Guest Post by Angel from Lonely Libertarian
When I went to school, we had the option to take “electives” including Home Economics (cooking, sewing, budgeting, finances, etc.), auto mechanics (basics of car maintenance), building trades (seriously, if you own a home, you need this), agriculture (care and processing of farm animals and crops). We were all encouraged to take advantage of “real life education”. I took a semester of auto mechanics, a semester of building trades and a semester of home Ec. I can do most auto repairs, run basic wiring and plumbing, replace lighting and plumbing fixtures, frame, drywall, cook, can, budget, and figure taxes (I’ve never paid to have my taxes done and I’ve never been audited…yet.)
While I had a pretty well-rounded high school education, most of the credit goes to my folks. Mom and Poppy never discouraged me from seeking knowledge, especially if it was useful. And much of my practical education came from my parents and grandmas. I’ve told the story of my first car, I worked years of odd jobs and saved every penny I earned. I paid $2500 cash for my 1965 Mustang. And Poppy took the keys until we went over every inch of it, engine and transmission, and he was satisfied I knew how to take care of it. I rotated my own tires, changed my own oil, belts and hoses. I still do all of my own vehicle maintenance.
Every house I lived in growing up was a “handyman special”. We were very very low income blue collar, but always owned instead of rented. The first house was purchased from an old farmer for $1000 cash and a $10,000 builder’s loan. Two bedroom, one bath, less than 1000 sq ft. Poppy later added a master suite, increasing the square footage to 1200. Total investment was $35,000, they sold it a few years ago after 20 years of being rental property for $98,000. I was too young to do much on that one but fetch tools and carry trash, but the next one was different.
The home they’re still living in was housing for various fauna out in an old wheat field. Birds nested in the kitchen cabinets and there was animal poop everywhere. When Poppy took mom out to see it, she almost had him committed. Understand, he was working full time and going to college part time and wanting to move this house in next door and work on it in his “spare time”. I was 12 when he bought it and 14 when we finally moved into it. This is the house where I got my training. I helped tear out walls, move walls, re frame, pull up flooring, lay flooring, hang drywall, mud and tape and texture, paint and wallpaper, hang cabinets, install plumbing and electrical, pull wires, blow insulation…. every time I walk into that house, I can see something I helped build. I love that house.
Two years after he retired, Poppy drew up plans, got a permit, and proceeded to build mom’s fantasy master suite, 1000 square feet of luxury and solitude. He finished it in 6 months. She still smiles every time she walks into it. This house, total investment of $60,000, was appraised last year at $148,000. As an adult, I’ve always owned, never rented, and always homes that I could easily afford and work on to make better. I bless my parents for that part of my education.
Shortly after I graduated, the shift started. College prep was the only field of study promoted, and all the other programs were eventually eliminated from the budget. Lack of interest? Lack of promotion? I’m not sure, but suddenly students were expected to study for two goals: passing standardized tests and going to college. A college education was the end-all and be-all. What was forgotten were all the students who weren’t interested in college; whose talents and interests fell elsewhere. For 30 years, a whole segment of society was ignored as Higher Education was shoved down every student’s throat.
Now we see the damage, the education bubble is about to burst, we have a couple of generations of high-debt, educated people with no skills, and a dearth of skilled workers. God bless Mike Rowe for bringing the sexy back to the skilled trades. We’re slowly seeing a shift in the popularity of trade schools and apprenticeships, although high schools are still woefully under serving young people who aren’t interested in a BS in Disgruntled Minority Feminine-ish Studies at an overpriced university. Hopefully, when the education bubble bursts, things will change.
In the meantime, Young People of America, if you’re waking up to the reality that your practical education has been taken from you in exchange for a mountain of debt and a useless degree, look around you. Find one of us older Americans who you used to mock for being uneducated and unenlightened. If you ask nicely, maybe apologize for being a Liberal twunt, we can share all sorts of amazingly useful skills and information with you. And we might even slip in a much needed lesson in self-reliance, Liberty and the U. S. Constitution. You’d be amazed at what you don’t know.
I think I can’t give a little insight on this. Whose to blame? Baby Boomers of course. But more accurate Baby Boomer educators. I had home ec. in school but it didn’t teach anything other how to use a sewing machine for a few weeks and how to make one cake. My Baby Boomer teachers were enthralled by the idea of the internet and computers being the future they didn’t bother to pass on skills of the past. I’ve seen this debate recently of not teaching cursive to elementary students because it wouldn’t be needed in the future. Who are these people who think they can predict the future?
