Maybe it’s about time our schools recalled ‘adulting’

In the perpetually-swinging pendulum of educational wisdom, some experts are calling for a return to hands-on classes such as shop and home economics.

“These are the kinds of ‘adulting’ skills many kids no longer learn at home, whether it’s because their working parents are too busy or their extracurriculars too onerous,” a New York Times columnist explained.

“According to popular educational theory, some kids are what educators call tactile learners; they do especially well with a kinesthetic instruction that involves actively doing over passively absorbing,” she added.

My feeling is that writers who twist nouns into verbs such as “adulting” should have their desktops confiscated, or the next thing you know they’ll be using them to create abominations such as “childing,” “adolescenting” and “senior citizening.” Which I’ll resist for as long as I’m still columning.

But I do wonder how my grandkids are going to fare after their elders are gone, but before AI takes care of all their needs. Will my grandsons know how to use a wrench? Will my granddaughters know how to darn a sock? Will any of them ever want to?

Before “kinesthetic instruction that involves actively doing over passively absorbing” was born, classes to teach hands-on skills were staples of public education.

Dusting off my high school yearbook, for example, I counted five shop or home economics teachers. In contrast, there were just two academic counselors who, the yearbook said, stood “ever ready and willing to help the student find his niche in college, business or industry.” (Yes, that was “HIS” niche. Girls, presumably, would be too busy darning socks to worry about their niches.)

I don’t know what else besides sock-darning went on in the girlsonly home economics classes. But the boysonly shop class I was required to take consisted of making a garden trowel, a lamp and avoiding the wrath of Mr. Ehlert, who rumor had it, could probably pound a nail into a two by four with his bare knuckles.

At the end of the semester I proudly took home my projects and presented them to my mother.

“Those are wonderful, sweetheart,” she said. “Which one’s the lamp?”

But according to a survey taken a few years ago, shop and home economics are among classes no longer considered necessary in most public schools. Other anachronisms included cursive handwriting, the Dewey Decimal System and violent gym classes that permitted aggressive activities such as dodgeball (to be replaced by kinder, gentler yoga).

And, illustrating how quickly educational wisdom changes, the latest class considered out-ofdate was ... basic computer skills. The educational pendulum never stops swinging, though, so that one might return some day.

Maybe when our descendants are “great grandchilding.”