Quote:
Originally Posted by DETRoadster
I struggle with this as someone who is getting on in years, being closer to retirement than I am comfortable with. Is basic arithmetic a needed life skill or was your father wasting your time? What about cursive penmanship? Necessary life skill or a waste of time?
How many of us can raise and harvest our own crops and livestock? Technology took care of that for us and it's no longer seen as a basic life skill.
My nephew had to call a plumber to his new house because the previous owner had hooked the hot and cold water supplies up backwards to the kitchen sink. I was laughing about it and my wife reminded me the only reason I found out is he mentioned it while he was helping me set up my new wifi router that had me baffled. Hmmm. Self reflection time.
Perhaps what fathers need to be doing at the dinner table today is quizzing their kids on coding because the machines take care of the simple stuff.
But yes, at a high level I do agree with you. Doing math in your head should be a basic function of that job. Sadly for the average Sbux employee, the art of pulling a good espresso shot is not part of their knowledge base either as they simply push a button and the technology does the rest.
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call me a little shit, but i know my tables, can set up my wifi and take care of mechanical things too...
"technology took care of that" is just an excuse imo, yeah we have phones that are vastly more powerful than what 3 people went to the moon with, but there's no reason not to use that to acquire information. a few years back my mom gave me shit because i was looking up youtube videos on how to make eggs like i like them.
imo the issue is lacking self-sufficiency, you know? it's impossible to know everything at a master level, sure, but i also feel like a person living in 2019 should know basics like how to reverse two pipes as well as setting up a new router.
unless you are too deep in it, a normal person wouldn't need to know how to replace the water heater or write code that blocks access to a certain device after it streams too much netflix etc and that's fine because that's why society creates professionals in their respective fields.