who are both highly skilled, and insist that the only way to do well is to have college.

Interestingly, in both Europe and Asia, there are various vocational programs designed to get you skills that can make you a productive citizen, if full college isn't for you.

huh, maybe there is something we could learn.

Ahh, my favorite soapbox! My pet idea for the improvement of the USA is a course called Practical Life, and it teaches needed skills from K through 12. About 3 hours a week should cover it.
We start with blowing noses, wiping butts, washing hands in Kindergarten. Progress through fixing buttons, zippers and seams, dressing for weather, map reading, how to research anything, follow written instructions (Ikea class), practical geometry and measuring, how to figure %s in your head, count change, fill out applications, answer intrusive questions, say NO, recognize propaganda, do laundry, learn 2 recipes/year, how to explain things, clean things and recycle things, tell a joke, first aid, handling injured people and animals, the 4 directions, basic comparative religion, budgeting, laws, etc, etc, etc.
I have notebooks filled with topics suggested by parents, teachers and kids of the things they need to know to be self-sufficient. They are small things but knowing them makes a competent Human. If the 18-25 group has some general knowledge and life skills, things might go better for us all.

@SwissArmyD: "The idea that everyone SHOULD go to college is a crock, and believing it is what causes us to devalue the Journeyman Plumber or the seamstress, who are both highly skilled, and insist that the only way to do well is to have college."

Amen to that! And it's even worse, I think. Because if you're telling everybody they have to go to college, and people who have no aptitude for it sign up for classes, you either flunk a lot of people out, or you have to create programs they can pass, or maybe both. There's probably some way to measure this.

And people still wind up missing chances to get into the skilled trades.

Filling out a worksheet and getting a good score does not usually produce the same level of pride or sense of accomplishment as actually MAKING something.

I took woodshop in middle school twice. I LOVED it. Mind, I still have only rudimentary skills, but one of the two lathe lamps I made is in my daughter's bedroom (I saved $15 for a new lamp!).

I also took sewing in summer school. I know enough to know I shouldn't sew most things, but I can get a patch onto a scout shirt or mend a seam.

I also got great grades. Having something there and done is much more fulfilling than a pile of papers you don't really care about!

Also, the number of kids I had to teach to do things like:

boil water (to make pasta)
use the washing machine (it had 3-step instructions)

and similar at college was ridiculous. This was a well-ranked private school!

Since I know school won't teach it, I am making sure my kids know how to do laundry, cook a few things (okay, once they are older and can see the top of the stove), etc. I am also learning how to knit because, gosh darn it, I thought it would be good to show the kids that you can make things, not just buy them from a store!

As for finance... schools absolutely SHOULD teach that. It could easily be part of math or a tie-in to social studies.

We still have it in Canada.

The problem is the curriculum, and the people who teach it.

My son is in shop class, working on 25 year old technology. The teacher sees no problem with this.

Of course, this is also a school that assigned a color wheel in grade 7.

Remember - your mechanic probably next more money than you do.

At my middle school, everyone had to take both home ec and shop classes where all those things were covered.

Cooking/baking, meal planning, nutrition, simple sewing. Woodworking, drafting, leatherworking...

I think we even had a business class where we learned simple accounting, some typing and how to balance a checkbook.

Are the schools not teaching this anymore? And if not, are the parents?

Grr. "Next" = "makes".

Remember - your mechanic probably [makes] more money than you do.

When I was younger, I used to live in a small apartment building on a quiet street. There was a large house at the end of the street with a driveway/garage area enclosed by a brick wall, with a large wooden gate for egress. The house was much larger than the others on the street.

When the driveway gate was open you could see the driveway and the garage. The driveway always had two or three Porsches parked in it.

When friends visited, they speculated that the owner of the house must be a banker or an attorney or a doctor. It surprised most of them when I told them the guy who owned the house was a Porsche mechanic.

There is a huge shift going on in education. Do you teach things the tried and true way? Do you teach things the old way? Do you try to teach both ways?

For instance, most people and schools use the standard qwerty keyboard, one that was designed to slow down typing so that the keys don't jam.

