School leavers should know how to cook a meal, handle domestic finances, take part in a debate, enjoy the theatre and use the internet.

like: how to fix a radiator.

fixed

like: how to fix a radiator.

omg! i learnt that apparently radiators have, like, WATER in them the other day - gareth couldn't believe i didn't know before. i can't imagine this really, i don't know where the water would go.

Actually, the school I went to was very very good about this - however, it taught me about the Merkin political system, in which I cannot legally participate. I know next to nothing about the British system - in which I legally can.

(They probably got a kickback from McDonalds for the training.)

on the other hand, i had a plumber come out to stop the flow of water through mine because i had no clue how. it involved a very basic screwdriver operation. mortifying.

more important is the ability to follow multi-part television drama.

Handling domestic finances and using the internet would be good things to learn in school. Enjoying theater and cooking are asking a little much though.

I learned this the hard way. Easy option, my arse!

As is I think everybody should just get the Achewood Cookbook.

Home finances - this is totally on yr parents isn't it? I never learned jack shit about bills and credit in school at all.

certainly, it's rather more important than "enjoying the theatre". WTF with the cultural fascism, tony, you dick? what's next: i have to "enjoy sport"?

my parents were complete shit in this area (as in most things) so therefore not good role models. I wish I had learned it in school.

(advanced lessons could include holding in a piss for at least three pints; ordering a round when mashed; taxi-queue etiquette; and kebabs and the consumption thereof.)

I am SOOOOO behind this statement, though! Life will force you, more or less, to either learn about finances or pay an accountant. You cannot pay someone to be open-minded for you, or appreciate beauty/wisdom/human nature in whatever form.

In a lot of primary schools now (not necessarily posh ones, either) they do exactly this. My mate was a Teaching Assistant for a bit, and the school he did this in had a projector hooked up to a laptop in each classroom so that the teacher could google something if a kid asked a question the teacher didn't know!

This is roughly how people have always gotten through life and will continue to do so. Teaching specific life skill is always a great idea, but the thing they're actually trying to accomplish here is less a matter of that, and maybe more a matter of trying to give people a good enough general education that they have any interest in, say, taking part in a debate.

uh-huh. that's why my dad, who's a volunteer for the citizens advice bureau, never sees anyone come in in a state of blind panic because they've managed to get themselves in some horrific debt hole because nobody ever bothered to teach them the basics and, for whatever reason, they never quite picked it up for themselves?

but hey, even if these people existed - and they obviously don't; my dad must be putting LSD in his porridge again - the answer's simple: they "pay an accountant". silly me. i forget that accountants are happy to work for fresh air and a smile.

You cannot pay someone to be open-minded for you, or appreciate beauty/wisdom/human nature in whatever form.

er, no, and you can't force someone to be open-minded or appreciate beauty and wisdom either. hellfire, i'm 31 and my tastes and sensibilities are growing and changing all the time. i'm frequently amazed and overjoyed by my capacity to learn more about art in all its forms, and to enjoy things i never thought in a million years i would.

this is perhaps in some way related to my education, which had a classical bent (ie i studied latin and greek and had mad old teachers who let me watch "if ..." in liberal studies) but is very much a part of who i am, my own aesthetic sensibilities etc. like i say: my brother-in-law, who's a top lad and a talented painter and musician, would rather de-nad himself than go to the theatre. does that make him a lesser human being? i think not. and he's certainly far more useful with a tax return - or a hammer and a drill - than i am, that's for certain.

i mean, i speak as a complete ponce for whom art provides a validity to life, but i really think this "teaching children to appreciate the theatre" nonsense is misguided bourgeois shitwittery of the first order. IT WON'T WORK. teaching them how to deal with tax and 'leccy bills, however, just might.

I'm not sure what I'd say should be cut instead, but in my particular rural school district, there was a lot of administrative waste and sports money in the budget every year that could go (sports funding is rarely cut because apparently, unlike for music, it's very important for kids to grow up well-rounded and develop important life skills and discipline from sports).

It's just that I can think of a lot of people who are fine at the infrastructure of life, meeting legal obligations etc but shite at thinking clearly or appreciating big swathes of human experience and HEY, GUESS WHAT? THEY VOTE!

Maria, schools in NYC have been known to cut sports and recess periods for lack of funding/facilities, with entirely predictably horrifying results in classroom behavior and attention span, esp among boys.

