My daughter is going into Jr. High next year. I can't believe it. She is going to be in 7th grade. She brought home all the stuff about her "electives" and had to have me sign off on her choices for a foreign language and her Science and Math electives. I'm still a little fuzzy on how Science and Math are electives, or how classes that are "elective" could have anything to do with Science and Math, but what do I know!!?? When I went to Jr. High you chose a foreign language and the other elective track was either sewing/home ec. or shop/drafting. All the girls took sewing and all the boys took shop. I don't even know why they gave us a choice since that was always the way it went. The only girl I ever knew that took shop was this HUGE girl named Beth. No one even batted an eye when she signed up for shop because we all thought she was a guy anyway...like her family was in the witness protection program and this was really a boy pretending to be a girl but doing a crappy job of it. In any case, the shop teacher was so shitty to Beth from day one that in a couple of weeks she switched to the sewing/home ec. track. I think she failed.
Anyway, I guess they don't offer shop or home ec. anymore. The new electives are things like "Forensic Science" and "Global Warming Trends" and "Personal Finance". Isn't that weird? Brenna's idea of personal finance is my wallet. I think it will come as a big shock to her that someday she will actually have to earn money. I imagine that it will take the first 6 weeks of that class for the kids to realize that their parents actually still have to PAY for the things they put on credit cards. As far as global warming trends go, they probably will watch Al Gore's fabulous Academy Award winning documentary....ooops. Sorry. I fell asleep. Al Gore is so personality-void and dull that I nodded off just typing his name. I bet that documentary is fascinating, as long as he doesn't appear in it.
Anyway, I guess they don't offer shop or home ec. anymore. The new electives are things like "Forensic Science" and "Global Warming Trends" and "Personal Finance". Isn't that weird? Brenna's idea of personal finance is my wallet. I think it will come as a big shock to her that someday she will actually have to earn money. I imagine that it will take the first 6 weeks of that class for the kids to realize that their parents actually still have to PAY for the things they put on credit cards. As far as global warming trends go, they probably will watch Al Gore's fabulous Academy Award winning documentary....ooops. Sorry. I fell asleep. Al Gore is so personality-void and dull that I nodded off just typing his name. I bet that documentary is fascinating, as long as he doesn't appear in it.
Brenna picked German for her foreign language. I don't know why. She came home with her sheet for me to sign and I saw that she circled German for her language. I asked her, "Why German? You had 2 years of Spanish in 1st and 2nd grade and French in 3rd and 4th grade. Why not continue with one of those?" She said, "I don't know. I just thought it sounded like fun." Whatever. I could care less. But you know who was pissed off over her choice? My ex-husband! I called him about something completely unrelated to her language choice and he brought it up. He asked me, "Why is she taking German?" I said, "She thought it sounded like fun." He said, "Well, I know it's part of her heritage because I'm part German, but in high school I am going to have to put my foot down and insist that she take Spanish."
Please.
So, Brenna will be taking German for the next 6 years, needless to say.
My big question is---what ever happened to home ec. and shop classes? I personally thought that sewing was a big waste of time, and I'm sure that drafting was pretty lame too. But I think all kids should still have to take home ec. and shop. In home ec. we learned how to make cinnamon rolls and how to read a recipe. We learned how to grocery shop and measure wet and dry ingredients. Most kids will never learn this stuff at home. Once they get to college and move out of the dorms (where meals are provided) they are all going to live on Rice Krispie treats and Skittles because none of them will be able to cook a damn thing. And I think every kid needs to know how to make bookshelves (which is what the boys did in shop class). The way things are in school now we are going to end up with a generation of really smart but helpless adults. When I was a kid we learned how to write a proper thank you note in school. Brenna can't even write her name in cursive properly because they don't have time for handwriting practice in class. They are too busy preparing for their stupid 2 week long National Test of Basic Skills (thank you George Bush and No Child Left Behind). Her teacher is encouraging the class to read Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope which I think is great, but they are 6th graders and most of them haven't even read some real classic books, like Black Beauty or Swiss Family Robinson!
