Poll: Did Your High School or College Teach Basic Life Management Skills?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I graduated from high school in 1975, and Home Ec was required for the girls in junior high, elective in high school. We learned basic cooking and sewing, but I don’t remember any financial component. That we were expected to learn at home. The boys didn’t learn to cook at all. The students in the vocational classes got basic skills info, but those of us in AP and college-prep were expected to be bright enough to learn that stuff on our own, I guess.

My sister is a high school Home Ec. teacher and she teaches all those Life Skills.

22

Home ec was an elective, and since I was in band every year I couldn’t take it.

The only life skill I learned was in the semester I took business math, which turned out to be the most useful class I ever took in high school.

Should high schools teach life skills? Maybe. Geometry certainly never did anything for me and I was required to take it. I can’t picture one person who doesn’t NEED to know how to sew on a button or cook.

Of course it’s the parents’ job to teach life skills. But, just as with sex education, a lot of parents don’t. If we’re gonna teach kids about condoms, surely we should teach 'em to balance a checkbook.

23

Hell yeah, but then, I was lucky enough to go to Antioch.

Located in the middle of fucking nowhere in Ohio. work-study has been mandatory part of the curriculum since 1920. At the time I was there (class of '80), you did a semester’s worth of work in 10 weeks, then had to get out of Dodge and work. Ideally, in your field of interest/major, but not necessarily.
The school worked to help place students, but many would strike out on their own.

How you got there (and the jobs could be anywhere) was your problem.

Where you lived was your problem (although a rudimetary “database” of available/short term rentals was available for particularly popular cities.

How you got to work was your problem, as was feeding yourself, clothing yourself and, well,…everything else.

By the time you graduated, you could be dropped anywhere, any time, and do quite well, thank you. Besides such fundamentals as money management, punctuality, and such, you learned how to think on your feet, read people and situations and most importantly, that you can meet your needs with a little effort and cunning.

As a chemistry major, I:

Did construction in portland OR and Houston, TX.
Was a migrant apple-picker in Washington state
Worked for the Red Cross in Bethesda, Maryland
Research Assistant, Xerox, Webster, NY
Research Assistant, MIT. This is where I was exposed to a then-obscure branch of analytical chemistry in which I’ve spent the last 25 years.
Thanks, Antioch!!!