We inherit some instinctive things (very little actually) from our genes. The rest we
have to learn… humans are trapped in a system where we have to relearn it all each generation… our cultural inheritance is not like our genetic inheritance which is passed on automatically, its an enormous learning curve , and its repeated every generation.
We must eventually reach the point where our learning capacity runs out, because
the amount each generation has to learn is increasing alarmingly.
It is a very tenuous situation. If one generation fails to learn, they pass nothing on, and everything is lost.
Lost cultures are like extinct species… you cant recover them.
So you may as well enjoy living in our culture trap… there is no escape for individuals.
You can swim against the stream a bit, like I do, but ultimately you are a child of your era.
Sorry, that is a biologists view of the human population. There are other views.
My family, at least back through my grandparents (1900 and on), has always placed value on learning of life skills. Every generation has been educated in the ways of the garden and the kitchen and the workshop. Even those who have ceased to practice these skills (eg, gardening has become yard work to me), the knowledge and appreciation of it remains.
I have little patience or sympathy for people who can’t do simple, practical things like clean a fish, cook a stew, trim a hedge, or assemble an IKEA bookshelf. Reading a map and writing a sentence are different but are still basic life skills.
“Formal education” which doesn’t include basic life skills falls short of useful. I wouldn’t hire a PhD who can’t balance his/her checkbook or do simple troubleshooting (Is it plugged in? Is there ink/toner? Is there paper? Does restarting help?) Some of them wear velcro shoes and can’t read an analog clock.
I’m grateful to my family for teaching me basic skills; my kids have learned them and are teaching my grandkids. I teach my grandkids bad habits, but that’s my privilege. It’s valuable to widen the scope of what is considered education.
A few years back I realised I could not tell the time, bizarre, I looked at a normal clock with hands and did not know the time… years of just being digital spoiled my time telling, so I bought a watch with hands to relearn. Then moved countries and language so had to learn again with funny numbers.
Ok I exaggerated the story a bit, but some skills we forget, map reading, the kids of my wife have no sence of direction and cannot go anywhere without a gps system, I get a map out and learn a route.
Similar with ikea, her son cannot construct anything from this company, he waits till I drop round and do it for him. Yes he has been to uni, got a degree in computing, ask him to load a linux server and set privileges he can do it much faster than I can spell it.
Today society runs at such speed some skills are forgotten or just never learned.
By the way I am from Yorkshire, where we invented stainless steel, cats eyes, oxygen, the world, … long list, so I know everything ! Ha ha ha
My family were like that. There was no option to buy in help … you had to learn to
do things yourself.
It is the urban environment that undermines this. Rural people have always needed to be multiskilled. Farming would not exist without multiskilled people.
Agree.
Not everyone come from parents that are well educated or have a handful of life skills.
Some children grow up in a city with parents that have not graduated from high school and have no skills (to speak of) to pass along to their children.
In a family that lives basically from paycheck to paycheck and even has a “tab” (running bill) at a small family run grocery store.
Education for these children has a different route.
It was called ‘wireless’ then .
I was cautioned it was a great distraction to be used sparsely, and that “all these radio waves in the air were affecting the weather”
The purpose of free schooling is to try and smooth out these sort of disadvantages.
It is successful to a degree, especially on the academic and technical side, but
not so much with life skills.
At my high school, they thought that participating in team sport taught life skills.
So everyone played football, whether they had physical skills or not. I think it did damage to some kids.
Just on wireless, last night we had an outdoor market, where I set up the sound system as I do every week. The microphone started to play up. Our in house expert presenter said Its bluetooth, I said no radio mic, uses wireless radio system to communicate.
His response was brits know nothing about this so make up names Difficult to educate experts, I did not bother.
