Curriculum experts in Britain have been busy cooking up ways to tackle the UK's growing childhood obesity problem. One of the solutions that has been tossed around would involve giving all students the opportunity to take cooking classes at the junior high school level — either in-school (the preference of the country's home economics teachers) or on an extra-curricular basis. After all, it's one thing to know what you should be eating every day in order to say healthy. It's quite another thing to have the food preparation and cooking skills required to whip up a healthy meal on a budget.
This got me thinking about the other types of practical life skills that kids should be exposed to before graduation day — skills like making a multi-course meal for the relatives (everyone has to do it sometime), balancing a budget and a chequebook, repairing clothes (this will help with the budget department), soothing a fussy baby (starting with one of those hard-to-soothe infant simulators, and a teenage version of The Dating Game and/or a local faith organization's marriage preparation course. Now that would be a course they'd never forget.
What's ironic is that, here in Ontario at least, high school students in the applied (as opposed to the academic) stream are more likely to take courses that cover this kind of turf during their high school years. Is it because we somehow believe that kids who are university-bound are less likely to need to know how to whip up a multi-course meal, balance their chequebooks or soothe a fussy baby? Or is it because the need to cram a huge number of academic credits into four years of studies leaves no room for anything as frivolous as courses on how to survive in the real world?
It's something to think about. Sure, in a perfect world, Joe and Jane Teenager would acquire these skills at home from Mom and Pop — but as any real-world parent of a teenager can tell you, most teenagers do better at learning from anyone but Mom and Pop. (Why do you think there are so many driver's ed schools anyway?)
Now I'm going to toss it over to you. If you could add some courses to the high school curriculum so that kids could be better prepared for life in the real world, what would you suggest that they study? Roommates 101? Car Payments 301? Bad Relationships 401? Let me know!
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