Slow Schooling Chapter Eleven: Life Skills

On learning real life skills

Apr. 23, 2007

2:45 PM

Pressing On....

My 7yo son has put together and fastened a battery-powered cable car that runs from the dining room window to the upstairs railing. I imagine at 17 he will be doing the same thing, only from a 50 foot high tree house to the ground, for the purpose of bringing up his dog. Would that count on a high school transcript?

Most children are run through the public system as if he or she is college-bound to inevitably work a lifetime for a corporation. That system fails the children that are more gifted or eager to work with their hands in a trade, create artwork of some kind, or coax food from the ground. Because our society thrives when people fulfill their own innate talents and bents for the good of others, it doesn’t make the education a future CEO needs inherently worth more than the training for rug weaving. And making more money isn’t the best indicator of happiness, which is, most parents say, what they want more than anything else for their children:…