# Essential skills our children won't need. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 25, 2011, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706 "2011-10-25T03:06:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Trom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Trom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trom)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/61 "2011-10-25T18:59:36Z")
> [@Soylent\_Juicy](#): > > Manually filling out a credit card slip. (Remember that machine with carbon slips that rolled across your card?) Many taxi cabs in Chicago still have these. The fact that most cabbies don’t like to take cards might explain why they haven’t modernized. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/62 "2011-10-25T19:01:59Z")
> [@Trom](#): > > Many taxi cabs in Chicago still have these. The fact that most cabbies don’t like to take cards might explain why they haven’t modernized. Or the fact that they haven’t modernized might explain why most cabbies don’t like to take cards. ---
**Author:** ![Cryptic\_C62](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cryptic\_C62](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cryptic_C62)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/63 "2011-10-25T19:08:51Z")
> [@Marconi\_N.Cheese](#): > > Tying your shoes. Err… what? Last I checked, my shoelaces are still shoelaces. ---
**Author:** ![Trom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Trom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trom)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/64 "2011-10-25T19:18:13Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Or the fact that they haven’t modernized might explain why most cabbies don’t like to take cards. Perhaps. I was always under the impression that having a paper trail meant the cab company got an accurate picture of how much the cab made in tips (and then has to report to the cab company and/or IRS). Also, they have to pay the credit card processing fee that isn’t included in the fare. ---
**Author:** ![Soylent\_Juicy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Soylent\_Juicy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soylent_Juicy)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/65 "2011-10-25T19:36:48Z")
> [@](#): > > Quote: > Originally Posted by Marconi N. Cheese > Tying your shoes. > [@Cryptic\_C62](#): > > Err… what? Last I checked, my shoelaces are still shoelaces. …because little kids these days aren’t allowed to go to school with shoelace-shoes, they’re required to have Velcro. Something about the teachers not having time to tie everyone’s shoes. (\<---- I lived with a single dad for a short time, this was the policy at his son’s school.) ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/66 "2011-10-25T19:38:46Z")
Organizing their CDs alphabetically or chronologically. Marking their place in a book by dog-earing a page. Sharing the Sunday paper. Using a skate key. Filling a fountain pen. Defrosting a refrigerator. Replacing a turntable stylus or needle. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/67 "2011-10-25T19:41:24Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > It’s because Dopers are all old. Very, very old. Like…50. Their kids set the SDMB as their homepage, and now they can’t figure out how to leave to “get on the Google”. Hey! I resemble that remark! I, for one, hope cursive writing doesn’t die out. Did you never need to write out a hand-written note of condolence or congratulations, or add meaningful words to a birthday card? Do you want it to be legible? Or do you expect to print? Maybe you’ll type something on your word processor, print it out, and stick it on? :eek: I will add one thing that I don’t miss at all: those inter-office mail envelopes, with successive names/departments crossed out and the next slot filled in as they got used and re-used, and fell apart. But there was no particular skill in using those, except perhaps in reading the directions so that you tucked the flap in instead of taping it shut. Roddy ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/68 "2011-10-25T19:58:19Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > I remember those too. They were a vast improvement over the cubes. Magi-cubes were even better. They triggered by a piece of wire releasing under tension and striking the other piece of wire at the bottom of the bulb. You didn’t need batteries or the like - you could set them off with a pencil. They were expensive, but my father own a chain of Fotomats (look it up), so I swiped them all the time. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/69 "2011-10-25T20:08:49Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > That’s true, but I seem to remember a thread in which a lot of people mentioned friends that couldn’t read them. It was pretty recent, I think. But the thread is about skills kids won’t _need_. The kid may not have known how to read one of the clocks, but he must have needed the skill or it wouldn’t have come up. There are lots of skills I, individually, have needed that I didn’t have at the time, but I don’t think that fits the bill. > [@Ludovic](#): > > Or the fact that they haven’t modernized might explain why most cabbies don’t like to take cards. I asked about this once, as the cabbie just happened to be bitching about it to me. He said it’s because the cab company added the machines “for the convenience”, but they charge the cabbie a fee to use it. So they often refuse cards because it’s literally money out of their pocket. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/70 "2011-10-25T20:16:21Z")
> [@YoSaffBridge](#): > > Using a typewriter. The feel of cranking the paper onto the roller, using the return lever, making sure you left room at the bottom of the page for footnotes, using White-Out on mistakes. It all seems so prehistoric compared to word processing programs used now. A friend’s 14 year old daughter was watching me typing and remarked “That’s so cool. You can actually see what you’re printing.” Touch typing, period, with those itty bitty keyboards they use now. Telling time on an analogue clock. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/71 "2011-10-25T20:23:29Z")
