Should Life Skills Be Taught in School?

plinkyplonk changing a plug has been on the GCSE syllabus forever, so everyone is taught that.

gothvixen That was an example.I was trying to state that the simple things are things that the younger generation don't know about.

gothvixen I definitely wasn't taught that - would have come in handy lol

jms19 then obviously you've never taught in schools, because the syllabi change regularly to account for developments across the whole range of subjects.

gothvixen a bit of a passive aggressive comment, not sure it was warranted.

I just meant more practical things could be taught in place of certain things that most people don’t use.

jms19 you don't become educated just to learn things you will use in your future. If that were true, some people would learn little more than how to switch TV channels and use a mobile phone. The population needs to be offered the opportunity to learn about a range of subjects, just to be well-informed and have basic reasoning skills. It also needs to be a solid foundation for those who will further their education and follow career paths that require specialist knowledge and intelligence. Education make for a well-rounded person, and life skill are the responsibility of parents, not teachers who really do have better things to do. Call me passive aggressive if you like, but I'm more than that, I'm angry that those without a clue think teachers should take on the responsibilities of those who breed without the ability to bring up their children to be adults capable of functioning in society. Comment about topics of which you have knowledge, when you're clueless it's best to keep quiet rather than letting people become aware of your ignorance.

gothvixen i mean I’m not gonna get into an argument and make generalised statements about people i know nothing about.

Enjoy your day.

Midnightflower I agree. Teachers have enough to do, and as a parent I will be showing my son life skills when he is old enough, and teaching him to cook, change a light bulb things like that x

Midnightflower Not every child has a safe/stable home life so for that reason I feel like we should maybe add a little more into the curriculum. I used to have home economics class and that would be a good one to add life skills in. I think Gardening should be taught more, my daughters school have a small allotment and it's so valuable.

SamGoodship it would be amazing if we could provide every child with what they need, but I think realistically teachers are already dealing with so much and they are leaving on mass, that it's just not possible. My son has had 3 new teachers this year and his head teacher taught the class for a while. The education system is broken as is so many other things.

Nadiaparveen life skills should be taught by parents. End of. If you can't bring up a child to be an adult able to function in society, you shouldn't be having children.

gothvixen maybe some of us didn't have that at home .. or missed a parent to tell them this stuff

PhilipMarc I have a similar one in which I collect £2 coins. No, I am not wealthy lol as I find they are far and few between so shall probably have no more than you by end of the year.

I don't think it takes much for this lesson to be added into other finance type lessons or even in maths. I.e. Kids are asked to list every bill paid out by a household plus miscellaneous, food, clothes etc and balance against wages coming in.

Lynibis It's just good to have money diversified.

People in the big cities tend to rely on cards now, but they definitely should have cash and coins around whether to pay or to tip someone if they'd want.

I have Bitcoin worth £250 though I don't really recommend that to anyone (not counting the device which is stored in that cost me £50 so... £300 in total), instead, gold and silver are better investments especially to have in physical format.

hspexy Is there any home or life skills you feel are missing from kids education?

SamGoodship I’d say cooking skills are definitely lacking. I recall making simple things like pancakes and French bread pizza in school - neither required much skill and felt like a waste of time, particularly when you can learn to do a lot of the simple things on YouTube. They should’ve taught us more about ingredients in food, and i suppose the chemistry of food. Learning about healthy and balanced meals would be beneficial

williamslf58 I agree with you 100%. On the back of all utility bills is instructions on how to pay and where.

gothvixen "Tom Holland is no expert and his opinion on this is completely irrelevant"

This closed minded thinking is exactly what is wrong with some teachers. Because he's not a so called expert his opinion is worthless to you as it differs from your own. Many teachers know nothing other than education going from school to college to uni and back into school.

Tom has been through the school system more recently than you, and is giving is opinion what he thinks could be improved and others will agree.

The education system could do with a huge shake up in my humble opinion, resources and time could be better directed, basic financial education required by everyone like understanding taxes and pensions would be way more useful to the majority of people, realistically most people will never use half the stuff required for GCSE maths exams. But everyone would benefit from learning about bills, taxes, mortgages.

Thats just one example. It would be a huge shake up to undertake these kind of changes and I suspect that's why it isn't implemented.

ILOVEFANTA education isn't about life skills THAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT BY PARENTS. Everything you learn isn't supposed to be relevant to your future life. Education is about broadening your mind, using different parts of your brain for different skills and creating a population that has a decent general knowledge. If you had your way our already devalued qualifications would be utterly worthles, because academic standards would be so low. UK degrees used to be respected, but in order to lower youth unemployment, teens were encouraged to pay for degrees with very low entry requirements, so now every old FE college is a university and people who wouldn't have been able to pass O-levels are saddled with debt because they have these worthless 2:1s. It's a joke, there's no intellectual rigour and people have been conned . Your ideas aren't implemented because you don't understand the purpose of education. You don't know me, or my career path, and I bet you don't know many teachers. You have a chip on your shoulder and no facts upon which to base your comments. Maybe you're one of the people who has neither the knowledge nor intelligence to bring up children properly, but everything needed to be a functioning adult can't be passed on to schools. Tom Holland's opinion is different to mine, because Tom Holland has no idea of the huge workload that teachers have to deal with, and doesn't appreciate anything about teh insult it is to tell people who are subject specialists to start telling children they will need to pay water rates. PARENTS need to step up, not schools. The problem with non-teachers is that many of them are bitter they weren't clever enough to do well and master subjects themselves.

gothvixen

I personally think life skills should be taught in schools and they would be useful for everyone.

Yes parents do need to step and teach their children life skills as well but there would be no harm in ensuring the entire population are aware of the same set of basic skills needed in life no matter what career path you take. You'd been surprised how even the most intelligent people sometimes lack what many call common sense.

I do understand the importance of education. You've gone off on a tangent and ranting about the higher education system, that isn't what this discussion was about, it's about life skills been taught in schools. But it would be possible to shake up the higher education system too.

Don't assume people who don't teach aren't clever enough to master subjects themselves. I'd probably argue that those that did master the subjects are applying them in much more qualified and higher paid roles than teachers.

Yes teachers are under enormous pressure I have some very close friends who are teaching and I hear their struggles and what's it's like first hand. Teachers have huge workloads but so do many other people in other roles.

I don't have a chip on my shoulder at all but think maybe you do as I'm not sure why your offended and think teaching pupils about water bills is beneath you.

SaveMeSunday BY PARENTS.

MrsCraig That's great! I wasn't taught anything along those lines