Here's my favorite:
Those of you with kids will understand that sometimes the hardest thing to get your kids to understand is that they're not a perfect little snowflake, and occasionally they need and deserve a boot in the ass. Junior Bear and I went round and round about his schoolwork, and one of his main retorts was that his teachers loved him and told him he was doing fine. Of course, the bleakly low grades on his report card kind of contradicted that worldview, but who was I to throw reality into the picture?
And don't get me started about the recent college grads (or dropouts) who have been told their entire lives that all it takes is effort and a little PowerPoint to get through life. I've watched several go into meltdown over the years when they were told that no-one gets paid for just showing up or for making something pretty that doesn't actually accomplish anything. My favorite was when a mini-project done by an intern at Fort Meade was described as a "self licking ice cream cone" by the crusty old warrant officer who she reported to.
So, what do you all wish you'd learned in school, or wish your kids would be taught today?
3 comments:
I wish my mechanical engineering degree had come with more mechanic stuff. But as you say, everything send to be going to the way of the computer presentation.
Oh, Daddy Bear, why would you want to invoke reality into people's little world? Don't you know it's all about self esteem? Everyone gets a participation ribbon. Yay! I got self-esteem from busting tail and trying make my father proud of me because that meant more than anything. If I did something stupid, I got self-esteem the hard way from dad.
Every time I find myself scribbling away furiously trying to keep up with someone leaving a phone message (a common part of my current job, and we get some doozies, let me tell you) or trying to take notes in a class, I find myself wishing they had taught shorthand when I was in middle school.
I can type faster than I write (about 45-50 wpm), but still not at a real note-taking speed. I think shorthand is a skill whose usefulness has been significantly overlooked, since it's not commonly needed in an office setting anymore.
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