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Education Dive
Is
it up to schools to teach students basic life skills?
Lauren Barack
Feb. 27, 2019
Dive Brief:
Educators are weighing in on Twitter regarding the debate over whether
students should be learning basic skills — including cooking or doing
laundry — at school or at home, The Washington Post reports. The recent
string of comments began with University of Virginia cognitive
scientist Daniel Willingham, who posted his response to a Forbes story:
“Five Things High Schoolers Need To Know More Than Computer Science.”
There's sharp disagreement over what the job of a school entails — and
how far schools' duties stretch beyond typical academic disciplines.
Willingham's post indicates that he thinks students should be learning
these skills at home, but others noted that sometimes, students might
not have the role models or resources needed to learn these life skills.
In addition, some districts already aim to equip students with
non-academic skills, and the rise of community schools continues to
emphasize a more holistic way to support students. The Jennings School
District near St. Louis, for example, brought washing machines into
schools so children could learn to do laundry — and even wash their
clothes during the school day, the Post reports.
Dive Insight:
A well-rounded education should include the ability to calculate, write
well and have a sense and understanding of the world at large. But
students who have not also mastered basic life skills — such as cooking
a meal, cleaning their room or knowing how to care for themselves — may
graduate from school, but not be able to matriculate, easily, into
their next project: adulthood.
That’s the argument many people make for including home economics
classes in schools. These lessons are meant to help students learn the
skills they will need to keep their own home neat one day, and even
their bodies fed. These classes were often coupled with other life
skills courses such as electric, automotive, metal and wood working
where students might make their own hammer, learn how to change the oil
in a car, or build an electrical switch and get a light bulb lit all on
their own.
Yet, these home economics courses are slowly disappearing, as Education
Dive has recently reported. In some cases, though, students have
expressed regret, that after they went on to college, they wish they
had been taught some of these life skills, particularly those around
developing financial literacy.
Adding home economics classes into a curriculum is a choice
administrators could consider to ensure their students have all the
abilities they may need when they graduate, not just academic ones.
These can be easily combined with other academic subjects, however,
from botany to biology, by weaving science, technology, engineering and
mathematics (STEM) tools in to the lessons.
That’s what the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley, California, has
been able to do for more than 20 years, mixing some botany, social
justice, history and literature lessons in with the greens that
students grow, harvest, and then prepare and finally eat. Children
learn academics with some basic skills, equipping them wherever their
life takes them next.
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