I've read how my generation could pass secret messages by writing in cursive and the now generation would be unable to read it. Or a vehicle that has a manual transmission is safe from carjacking.
Last weekend I was using a power router and the instructions said to route in a clock-wise direction. Made me wonder how many of today's cellphone generation know what clock-wise or counter clock-wise means?
We have to help our own children and family be smarter than the average bear.
The piece about not teaching and learning cursive may be true in some places, but that is not all true. I know that most schools are using cursive. I taught cursive to my students and so did my colleagues.It was a standard expectation. When they came to me in first grade, I worked with them to make sure they used print correctly. Letters such as "p" and other letters that hung below the line needed some prompting for some children. Often they would use a capitol "P" for everyone they wrote. I wouldn't accept work until the print letters were written correctly. It doesn't take long for children to not want to re-do something. A couple times and they get it. It is also a matter of learning and understanding about capitol letters. Print in shape, mostly by Christmas, and then we worked on cursive. We would work on them together and I would have children circle their best examples of writing those letters.
Manual transmission? Most women I know have never learned. If you lived or were around a farm at all as a kid, you had to know how to drive a manual transmission. It was one of my daughter's goals as a young adult, to learn to drive a manual transmission and she has a car that was her dad's as a once in a while drive that has a manual transmission. I think the desire for young people is exposure. Daughter and her dad would take road trips in cars with manual transmissions. He liked to drive a certain type of sports cars, and she developed a love of them from him.
Clockwise? We had analog clocks in classrooms, no digital. Because the bathroom was shared and way down the hall, we had a sign out sheet so we knew who was gone and how long in case we had to send a search party. Children had to know how to tell time to check out. We also had work for learning clockwork, on analog clocks. In the beginning, we had students come to school with a digital watch so they wouldn't have to think about the analog, parent provided of course. Do I know that clockwork is probably not taught in common crap? And there are probably many teachers now who are overwhelmed with teaching useless crap, instead of something useful. Yes, but telling time it is a life skill.
Is Common Core still being used in schools? I believe it is meant to dumb down America.