rolling down a car window. running to the bank desperately on Friday afternoon (the only day that the bank was open after you got off work), hoping you wouldn’t have to cancel your plans for the weekend because you didnt have enough cash in your wallet. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/72 "2011-10-25T20:24:27Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Organising your evening around the TV schedule. Or looking through the TV guide (name brand or the one in the newspaper) to see what was on that week, THEN organizing your evenings around that. Also having to choose between two programs you liked, because they both came on at the same time, and you wouldn’t see them in re-runs for something like 6 months, or in syndication for years. For another one- I suspect my son will never have to learn how to manually keep a check register and balance it vs. the printed statements every month, like people used to up until about the mid-late 1990s, when call-in account info became available, and shortly after that, it became available on the web. ---
**Author:** ![Canadjun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@Canadjun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Canadjun)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/73 "2011-10-25T20:35:55Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > \*Calling a number for the weather and time. I phone up the weather recording all the time and will probably continue to do so until either my watch shows me the forecast or they get rid of the service. I like finding out the weather when I am getting dressed in the morning and my cordless phone is quicker to get to than my computer. ---
**Author:** ![mkecane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@mkecane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mkecane)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/74 "2011-10-25T21:08:56Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > \*Making up nonsensical words because you have no idea what the lyrics are - “Don’t be a bustle in your head, you know, don’t be a long now. It’s just a sprinkling for the May queen.” That looks accurate to me. 😛 But you think technology will make me stop _that_? Think again! ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/75 "2011-10-25T21:18:14Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Also having to choose between two programs you liked, because they both came on at the same time, and you wouldn’t see them in re-runs for something like 6 months, or in syndication for years. Or programming a VCR to record one show, while you watch the over-the-air broadcast of another on your TV. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/76 "2011-10-25T22:19:59Z")
> [@chiroptera](#): > > Read a map. > Write cursive. Reading, period. Writing, period. Arithmetic. Using a slide-rule, even. Thinking. > [@Trom](#): > > I’m in my mid 20’s, and half of the things people have listed _I_ didn’t need growing up. Ah, Trom, the stories our grandmothers told, of growing up in the Old Country shtetls. My grandmother’s childhood chores in the little town of Perushkov, tending the family geese. Mother (that is, my great-grandmother) chose one for dinner, Father (my great-grandfather) slaughtered it, then they cleaned and plucked it. You young’uns just don’t learn those skill, do you? > [@Yllaria](#): > > White-Out? Luxury! > > Does anyone remember the old, pencil-shaped, peel-back typerwriter erasers with the little crumb broom on the end? We had lessons on using those and had to pass a test. You had to remove the ink without tearing the paper, which was hard to do because the erasers had to be hard and abrasive to remove typerwriter ink. You had to keep the crumbs from dropping into the typewriter. And you had to be careful not to shift the paper on the carriage or the typed line wouldn’t line back up for the correcting strike. > > Oh, and if you were using carbon paper, you had to carefully do each copy without getting carbon on you or sliding the copy pages out of alignment. Those erasers came in the peel-off paper kind and the wooden kind, as well as the circular ones. I think I still have one of those old wooden erasers laying around. And you had to put a piece of scrap paper behind the carbon paper before you erased the page in front. And using a typewriter to cut ditto stencils! ---
**Author:** ![Bosstrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Bosstrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstrain)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/77 "2011-10-25T22:43:15Z")
Math…I may have missed it but I didn’t see anyone mention math. I knew when I was 5 that I wouldn’t need it, the damn calculater’s right there, google even has it’s own. ---
**Author:** ![pullin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@pullin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pullin)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/78 "2011-10-25T22:54:47Z")
> [@randomface](#): > > A lot of people use small “jet” cigar lighters to light campfires. I did the last time I needed to. On a semi-related note, where can you buy strike anywhere matches? I’m really lazy. I taught my kids to use a small bag of match-light charcoal. Let it burn for 15 minutes and then throw all the logs on top. Works like a charm. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/79 "2011-10-25T23:41:51Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Hey! I resemble that remark! > > I, for one, hope cursive writing doesn’t die out. Did you never need to write out a hand-written note of condolence or congratulations, or add meaningful words to a birthday card? Do you want it to be legible? Or do you expect to print? Maybe you’ll type something on your word processor, print it out, and stick it on? :eek: I was starting to think it was just me. I will probably be handwriting not only birthday cards and notes, but lists ,telephone messages, etc forever. In cursive- it’s much faster than printing for me And although I know the email system where I work has some sort of template that opens up an old-fashioned “while you were out” note to send phone messages through email, I also know the person who sent me one hand-wrote the information while she was on the phone with the caller and then filled in the template- It would have been faster and easier to leave the handwritten note on my desk. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2011, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706/80 "2011-10-26T00:48:57Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > …I will probably be handwriting not only birthday cards and notes, but lists ,telephone messages, etc forever. In cursive- it’s much faster than printing for me… You can continue to send birthday cards out in cursive, but if your recipients are younger than 16, I bet they can’t read it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/essential-skills-our-children-wont-need/600706.md?page=5)