I’ve stated before I was lucky as a Millennial because I was born in the 80s before the take over of the internet in every single home in every single hand. I learned to cook and drive a stick. I know how to do math in my head and solve equations without a calculator. There is a major skills deficit in my generation. The worst part is Millennials aren’t as tech savvy as once believed, they just weren’t tech illiterate.
If you are a Baby Boomer parent with a Millennial at home under 18 I urge to take away their technology without explanation and teach them how to do everything offline. If you are a Boomer parent with a grown Millennial at home I urge you to stop paying their phone bill and stop paying for the internet. Change your passwords so they can’t go online until they get a job and teach them how to do thinks offline.
Millenials won’t even try, they just wait to be told, instructed, directed – and if you don’t say it nicely, they’ll just fucking walk away and quit. Boomers are narcissists, a generation that just can’t stop praising themselves, but millenials – fucked as they are, will suffer from self inflicted wounds.
Yes, I know I’ll get shit hammered for pissing on millenials, and to be sure – I’m only speaking of a percentage. What percentage? Depends on where you are, what you’re doing, what needs to be done – so dial it in to your local and there’s your answer.
But the hallmark of those gadget gazers is the complete lack of interest in nearly anything non I-whatever.
Use the internet to learn the skills you desire. I mean really, a person can “Google” anything and get a myriad of suggestions. It’s how I work on some of the cars I own. John
Last week I was at a client site, wanted to use the microwave. A millennial girl wants to heat some frozen mac and cheese. First of all, if you’re going to cook stuff like this a work, put it in the fridge the night before, so it’s partially thawed – so you don’t hog the microwave for 6 minutes. But any way, she gets it partially cooked, the instructions must have said stir – this gal didn’t know how to use a fork. No kidding, sorta held it in her fist, and stabbed the mac and cheese. And someone is gonna marry that? He’s in for a big surprise.
Millennials will save us!
“Whose to blame? Baby Boomers of course. ” ———— Clams
Too bad you’re not also black. That way you could also blame slavery.
Stucky- I said specifically boomer educators.
People learn what they must; the real issue is that the learning curve may be too long to survive (e.g., discovering the need to learn to grow food or dig a well once you’re already hungry or thirsty.)
I have two sons with computer science degrees. They are among the very, very few IT pros who actually know how to trouble-shoot a PC because they worked while in college at the school’s residence hall help desk repairing students’ and staff’s computers.
Most young people today know how to press the buttons on their iGadget, and that’s about all. That’s what passes for “tech savvy.”
Stephanie is correct; school administrators became enamored of “technology” and have pissed away unimaginable money on computers, iPads and the like, creating an entire ecosystem of dead weight costs that become obsolete on very short schedules. I’m all for 7th graders doing PowerPoint presentations, but as a means to an end and not an end unto itself.
One last: EVERY normal proto-adult with an IQ above 85 should learn to safely handle, operate and shoot a gun. Doing so inculcates a respect for one’s own power and a systematic suspicion of those who wish to take it away. Of course, I leave it to parents to decide if their sons and daughters are clued-in enough to handle this. I suggest that those who are not will never become full adults….and we’re surrounded by such dysfunctional young people (whose parents, too, are often not fully adult.)
I agree with changing a tie and knowing how to cook. Some of that stuff- hemming pants and changing your own oil – is best left to professionals, unless you get a kick out of doing it yourself.
I meant changing a tire.
God bless my parents.
They went out of their way to teach me what I needed to know. Not everything, but enough so that I wasn’t an incompetent dooshbag.
How to hammer a nail straight using the appropriate hammer. How to use a nail set. How to properly cut a board with the proper saw. How to patch and sand drywall. How to paint properly. How to measure properly. How to cook my own food from scratch. How to do my own laundry. How to change a tire – even how to repair the tire and remount it. How to fell a tree properly. How to build a fire. How to gut, skin and process an animal you just harvested. How to plant trees and other plants properly. How to run power tools. How to sharpen a knife properly. How to make on-the-spot repairs to a disabled car to get you home – or to the mechanic. How to weld. Caulk a bathtub or windows. Lay tile. Mend my own clothes. Repair a water hose. Solder copper pipe. Change and gap spark plugs. Read blueprints and make passable working drawings…
In short, a good foundation for being independent. Self-reliance. Want to be able to say “FUCK YOU!” and shoot society the bird? Learn how to do this shit and be independent. The less you are beholden to someone, the better you will feel.