Other keyboard layouts like Dvorak keyboard are laid out in a way that is faster to learn, leads to fewer mistakes, is less fatiguing, and leads to fewer repetitive use injuries.

How to you change the technology? Would students have to carry their own keyboard if they went to work for a company that was using the old model? Do you teach students both? Do you teach students things that you don't feel comfortable using?

I remember going to school more than 40 years ago and bring told that I can forget about standard measurements because the whole world was going metric. Our school stopped teaching standard measurement, yet here we are teaching standard measurement and still debating the whole issue.

Do you teach towards the "new brain" that needs constant stimulation and allow students to use the internet to solve test problems? After all, most people now use technology at work and are not penalized as long as they work quickly and accurately.

Or do you fight the short attention span and aim for deep thinkers who ponder and contemplate and thus eschew distracting electronics.

Do you attempt to find balance?

Do you teach towards the "new brain" that needs constant stimulation and allow students to use the internet to solve test problems? After all, most people now use technology at work and are not penalized as long as they work quickly and accurately.

Or do you fight the short attention span and aim for deep thinkers who ponder and contemplate and thus eschew distracting electronics.

Do you attempt to find balance?

Posted by: Jen at October 1, 2013 2:49 PM

I have found that children need to learn two things in school. basic skills, or the tools to unlock self motivated learning, such as reading, writing, maths. The second thing they need to learn is the process of taking basic literacy and numeracy, and applying it to learning other concrete skills, and after that advanced skills with elements of critical thinking.

Since American schools for the most part, are failing at the task of the basic skills education, How you decide what skills you need after that are down the road, and best determined by the student themselves, rather than the educational bureaucracy.

I would venture to guess, that for keyboarding, teaching the standard keyboard provides a good basis for learning other keyboards, including those in other languages, some of which are not going to even use the Latin alphabet.

By any means, you have to know the English alphabet and how to read before you can be an effective keyboarder, because if you are not editing and making judgments about what you are typing, you can easily be replaced by an optical character reader......

Same for calculators. If you don't "know" arithmetic, and math, you get garbage in and garbage out. A calculator doesn't "solve" problems. It takes a little of the drudgery out of doing calculations by hand, but set up the equation wrong, and the calculator does nothing, except obscure where you made the mistake.
This is why you don't hand third graders a calculator and tell them to rush right off to MIT. It is a tool, and nothing more.

"No guy that I knew of ever took Home Ec. I'd never even heard of someone doing this. Basically, if you did, it was a clear message to the other boys, 'Please taunt and bully me without restraint or letup for the rest of my natural existence.' "

Or, it could be an opportunity to be a guy surrounded by thirty girls baking cookies and cakes and pies.

Whoever wants to call that guy a pantywaist can be sure he's probably had his hand in one ahead of them.

I'm not convinced American schools ARE failing. First, we need to determine our criteria for failure. Are we using test scores, graduation rates, or something else?

I found this assessment interesting.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/american-education-not-catastrophic-decline

I also found the first comment spot on:

"I've always taken "educational failure" to be code for "our schools aren't turning out enough kids that vote like me." Which works both sides of the fence quite nicely.

But I'm cynical like that."

On another note, it's easy to compare our system to the systems in other countries and find ourselves lacking, but we might have different opinions if we lived in those countries. I have a friend who lives in Japan with his wife and 2 kids. When the kids are old enough to go to school, he intends to move back to the states, because he believes the educational system is better here.

They conduct tests where the questions are exactly the same. Meaning no dumbed down questions in a country that has worse education in a subject.

Some of the tests include English and we are not always beating countries where English is a second language.

We need classes like Home Ec. so students learn how to cook more than whatever they can find in the frozen food isle, I know people who have to dust off their stoves because they never cook, ever, and simply don't know how. Finances are the same, the amount of people who can't even balance a checkbook, let alone make a budget, is just pathetic. But hey, we can't bring up such reasons why people are poor, frozen $10 dinners every night and no budget are the norm, it is the Gov. fault for not giving enough handouts.

