It's easy! All you have to do is have spent your entire childhood taking engines to pieces and putting them back together again!snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:26 pmRight, you people have just jinxed me! As soon as I finished reading this thread, my car went wrong. It is at such moments that I hold my manhood most cheap, because I know nothing about motor mechanics - despite possessing a fine set of XY chromosomes and a degree in Physics. Mrs. Snooze can get away with playing a poor lost girly in such circumstances, even though she has a much better instinct for mechanical devices than me, whereas I feel the full weight of the expectations imposed on my sex by the Patriarchy!
I could probably fix my mechanical incompetence by going to evening classes or something...
Teaching essential life skills
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Teaching essential life skills
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Just wait till your fiesta flaps start flapping, snoozeofreason. Then you'll really feel emasculated.shpalman wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:38 pmIt's easy! All you have to do is have spent your entire childhood taking engines to pieces and putting them back together again!snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:26 pmRight, you people have just jinxed me! As soon as I finished reading this thread, my car went wrong. It is at such moments that I hold my manhood most cheap, because I know nothing about motor mechanics - despite possessing a fine set of XY chromosomes and a degree in Physics. Mrs. Snooze can get away with playing a poor lost girly in such circumstances, even though she has a much better instinct for mechanical devices than me, whereas I feel the full weight of the expectations imposed on my sex by the Patriarchy!
I could probably fix my mechanical incompetence by going to evening classes or something...
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
You have access to Google - you can look it up! I hope you can change a tyre, understand the various lights and controls in your vehicle, sew on a button and take up a hem. They're all useful skills in modern society. They shouldn't be regarded as masculine or feminine.snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:26 pmEither way, I have phoned the garage, and nodded my head sagely when the lady on the desk suggested that it was a coil spring (as if, being a man, I knew all about coil springs)
Re: Teaching essential life skills
If I were in charge of education I'd make this a core subject, English, Maths, Science and Life Essentials.Millennie Al wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 3:02 amYou have access to Google - you can look it up! I hope you can change a tyre, understand the various lights and controls in your vehicle, sew on a button and take up a hem. They're all useful skills in modern society. They shouldn't be regarded as masculine or feminine.snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 4:26 pmEither way, I have phoned the garage, and nodded my head sagely when the lady on the desk suggested that it was a coil spring (as if, being a man, I knew all about coil springs)
Life Essentials would include basic sewing, repairing household textiles and furniture, basic vehicle maintenance, effective cleaning, how to pay a bill, password management, personal care... All those things it used to be accepted that parents would teach kids but apparently don't anymore.
Non fui. Fui. Non sum. Non curo.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Absolutely! also changing a lightbulb and changing a plug, hanging wallpaper, and reading a map/use of compass.nezumi wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:16 am
If I were in charge of education I'd make this a core subject, English, Maths, Science and Life Essentials.
Life Essentials would include basic sewing, repairing household textiles and furniture, basic vehicle maintenance, effective cleaning, how to pay a bill, password management, personal care... All those things it used to be accepted that parents would teach kids but apparently don't anymore.
Do children get sent to school these days not knowing how to tie shoelaces? if so, that should be lesson number 2 on the first day, straight after where the loos are and how to ask permission to visit them.
Re: Teaching essential life skills
Jesus.
There was no golden age when parents taught all these noble things to their children. For f.cks sake.
Thankfully schools and teaching are far superior now to any fantasy golden age schools. And that's the most terrible list of "Life Essentials" imaginable.
If you want a "Life Essentials" class, start with how to be happy and move on to how to be kind and end with what makes a good relationship.
There was no golden age when parents taught all these noble things to their children. For f.cks sake.
Thankfully schools and teaching are far superior now to any fantasy golden age schools. And that's the most terrible list of "Life Essentials" imaginable.
If you want a "Life Essentials" class, start with how to be happy and move on to how to be kind and end with what makes a good relationship.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
On second thoughts, I might go elsewhere for the "how to be kind" and "good relationships" classes, but I definitely want to attend the "how to be happy" module. As long as it doesn't entail horses.
Re: Teaching essential life skills
Those two classes are big on what not to do.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Schools are certainly more sensitive and imaginative than they used to be. Things such as shoelace tying may seem like simple skills that should be taught on day two of school (to those children whose parents were so feckless and irresponsible as to have failed to teach it themselves). But to an autistic student that could be a meltdown inducing experience that would colour the entirety of their academic career. I am fairly well acquainted with one young man, currently at Oxford University, who has an uncanny grasp of languages, can give detailed summaries of the history and current affairs of East Asian countries without notes, can absorb complex treatises on politics in the time that most people would take to get their heads around newspaper article, but who still can't tie up his shoelaces. If his school had insisted on shoelace tying as an essential skill, I doubt that his participation in mainstream education would have lasted beyond the first few days. As it is he - miraculously to some perhaps - manages to live an entirely independent and productive life that does not include shoelaces.lpm wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:51 amJesus.
