The Scotsman is all aflutter over a new poll that shows UK youngsters hopelessly stumbling through life, bewildered by potatoes and shampoo bottles:
A new generation of children is growing up as "life incompetents", unable to sew, care for their clothes, or even realise that potatoes are boiled before being mashed. Research published yesterday, after a three-year study by Stirling University, revealed youngsters today fail miserably in "Mrs Beeton’s skills" - the basics of cookery, cleaning, repairing and money management, which their grandparents took for granted.
A combination of a cosseted lifestyle and being raised by parents who are barely more competent than the children is to blame. It has left a generation unable to care for itself...
The team, led by Suzanne Horne, a senior lecturer in the department of marketing, investigated the lifestyle of nearly 1,200 Scottish schoolchildren. They were "stunned" by what they found.
She said: "Some did not know that you mash potatoes only after boiling them - and they were ‘educated’. Some children could not interpret wash care instructions on clothes labels and one girl took everything to a dry cleaner. Others discarded perfectly good clothing because they did not have the skills or the inclination to effect small repairs, such as replacing a button.
One could argue that some of these skills aren't as necessary as they were in Grandpa's day. Yes, it's good to know how to sew on buttons, but one can get through life nowadays without ever wearing a shirt with buttons on it, and clothing isn't quite as pricey and precious as it was back then.
On the other hand, I don't think home ec is at the heart of the issue for kids who can't understand labels on households goods. Especially we when meet this hapless chick:
It is a situation known only too well by young people such as Margaret Dyer, 20, who comes from a middle class home in Clarkston, near Glasgow.
"I was a ‘life incompetent’," said the student.
She added: "To a degree I still am, but I’m not nearly so bad as I once was. I was a whisker away from phoning helpline numbers on shampoo bottles.
Helpline numbers on shampoo bottles? That's not so much a failure of childrearing as personal hygiene and basic smarts, if someone can reach the age of 20 without knowing how to use a shampoo bottle. Something tells me that more than new home ec classes are required here.
Posted by kswygert at January 9, 2005 11:30 AM