We bought this farm 5 years ago. “Handyman special” and “fixer-upper” were compliments. We put months of work into it – I had to teach myself how to plaster walls. Not hang drywall – plaster. Undoing the cumulative damage of 100 years. Pulling up the original red oak flooring because it had gotten soaked at some point – the wood swelling and expanding, then when it dried out the floor was loose and had all these gaps in it… adios, floor. Put down proper white oak. Installed proper poplar moldings, plinth blocks, etc, that matched the original Arts & Crafts style. Steamed all the shitty old paint off the mantle over the fireplace – turns out it was walnut. Next project up is to make doors for every doorway in this house (previous owners had taken down all the original, handmade 5 panel doors in order to paint them. Then they put them up out of order. When they didn’t fit – derp – instead of rearranging them and putting them back where they’re supposed to be, they just cut them down to fit. Not one door in this house – except the front door – is where it’s supposed to be.). My wife doesn’t like the 5 panel doors, so she wants me to make 3 panel doors.
She wants this.
To become this.
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Using reproductions of the original 100 year old hardware… meaning hinges that look like this. This is a Bungalow style half-surface hinge..
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An aside: Anyone interested in this style of housing/furnishing can just look up “Arts & Crafts style” or Greene & Greene, Gustav Stickley, etc… we’re trying to keep the whole house with its original styling, so that it appears as a whole. Nothing worse than some Big Box hollow core plasticky shit door standing out like a sore thumb, when you’re surrounded by all sorts of handmade good shit…
Not my house, but I just love stuff like this. In the A/C style, attention to detail, simplicity and the skill required to construct this is the “decoration”…. no superfluous, shiny bullshit like the Victorians or the soulless, empty postmodern crackerboxes made later…
To work on something like this – even if it’s seen better days – and know that someone just like me 100 years ago put it together with love and care – because it was the right way to do things – is a privilege.
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I have taught myself a lot of skills in the past 2-3 years, since owning my home, but I still would be rather useless homesteading. I take most of the responsibility for not learning some of these skills earlier. Even though I have a STEM degree, I feel I wasted (and WAS wasted) all my young adult years. Now that I am beginning middle age, I am just starting to learn all the shit I should have been learning then.
@Billy: I’m mostly like you, except I don’t hunt or fish. Do everything myself. I rebuilt several homes. Here’s a link to a mill work place here in MN, but you can find the same in your location. I replaced 14 doors.
http://www.heritagemillworkinc.com/index-3.html
I had learned all that shit before I graduated HS and a full 99.9% of it was not taught to me by my gov’t drone educators. Fully agree with Stephanie that our teachers have let us down. Thankfully I had a good 2 parent family life where I learned the basics. Unfortunately many do not, or have parents that just don’t care or don’t know themselves.
Hi Dutch,
Thanks much. It’s appreciated. I can always use another good source for good stuff. As a thank you, here’s my source for hardware – the good shit. No pot-metal plated crap. Extruded and forged iron, copper, brass… it ain’t cheap, but if you want good, solid brass cannonball hinges with removable stainless pins so’s you can clean and grease them (so’s your doors don’t creak like a pirate ship), then these guys carry them…
http://www.restoration.com/
Get this – if you have something that you need to replace and cannot find it anywhere, and these guys don’t have it, if you send them your widget they will make a duplicate of it! As many as you want! Ain’t that some shit?
I was about to pull my hair out trying to find those Bungalow hinges – amongst other stuff – until I found these guys. Haunting FeeBay, looking for salvaged hinges – which is always a crap shoot, since it’s salvage and will always need some work, whether bead blasting or what have you… it’s nice to say “Imma need 20 of those” and have them show up – brand spankin’ new – and have them be exactly right.