There was no golden age when parents taught all these noble things to their children. For f.cks sake.
Thankfully schools and teaching are far superior now to any fantasy golden age schools. And that's the most terrible list of "Life Essentials" imaginable.
If you want a "Life Essentials" class, start with how to be happy and move on to how to be kind and end with what makes a good relationship.
I suspect that one genuinely essential life skill is the ability to recognise that people are different, and that maintaining any more extensive list of "essential" skills in your head is, at best counter productive and, at worst, the sort of thing that will qualify you to write editorials for the Daily Mail on education policy.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?
Re: Teaching essential life skills
snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:34 amSchools are certainly more sensitive and imaginative than they used to be. Things such as shoelace tying may seem like simple skills that should be taught on day two of school (to those children whose parents were so feckless and irresponsible as to have failed to teach it themselves). But to an autistic student that could be a meltdown inducing experience that would colour the entirety of their academic career. I am fairly well acquainted with one young man, currently at Oxford University, who has an uncanny grasp of languages, can give detailed summaries of the history and politics of East Asian countries without notes, can absorb complex treatises on current affairs in the time that most people would take to get their heads around newspaper article, but who still can't tie up his shoelaces. If his school had insisted on shoelace tying as an essential skill, I doubt that his participation in mainstream education would have lasted beyond the first few days. As it is he - miraculously to some perhaps - manages to live an entirely independent and productive life that does not include shoelaces.lpm wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 9:51 amJesus.
There was no golden age when parents taught all these noble things to their children. For f.cks sake.
Thankfully schools and teaching are far superior now to any fantasy golden age schools. And that's the most terrible list of "Life Essentials" imaginable.
If you want a "Life Essentials" class, start with how to be happy and move on to how to be kind and end with what makes a good relationship.
I suspect that one genuinely essential life skill is the ability to recognise that people are different, and that maintaining any more extensive list of "essential" skills in your head is, at best counter productive and, at worst, the sort of thing that will qualify you to write editorials for the Daily Mail on education policy.
Fortunately, most kids' shoes these days, at least at Foundation Stage shoe sizes, have no laces. There was absolutely no point in teaching the bagkitten to tie shoelaces (I did try, it was a waste of time and effort) until she was about 7 or 8 when her feet grew into shoelace sizes. At that point, it took her precisely 5 minutes to learn. Many kids just don't have the fine motor control to be able to tie their shoelaces at the age of 4, so teaching them to do it on day 2 in FS would be a miserable experience for teacher and kids alike - and an entirely pointless one as already mentioned.
PSHE is, however, a thing in schools and a bl..dy good thing too. It stands for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education. This week, the bagkitten's PSHE is all about mental health, it being Children's Mental Health Week. In primary schools it covers areas like physical and emotional health and wellbeing, relationships, understanding your body, changes due to puberty (incl differences between boys' and girls' bodies), understanding the basics of money, plus societal things such as equality, diversity, and so on.
So not the "how to sew on a button" type of thing but definitely similar to lpm's preferred curriculum.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:34 amAs it is he - miraculously to some perhaps - manages to live an entirely independent and productive life that does not include shoelaces.
*
I reckon abandoning velcro was a bad move on my behalf.
I haz these now. https://www.hickies.com/. Life-changing.
*I can technically tie my laces, in that I can follow the instructions so the rabbit goes round the tree and in the hole and everything. It is just 30 seconds later the buggers are undone again and dragging along behind me**. It is odd, a person stops to tie one shoelace and nobody takes a second glance but stop to tie both shoelaces and they stare at you like you are mental.
**and in the 40+ years of proud shoelace-failing I have fell over precisely zero times because of them***.
***I have however had about 8 months of my life stolen from in pointless conversations with strangers along the lines of "Tie your shoelaces or you'll fall over".
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here, nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.
This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
Re: Teaching essential life skills
Oooooooh. I can tie laces, but usually end up destroying trainers as I slip them off without undoing them, which tends to break the back of them. Definitely getting me some of those.Little waster wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 2:34 pmsnoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:34 amAs it is he - miraculously to some perhaps - manages to live an entirely independent and productive life that does not include shoelaces.
*
I reckon abandoning velcro was a bad move on my behalf.
I haz these now. https://www.hickies.com/. Life-changing.
*I can technically tie my laces, in that I can follow the instructions so the rabbit goes round the tree and in the hole and everything. It is just 30 seconds later the buggers are undone again and dragging along behind me**. It is odd, a person stops to tie one shoelace and nobody takes a second glance but stop to tie both shoelaces and they stare at you like you are mental.
