I was chatting on Facebook with a grand daughter recently. She didn’t know how to sew and wanted to make a Halloween costume. That amazed me, as I remember my early sewing experiences in junior high making a simple sack dress with a rolled collar. It was fun once I learned how to sew a straight stitch on the automatic sewing machines at school. My mom and grandma sewed on a treadle sewing machine that was powered by foot. As a young bride, I remember sewing curtains for our first apartment, sleeping bags for our boys, and dance costumes galore.
What is our world coming with so many BASIC SURVIVAL SKILLS being lost? I bet there are few teenagers who know how to make bread from scratch or even realize that store bought sliced bread wasn’t always available. Heck, I even remember when Nucoa made it first appearance as a substitute spread rather than butter for your toast. It came in a plastic bag with a color gel inside that you broke then spread throughout the mixture to make it yellow. Many of us probably remember toasting bread on an oven rack before there were toasters.
Computer skills are being learned as youth text each other on their electronic gadgets. They are not learning how to talk to one another, let alone notice body language in communication. What is to be done? Grandparents of the world arise! Take time from your retirement hobbies to teach the younger generation some of these LOST SKILLS like knitting a scarf or darning holes in socks or using yeast to make bread. If we don’t do it, who will? How many young men know how to change the oil or a tire on the family car, go fishing or saw a board? We are becoming a society not able to take care of our own basic needs. How many have ever planted a garden or fixed a leaky faucet or unplugged a stopped up toilet? Their busy parents don’t have time to teach these skills.
The schools should be addressing some of these skills, but they are doing well to turn out students who can pass the basic reading, math and science exams and graduate. Though the next generation does excel at video games. Getting to the next level of the newest game seems to have trumped the need to realize and learn what is really important. NEXT TIME: What’s Important?