What Lost Skills Do We Continue Teaching?
How far back should we go?
As technology improves our lives, what lost skills do we need to keep? What ways of doing things are going to be around long enough to keep the effort worthwhile?
Currently the most effective theft deterrent for a car is for it have a manual transmission. The ability to drive a manual is phasing out as more modern automatic transmissions can do better at transferring power. Fewer cars are being built with manuals. So, should we still teach it?
Schools no longer teach script (cursive), so kids can’t read it either. Many schools also only have digital clocks, thus most kids can’t read analog. The people I’ve talked to regarding student abilities indicates that they also have terrible handwriting.
Logically, you will be bad at doing something you don’t have to do.
From what I’ve seen myself, school is far different. The need for actual books is lessening and the majority of the work can be done with a Google Chromebook.
Instead of knowing how to write a story outline, students are taught more about how to use Word. We used to use graph paper to work out our equations, these days that time and effort is spent learning some form of spreadsheet program.