**and in the 40+ years of proud shoelace-failing I have fell over precisely zero times because of them***.
***I have however had about 8 months of my life stolen from in pointless conversations with strangers along the lines of "Tie your shoelaces or you'll fall over".
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Sorry,that was stupid of me. I didn't mean to be insensitive to anyone who can't tie shoelaces or who would find it stressful to learn. I was just remembering when I first went to school (a poor area of Scotland 1966) there was no such thing as velcro but untied shoelaces were a cause for physical punishment, and some poor 5 year-olds really hadn't been taught and they did get hit with the tawse; they usually kept their shoes knotted and wrestled themselves in and out of them however they could.
I also didn't start school with everyone else on the first day and so missed any information about the loos - to my great embarrassment.
I also didn't start school with everyone else on the first day and so missed any information about the loos - to my great embarrassment.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
No worries. As you might gather, shoelaces have become a bit of a sore point for me (as well as a useful lesson that what comes easily to one person may be next to impossible for another). Scottish schools of the 60s sound even less fun than English ones!Lydia Gwilt wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 4:22 pmSorry,that was stupid of me. I didn't mean to be insensitive to anyone who can't tie shoelaces or who would find it stressful to learn. I was just remembering when I first went to school (a poor area of Scotland 1966) there was no such thing as velcro but untied shoelaces were a cause for physical punishment, and some poor 5 year-olds really hadn't been taught and they did get hit with the tawse; they usually kept their shoes knotted and wrestled themselves in and out of them however they could.
I also didn't start school with everyone else on the first day and so missed any information about the loos - to my great embarrassment.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?
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Teaching essential life skills
I've split this thread from Toxic masculinity & femininity.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
If you have long lengths of dangly shoelace left over after tying they will tend to become undone again whilst walking. Tuck ends of dangly leftover bits under the cross lacing lower down shoe and things are less likely to become undone, hthsnoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 7:05 pmNo worries. As you might gather, shoelaces have become a bit of a sore point for me (as well as a useful lesson that what comes easily to one person may be next to impossible for another). Scottish schools of the 60s sound even less fun than English ones!
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Trouser length also matters, anything frequently brushing the knot will work it loose. Double knots help somewhat in this regard, but obviously increase the faff factor both on and off. I only discovered why my laces so frequently came undone via OtherHalf, and having a partner with complimentary life skills rather than matching ones, is a useful feature. Acknowledging when the other's skills are relevant helps to maintain that status.Hunting Dog wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 8:09 pmIf you have long lengths of dangly shoelace left over after tying they will tend to become undone again whilst walking. Tuck ends of dangly leftover bits under the cross lacing lower down shoe and things are less likely to become undone, hthsnoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 7:05 pmNo worries. As you might gather, shoelaces have become a bit of a sore point for me (as well as a useful lesson that what comes easily to one person may be next to impossible for another). Scottish schools of the 60s sound even less fun than English ones!
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me how others tie their laces, but I changed how I tie mine after encountering this site: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm
Which I think I got to from the old place.
Which I think I got to from the old place.
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three
now I sin till ten past three
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
f.cking hell, one more thing to think about.Grumble wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:32 pmIt’s a matter of supreme indifference to me how others tie their laces, but I changed how I tie mine after encountering this site: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm
Which I think I got to from the old place.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
I have a friend who has mocked me for over 25 years about how uncool my lace tying is. It doesn’t come up often, probably only 3 or 4 times in all that time, but I’m always mystified about what a cool knot is and how one finds this information out. I imagine he spends time watching rap videos looking at their shoes. I’ve never responded to him about it, and it’s always offhand not mean, but it’s amazing how things like that can play on your mind. Not enough for me to examine rappers’ footwear, but still.discovolante wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:38 pmf.cking hell, one more thing to think about.Grumble wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:32 pmIt’s a matter of supreme indifference to me how others tie their laces, but I changed how I tie mine after encountering this site: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/knots.htm
Which I think I got to from the old place.
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three
now I sin till ten past three
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Rappers don't have shoelaces, because they've always just got out of prison, where their laces were confiscated.
Which knot do you do, Grumble?
Which knot do you do, Grumble?
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
I buy hiking/snow boots with lace hooks for the top two fasteners, so I can just unhook the laces but leave them tied.
After a few wet walks, the laces are almost impossible to undo.
After a few wet walks, the laces are almost impossible to undo.
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Re: Teaching essential life skills
Schools shoul be very reluctant to consider anything an essential skill - almost everything is useful rather than essential. Even things like reading and writing, although extremely useful, can be worked around.snoozeofreason wrote: ↑Tue Feb 02, 2021 11:34 amIf his school had insisted on shoelace tying as an essential skill, I doubt that his participation in mainstream education would have lasted beyond the first few days.
Re: Teaching essential life skills
I tend to do the better bow, always stays done up.
where once I used to scintillate
now I sin till ten past three
now I sin till ten past three