Alan & Brenda Leonard

> If the educational establishment was actually serious about the "you
> might need this some day" excuse for teaching you something, we'd be learning
> very different things. There are few things more essential to life than
> growing food. What if there were another national emergency like WWII, and
> people had to turn their yards into gardens? You might need to know how to
> make your own bread or slaughter an animal some day, but no one is learning
> that in schools these days.
> I hope I'm making sense.

How about even more basic things, related in fact to math, like checking
accounts and how they work. My husband (who's in the army) regularly talks
to a young, new soldier who doesn't understand why his checks have bounced
or he can't get money out of the ATM. I still have checks, why don't they
work? The ATM said I had money yesterday and I didn't take it out, so
somebody stole it. These are truly serious questions soldiers ask. Last
week he explained credit cards and how you have to pay them off to someone.
They're not free money. If the schools feel this need to teach things "you
might need someday", this would be on my list!

Sigh.
brenda

julie means

some more useful life skills that schools could be teaching, if that were trully their goal, are relationship or communication skills, or parenting skills....julie
----- Original Message -----
From: Alan & Brenda Leonard
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2002 6:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Unschooling-dotcom] useful math



> If the educational establishment was actually serious about the "you
> might need this some day" excuse for teaching you something, we'd be learning
> very different things. There are few things more essential to life than
> growing food. What if there were another national emergency like WWII, and
> people had to turn their yards into gardens? You might need to know how to
> make your own bread or slaughter an animal some day, but no one is learning
> that in schools these days.
> I hope I'm making sense.

How about even more basic things, related in fact to math, like checking
accounts and how they work. My husband (who's in the army) regularly talks
to a young, new soldier who doesn't understand why his checks have bounced
or he can't get money out of the ATM. I still have checks, why don't they
work? The ATM said I had money yesterday and I didn't take it out, so
somebody stole it. These are truly serious questions soldiers ask. Last
week he explained credit cards and how you have to pay them off to someone.
They're not free money. If the schools feel this need to teach things "you
might need someday", this would be on my list!

Sigh.
brenda



If you have questions, concerns or problems with this list, please email the Moderator, Joyce Fetteroll, at fetteroll@...

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]

Visit the Unschooling website: http://www.unschooling.com

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]