Thing is about this house, all the doors were custom made on-site when the house was being built, and they’re not interchangeable or standard… I know I can measure everything, then cut my own lock mortices and such… and I’m not saying that custom millwork is out of the question… it’s a pride thing, I think. Have to weigh it some and run it past the wife… see what she thinks (I’m design and labor, she’s management)…
Steph, stop blaming Baby Boomers for EVERYTHING. Home Economics was a totally worthless course that never taught any more than what you learned, if even that much, when I was a teen in the 60s. I considered my mandatory 8th grade “homemaking” course to be a royal waste of time, and the best part of it was that we 8th graders got to piss off a whole Fri morning twice a month traveling to and from another grammar school that had the appropriate facilities, which meant a long stop at the White Castle on the way (we walked back then).
My “Greatest Generation” teacher was the classic old maid schoolmarm, a broad of about 60 who looked 85, and who lectured us girls incessantly. She taught us to do such wonderful things as rinse our dishes in water treated with extra Clorox, not bothering to tell us that you do not do this with silverplate or sterling silver flatware. I guess she assumed the we lower-middle-class kids were unlikely to encounter such niceties as sterling silver or fine lace tablecloths, which assumption was based on faulty information to say the least. I’m not the only girl who went home and wrecked at least one piece of the family heirloom silver doing this. The only other thing I learned was how to sew a scarf and make Chicken a la king, the wrong way. She also did not bother to tell us that the egg must actually boil for 15 minutes, something I set her straight on. She was an absolute cretin, as most home ec, phys ed, and sociology teachers are and always have been.
Some things never change. I learned to cook by age 12 in my mom’s kitchen, the appropriate place, and could put a whole meal on the table by age 12. Never did learn how to sew but am learning now… because I want to and am finally motivated to do so.
Stucky,
I’ve seen that video before… and I thought “That stupid split tail votes!“… Does not exactly fill me with optimism about this country…
It’s okay though. She can trade on her looks as long as they hold out and her boobs don’t sag. Hopefully, she’ll find someone stupid or gullible or desperate enough to marry her and take care of her for the rest of her life before her looks tank…
‘Cause afterwards, it’s gonna be hard to make a living if she’s still single. I was going to say that the worst thing for her would be if someone married her as a trophy wife, but she don’t rate high enough… perhaps if she suppressed her gag reflex…
“I said specifically boomer educators.”
What few understand is “educators”were the students too stupid to pass their first choice major.
I had the good fortune to see this up front and personal. When I enter college in 1974 I was a physics major. I took electives like biology, chemistry, and business. Then, thanks to Johnson’s Great Society legislation, NASA dropped the Apollo project and physics professors advised us to change majors because many jobs would never come back.
I switched to Nutrition (was a bit of a health nut), which was part of the Department of Home Economics. It also was over Education. As soon as I got there I started seeing people I had had in the elective courses the previous year. When I asked them why they were there they said they had flunked out of their first choice major of chemistry or biology or business and they had changed their major to Education. As part of the core courses for Nutrition I had to take many of the core Education courses. It quickly became apparent, if you had a pulse, you could get an Education degree. Never have I been around such a concentration of stupid people.
My first wife who selected Education from the start was an exception. She was very smart and wanted to be a teacher. After we graduated she started her first year teaching and one day she came home furious saying, “Those are the dumbest people on the planet”. She was teaching high school so I stepped up to defend the students saying we were one of them just a few years ago and they were just immature. She quickly set me straight saying rather firmly, ” I am not talking about the students, I am talking about the other teachers and administrators!” She lasted that year and quit out of frustration with the low IQs of educators in general.
Now when I meet an “educator” my first instinct is to figure out are they one of the very few with a brain or are they one of the majority. One thing I did learn is, if I had a child there would be no way I would send them to a public school.
It is not the Baby Boomers. It is the public school “educators” regardless of what age or “group” they are from that dumbed down Millenniums to the point they can not tie their shoes.
How would 25 year olds learn to cook when their 50 year old parents didn’t know how/do it?
Being working poor turns out to be a blessing, if the world goes to shit it will be an even bigger one.
I learned to sew clothes because I was pregnant and had NO money to spend on clothes. My mother was a near professional level seamstress, but wouldn’t make them for me because “I got myself into the mess,” but because it was illegal to go naked in polite society, and my mom had a Joann Fabric credit card, I made around 3 outfits plus a couple shirts. Most turned out ok. I still have a shirt and a pair of the corduroy overalls I made packed away.
