A course designed to alleviate the surprises that come with leaving school, and the parents' house, and joining the real world.

Subject matter would include: balancing a cheque book, avoiding telephone scams/multi-level marketing schemes, giving an effective interview, saving for the (near or distant) future, actions vs consequences (egs.early pregnancy, crime, addictions), respect for other human beings, how to cook something other than macaroni and cheese, and so on...

I realise that a lot of children are expected to learn these things from parents or trial and error, but it seems that these types of things would be more useful in the real world than say trigonometry or Shakespeare.
-- Twibble, Apr 12 2003

University of Housework http://www.clubsbon.../halfbakery/uni.htm
from the hidden files of [calum]. [my face your, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Completely Baked http://www.bygpub.com/books/tg2rw/
"The teenager's guide to the real world"
-Marshal Brain [ato_de, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

I never meant to imply that we should abolish Shakespeare or trigonometry in favour of reality lessons. I'm suggesting an additional course.

If I am indeed ranting, it would more likely be about 'adults these days', rather than kids. Adults that were never given the tools as kids to say, stay out of debt, or stay out of prison, or maintain healthy relationships or whatever. So my solution for future generations is to give them those tools early as a preventative measure.
-- Twibble, Apr 12 2003


Schools in my area are teaching this stuff. "Life studies' is one course name I recall. Everything in your example is there. I know there is discussion about scams, but I'm not sure if they get specifically into pyramid schemes.
-- waugsqueke, Apr 12 2003


Baked. They called it "Home Economics" in my high school. You learned how to live without your parents. It was primarily directed at girls.
-- snarfyguy, Apr 12 2003


It's ++good that preparations for a typical day/week/month/year are taught, alongside rote memorization. The first half of the idea's first paragraph is useful stuff, second half is arbitrarily broad and prone to abuse, whether by teachers foisting a mindset, or students/parents who smell lawsuits.
-- thumbwax, Apr 12 2003


Nobody learns from other people's mistakes.
-- ato_de, Apr 15 2003


Education isn't about teaching you how to do stuff, it's about teaching you how to think, so you'll be able to figure out for your elf how to do stuff.
-- angel, Apr 15 2003


We had a course called Career and Personal Planning. It taught us what we needed to know about budgets and stuff but was basically useless the way it was taught.

(Does ++good stand for doubleplusgood or is it simply a coincedence?)
-- -lines-, Apr 15 2003


Looks like you're learning to understand thumbwegian.
-- waugsqueke, Apr 15 2003


"Nobody learns from other people's mistakes."

That's fiction. So many things I have been taught by others who had learned from their mistakes.
-- bristolz, Apr 15 2003


It's best to learn from the mistakes of others; you really don't have the time to make them all your elf.
-- angel, Apr 16 2003


[bistolz] I would say that you are _aware_ of things through the mistakes of others, true knowledge comes from experience.
-- ato_de, Apr 16 2003


++good = doubleplusgood
-- thumbwax, Apr 16 2003


// There are certain things that are best to learn from others mistakes //

Amen to that. There are many spheres of human activity (aviation, maritime, and anything to do with explosives and projectile weapons spring immediately to mind) where learning from the mistakes of others is the ONLY viable option.

"Experience is the harshest teacher, because she gives the test first and the lesson afterwards".

+ for the idea. Many young people seem to know damn all about survival in the Real World. Sadly, some seem to know far too much.
-- 8th of 7, Apr 16 2003



random, halfbakery