I mean, that it's not true strictly as written. I still think there's something to it SOMEwhere.

it probably won't surprise anyone to know that i was always second-last to be picked for the rugby team (the last kid was invariably the fat dude who came out onto the pitch wearing his thermal vest) but at least i was getting some exercise. i HATED sport with a passion, and indeed still do, but again, what was more important: that i was kept at least vaguely healthy or that i learned to play the tuba?

xpost: laurel, do you really think that forcing uninterested and uncaring children to sit through more shakespeare will stop them growing up into uninterested and uncaring adults? it's a lovely idea, and you sound like a genuinely decent and caring person, but sadly the world is a shitty place full of shitters and i don't think forcible exposure to great art will do a single thing to change that.

whereas teaching said children how not to mire themselves in horrific debt-laden misery might just a) improve the balance of society as a whole between the haves (usually overprivileged cunts like me who were lucky enough to be born in the right place) and the have-nots; and b) give more people more disposable income to spend on going to the theatre anyway :)

CHEMISTRY and all that other science bullshit which was tedious at the time, which went in one ear and straight out the other, which i got straight As in with 0 effort or knowledge, and which hasn't been in the least bit useful to me since.

i think the "teaching kids to appreciate the theatre" is probably the most adequately done thing on that list at the moment! i mean, it's not about forcing kids to love the theatre, it's about giving them the opportunity to see it (which most probably wouldn't) and other art forms. i think school trips to the best artistic events possible - exhibitions, theatre, concerts - should be mandatory and as free as possible. and without any air of "you must like this".

This is roughly how people have always gotten through life and will continue to do so.

i would argue that most people who get by in life with only basic knowledge of these things would probably rather get by with a little bit more knowledge. i know i would rather know what a tax return is! i have this nagging feeling that it might be important.

yr not British, then?

All school literature classes are basically forcing uninterested and uncaring children to sit through literature and not grow into uninterested and uncaring adults. I think it has to do some small amount of good, even if it's not totally transformative and the source of a lifelong love of literature. And would teaching children not to mire themselves in horrific debt-laden misery would actually take much longer than teaching one complete Shakespeare play?

super xxxpost.

(And as a side issue, our received-wisdom shorthand for high-culture experiences tend to revolve around things that are increasingly archaic, like ballet, opera, and poetry. Thing is, if you're just shooting for that big-picture goal -- winding up with kids who are able to be open-minded and think critically about art and culture -- you can just as easily develop that with a lot of different media. I suppose the obvious example these days would be the number of people who wind up learning to think this way by being music geeks, but a more apt approach might be to read fiction not in terms of testing students' comprehension, but as something they might have aesthetic opinions about.)

I mean, that's not a knock on any of those things -- it's just a flat fact that the art forms average people most strongly associate with Proper High Culture tend to be old and not incredibly vibrant or relevant in modern terms. The ballets and operas people think of as cultured and sophisticated are centuries old; it shouldn't be controversial to point out that these formats peaked a very long time ago, and aren't exactly major forms of expression in the modern-day US or UK. Poetry does a little better, relevance-wise, but much like ballet and opera, it's largely supported by small academic circles and arts philanthropy and grants, not any kind of significant public audience -- and once again, the names that would come up on a Family Feud board for "name a high-culture poet" were all buried hundreds of years ago. Classical music: the same.* (And I think we all know that when laymen talk about the need to appreciate these things, they are not usually talking about exposing children to cutting-edge dance choreography or 21st century microtonal compositions.) I'm glad there are people who keep these forms alive, and people who keep them pushing forward in new directions, and I'm happy to see the many ways in which they still have profound effects on a lot of people -- all sorts of people -- but it'd be insane to claim they're particularly vibrant or prevalent or popular media for artistic expression in the 21st century (even among the educated upper classes who made them seem important centuries ago).

(* Classical music is actually a bit more like soccer in the U.S. -- the kind of thing a lot of people are involved in when they're young and yet turn out not to be massive consumers of across the rest of their lives. But obviously even the kind of puffed-up semiclassical and opera music that's moderately popular is like deliberately archaic, all plush curtains and violin soloists in corsets and "look, this is cultured old-Europe stuff" -- on some level it's playing to the very same "eat your vegetables" vibe that's behind telling kids this stuff is where sophisticated High Culture lives.)

From 1990 to 2004, over 172 new operatic works were produced by professional opera companies in North America. (Source: OPERA America)

and there's at least one opera company of some sort in every city in America with a metro population > 1 million (excepting Las Vegas, Buffalo, and OKC, but there are opera companies in Reno, Erie, and Tulsa, respectively).

YES, WE KNOW SHAKESPEARE MADE A FEW KNOB JOKES. GET OVER IT.

I WANT CHEAP SERIOUS ELITIST THEATRE!!

er, nothing else to add, really. other than "nabisco OTM", but i feel such truisms should be banned from the sandbox and indeed from nuILX :)