On another note, it's easy to compare our system to the systems in other countries and find ourselves lacking, but we might have different opinions if we lived in those countries. I have a friend who lives in Japan with his wife and 2 kids. When the kids are old enough to go to school, he intends to move back to the states, because he believes the educational system is better here.

Posted by: MonicaP at October 1, 2013 6:20 PM

The SAT has been renormed at least five times in the last thirty years to hide the decline in basic math and verbal skills.
The American school system has failed badly at both preparing the students they have to do college work, and directing those who cant into a reasonable vocational alternative.

Remedial courses in College have skyrocketed. If you dont define that as a generalized failure, what the heck would you define as success?

Forget the comparison to other countries. It is the American students of the 1950's that current graduates fail to measure up to.

Remedial courses in College have skyrocketed. If you dont define that as a generalized failure, what the heck would you define define as success?

That might very well be a product of having more kids in college overall. In 1950, if you were poorly suited to college, you were guided toward career paths that didn't require higher education. Now, everyone is guided toward college, whether they should be or not. Of course students are going to look dumber. In 1950, kids who couldn't hack it academically didn't stay in school, so their test scores weren't counted, and they didn't need remedial classes.

Way back when (80's) we had a home ec course for a year that was like a semester of sewing and then a semester of cooking/baking. It was like two or three days out of a six cycle.

The sewing one sort of sucked because I had already learned at home. The cooking one was great because we were grouped in teams of four, and all the potheads in my group would skip it. So I got everything I baked or cooked. I gained weight that semester and still like the recipes I have from back then.

The next year you did an electronics, drafting, and woodworking (split over a school year). Both sexes.

But the overall value of it was well worth it.
========================================

On another note, it's easy to compare our system to the systems in other countries and find ourselves lacking, but we might have different opinions if we lived in those countries. -- MonicaP at October 1, 2013 6:20 PM

So very true. If you look at Europe, many countries have an eighth or ninth grade considered final. Asian countries do the same thing.

That's like comparing U.S. infant mortality to other countries. In many Asian countries you aren't an infant mortality until somewhere around nine months.

@monica. If the American public schools are graduating people who lack basic literacy, as opposed to forcing them to drop out before wasting even more taxpayer money, so they can enter a vocation, they are failing.

Most countries cant afford to waste so many resources on those who wont gain the skills to go to college. This is why in Germany for example, compulsory education ends at about 14.

I see the current US system both as a failure, and a substantial decline over how the education system functioned in the 1950's.

The kids aren't there to amass gold stars for perfect attendance, or as a necessary product for teachers to make money off of. If they graduate without skills, that diploma is worthless, regardless of the political spin the educrats want to put on their performance.

We don't need remedial courses in college. We need high schools to stop awarding diplomas to people who have not earned them. If this means, a standardized exam such as the GED to get a diploma, that would be an excellent start.

Then our graduation rates will actually mean something, as they do in Great Britain with their testing system.

On the other hand, the American educational system is stronger in creativity, language, and deeper thinking skills. Not to mention that the United States educated all of its citizens.

So how come americans do not do well in all those areas? American language is the least polished across the world. "American creativity" - take movies, tv shows etc which are the benchmark of creativity for americans - are the lowest when it comes to quality across the world. And inventions - yes america used to have some of the really good inventions, but real good stuff(solar pv, wind energy, electric cars, etc etc) still seems to come from Europe rather than anywhere else. Americans seem good at running businesses more than anyone else, but that is about it. And even those are probably started by first generation immigrants more than anything else.

United states educated all its citizens - then why does united states have entire generations of citizens who live their entire life on welfare rather than do some real work?

"No guy that I knew of ever took Home Ec. I'd never even heard of someone doing this. Basically, if you did, it was a clear message to the other boys, 'Please taunt and bully me without restraint or letup for the rest of my natural existence'."

When I was in the seventh grade, boys were required to take a course called "Bachelor Living". It was essentially low-level home ec. Very basic cooking -- boil water, cook pasta, stir fry, make a few soups, make hamburgers. Basic laundry sorting (whites in hot, colors in warm). Basic clothing repairs -- fix hems and sew buttons back on. That kind of thing.