I've just read that schools will be giving compulsary cooking lessons for teenagers, to encourage them to eat healthier.
What happened to our education system?
Cooking WAS compulsary when I was educated, and the family always looked forward to what my sister bought home on a Thursday night.
The problem is, we've had successive Governments and Liberal do gooders toying with the system over the years!
They abolished the times table up to 12x12 parrot fashion, because it was deemed to be demeaning. Maybe, maybe not, but I don't need a calculator to work out the simplest of sums like the kids of today have to!
All they are doing, is slowly going back to the way things were in the 50's and
60's!
So the lesson is, 'if it ain't bloody broken, don't try to fix it!'
If they'd left well enough alone, our kids would be so much better off for it now!
We all learn from our mistakes, so please learn yours Gordon, and the rest of your ministerial prats too!
Life here in the UK should be so much better!
Your numerate Worm....................
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I remember trying to help my child with math here in American system, and realized they weren't requiring rote memorization of the multiplication tables at school. How foolish! Yet, here they had timed tests to see how fast they could come up with the answers to multiplication facts. So when we took it into our own hands to make sure he mastered the tables, it was a big step forward for him. I remember MY 4th grade teacher having a chart and giving us a star everytime we could recite one of the number families in the multiplication table.
The same is true of the phonics method for learning to read --if you don't teach it, you slow everyone down.
Foreigners especially have trouble if they don't master the basic short vowel sounds --they have to hear and master the subtle differences and then it's much easier for them. I learned this trying to teach an illiterate Hispanic man how to read. a, e, i, o, and u were all the same to him in their short sound --a mix between eh and uh. He was tone deaf to the differences and I didn't work with him long enough to solve the problem.
Saxon Publishers math curricula is the best. Home schoolers have done the research.
We also had cooking required of all the girls for at least one year when I was a student. I learned to sew a little there and some cooking basics, and nutrition basics. Then when my children were students, our school required it in 8th grade for both boys and girls but it was an impractical course. I think you can opt out now--not sure. My daughters never did really learn to sew on buttons, even. I think they made a bag with a zipper in 8th grade --something boys and girls could both make. But when I was in 8th grade we had to make a gathered skirt, with a button, a zipper, and a hem and we did learn to use the sewing machine. Hemming and buttons are a woman's basic skills. I think the home skills have to compete with music and art for student time. While the social studies/history and geography teachers get prime time to push their liberal garbola and revisionist history to our kids every year.
Ah, a voice in the wilderness!
The boys had wood or metalwork, and the girls had domestic science.
In those days, cooking was womens work, and maintaining the house was the mans. These lessons have made me very practical over the years. Any cooking, sewing or housework I do now, was learnt at home or with the Scouts.
Nice to "see you again," Worm!
I love this ability to blog around the world!
yes our guys took "shop" and I think they still do in Jr. high --for a year maybe. I'm out of the loop, actually! don't know what is going on --we called it Home economics for the girls and "Industrial Shop class" for the boys, as I recall.
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