In any case, it is nice for our kids to have so many educational choices. And since my daughter is wicked smart and in the gifted program she will have more choices than most. But because of all the educational pressure to do well she will have very little time to learn how to live on her own. I hate to pull her away from her hours and hours of homework to teach her how to run the washing machine or make Alfredo sauce. Not because I don't think she needs to know that, but because she really does have hours and hours of homework and when she isn't doing homework she needs to PLAY!! That's why I think they ought to teach the kids (all the kids, not just the girls because I am going to teach my daughter that men should do their own damn laundry) how to separate lights from darks and how to make a pork roast (well, except the Jewish kids. How stringent are those pork rules now, Alan?) and they should call this class Real Life Skills. And it would not be an elective.
8 comments:
Wow...I wish Chemistry would have been an elective when I was in High School. If it hadn't been for Judy Tharp and Amy what's-her-face taking pity on me, I never would have passed.
I agree completely, kids aren't learning life skills, although it sounds like at least a few of the electives are leaning that way. Personal finance sounds like a great idea.
In my Jr. High, both the boys and the girls had to take both Home Ec and Shop. It was awesome. Nothing says fun like watching some jock try and make pancakes and sew on a button.
My pan cakes rocked.
My buttons all fell off.
I am totally with you on the men and laundry thing. Nikolas is doomed.
I took Home Ec too. It never occured to me to try to take shop - it was very segregated in our school too. Home Ec was useful in retrospect but at the time I had been trying to get into second year calculus and my advisor had flat out refused and told me to take Home Ec instead. I was pissed and damned if I would be forced into a "traditional female role" etc etc. So I managed to gloriously fail Home Ec.. And typing. Both of which came back to bite me hard later. I still burn almost everything I cook - I think I have some issues there.
Fortunately, Kamran went to cooking school. (he won a month of it in a contest at a movie theater - how random is THAT?!) So at least one person in the house can make a pie crust and a decent meal. By the way - Kam omitted that piece of his history for EIGHT years and one day, as I was mangling a set of pie crusts, he casually mentioned it.
Did we really learn life skills? I am occasionally surprised that I ever managed to pay my rent or bills on my own. It was definately touch and go at first!
I do wish they would teach penmanship though. They gave that up in school before our time. It really irritates me how badly my students write.
Most of Us (Gods Chosen People) tend to look the otherway on bacon, but draw the line on any other pork products. I mean, really, doesn't bacon make EVERYTHING better? Try and name a dish that bacon doesn't improve. Thought so.
I'm thinking a banana split would be a touch nasty with bacon, but I could be wrong.
Try crumbled bacon, let me know how it goes.
I took both cooking and woodworking in junior high and learned how to make pancakes and some kind of candleholder thing. I avoided anything remotely home-ec in high school 'cause I was going to college and was not going to need to know any of that stuff. Ha. Wished I learned how to sew.
But, why do the schools have to teach it all? I put my foot down a year or two ago ... both my daughters and my husband do their own laundry. We need to quit treating our kids like little princes and princesses and instead expect them to be contributing members of the family.
Hey - I'll help Brenna with her German. After all, it is the language of intellectuals (except for Latin which is dead). Never set foot in home ec. Not once. Took drafting and any course that had hot guys.
I have an 8th grader and last year when she wanted to join the cooking club I thought it was a good ide for the very reasons you state. Its not available in school anymore. She is also gifted and has piles of homework which is ridiculous, she didnt become gifted by pushing papers, why do they think this will reinforce her gifted ness? Its not.
Anyway, they dont teach typing by the way anymore either, just a little quarter of "keyboarding" and its not even a full quarter. So although all these kids fly around the keyboard...they are all looking at the keys and using the wrong fingers!!! The two things you were not supposed to do!!! LOL
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