Can they survive?
Posted on: November 25, 2012
English: Juliette Gordon Low Category:Girl Scouts of the USA images (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Was just thinking about all the skills kids today do not have. I am approaching 50 so I do not see myself as old, yet. My childhood was very different from those growing up in 2012. I spent most of my time outside. Art and music filled the rainy day space when I wasn’t outside. I can build a fire, plant a garden, and navigate without the use of an ap on my phone to tell me how. I can recognize various plants and trees so I possibility could survive off the land thanks to many years in Girl Scouts. My merit badges were not technology based or business related but more life skills and special interests via the arts.
The group of kids I think will survive might surprise you. As a former special education teacher, I taught skills the regular education kids needed but never got, life skills. My students who were considered mentally challenged could cook, wash, dry and mend clothes. They could do comparison shopping. They knew how to navigate around town as well as tell you where local emergency management places were and who to ask for if there was a need. I doubt half of the regular education students in high school could do these things. My students who could write knew how to generate a letter and address one. I cannot even begin to list all the kids I have had to help because they have never written a letter until after they graduated from high school. My students were taught manners and USED THEM!!! They also knew that when it rained you wore a raincoat and carried an umbrella. Cold weather, you would never find a single one of my students without a jacket or showing “skin” because they knew being warm was important. I note this because I saw a high school girl at Target the other day in a tank top when it was 45 degrees outside. I questioned who was more intelligent and why my former students had the label, mentally challenged.
What happen to common sense? Is logical reasoning something that has genetically been altered so it is now something we need to teach? Will our future be effected by the sudden change in life skills? Who is really getting the better education?
Related articles
- Doing it for themselves (newsregister.com)
- Our Survival Skills Become Our Talents (startwithwhy.com)
- Sunday Snippet: Life Skills & Camp ~ It’s Only Natural (wehakeecampforgirls.com)
- Cooking, Sustainability merit badges to become Eagle-required (scoutingmagazine.org)
- Literacy: a fundamental life-skill (unicef.org.au)