My mom grew up on a farm and my grandfather inherently disliked corporate food and spending money, so I learned to can and process food in multiple kitchens.
I really didn’t get good at cooking until the past few years and, in some part, thanks to Food network. My parents and grandparents were the kings of cheap, low-spice (onion powder was pretty exotic, though chili powder was always in the cupboard), bland food meant to feed an army of a family for not much money. My mom never really learned to cook until she met dad, her farm job was cleaning, not cooking, that was her older sister.
Once again it strikes me as amusing that we humans have access to the single largest university EVER known to man and we continue – in average – to lose skills and IQ.
I’m glad I haven’t totally wasted this gift. I’ve learned more in the past decade than I had known in my entire life, and I had learned a lot in those previous 4 decades.
Peace all, back in the day lots of things were different, ‘cept one, we humans would rather pay a King than do things for ourselves. So it goes.
The time is coming, probably sooner than later, when the person that has mastered basic skills will be a very valuable individual. Small engine repair, basic plumbing and electrical repair, gunsmithing, fishing and hunting, &tc. Most young folks don’t want to hear from a fat-assed old boomer, but here’s a bit of advice anyway: your time on the Big Blue Marble is your most valuable and precious commodity. Use it wisely because time passes so fuckin’ fast. Choose to sit in front of the ‘puter or play video games if you wish, after all, it’s your life. But, there’s another world out there, a world of gettin’ off yer ass and actually doing things. Get your hands dirty, a little grease or oil under your fingernails never hurt anyone. Doing basic maintenance on your truck/car is great fun plus @85/hr labor charges you can save a ton of money. Money you can spend on the really important things in life: guns, parts, ammo knives, flashlights, neat solar shit, &tc.
One of my best friends from high school is now on his second superintendent of schools gig for a huge school system in the midwest. Last time we got together I asked him what his biggest challenges are; he said dealing with 5 different unions and the fact they keep changing the “common core” curriculum.
Best thing I got from high school was learning how to type. I can do 60 wpm with fair accuracy even with these old fingers! My HS offered home ec, autoshop, woodshop, ag, and a business curriculum that included shorthand and bookkeeping. I’ll bet most of that’s gone now.
There is an astonishing array of ‘how-to’ videos on You Tube and various other sites around the internet. Numerous people with skills and an urge to share them have built up an amazing store of practical knowledge on the internet. It has become the ultimate Millennial riposte to the smug, superior attitudes we old farts have about our ‘practical wisdom accumulated over the years’. Basically, they will look it up when they need to do it, apply a little trial-and-error effort, finish the task, and move on. My 20-year-old son does this once in a while, on an as-need basis. I am embarrassed to admit that it never occurs to me — I head to the bookstore or the library! Or ask him!
“There is an astonishing array of ‘how-to’ videos on You Tube ….” ———— Bob
Indeed. Ms. Freud has a contractor for a client. He asked, “Who did the great job fixing your crumbling cement steps?” “Stucky”. “He knows about concrete?” “No, he watched a couple youtube videos and did it himself.” “Wow.”
Bob, stucky, you guys are absolutely right. The Internet and youtube put the knowledge of the world at your fingertips. I figure I now know how to do basically anything in a pinch.
Billy, as the former owner of an Arts and Crafts home, I can date those photos to a house built between 1905 and 1910. Mine was built in 1921 and was quite different, sort of a mix of “Craftsman” and Colonial.
Funny, just yesterday the 20 something year old next door neighbor stuck his head over the fence and asked me if I would teach him how to weld.
Billy says: I’ve seen that video before… and I thought “That stupid split tail votes!“… Does not exactly fill me with optimism about this country…
In her defense, traveling at the speed of 80 mph is not the same as traveling 80 miles. As bb can tell you, velocity is affected by terrain, curves and cops.
I can relate to that ‘split-tail’ (did you major in douche English?) I had a moment when I could not comprehend “streaming” until I bought a streaming device to try it out and convince myself. Notice I said comprehend and not ‘understand’, I can understand things but it took me a while to grasp the mechanics of a streaming system. I’m an old fuck. Good thing I have been taking Stucky’s online college courses.
Billy, unless you have a frog tail stub in you ass end, I think your tail is also split, you must be thinking of a split crotch.