OT - Basic Skills in Today's World

[Too_Many_Tools]

It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well you get the idea...there are basic skills that one needs to deal with the world we live in. Well this article shows what that lack of training, due to whatever reason, means as they get older.

When I drive through a neighborhood, it is a rare garage that has anything like a workshop within it anymore....a reflection of the lack of interest or knowledge of the homeowner to work with their hands?

Do your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the generation who is succeeding us, have the basic skills that are needed in the world today?

TMT

Repair jobs challenge young homeowners By MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer Thu Aug 3

The staff at his neighborhood hardware store can spot John Carter from a distance.

He's the slightly befuddled guy who often comes in declaring, "I have no idea what I'm doing. Can you at least get me through tonight?"

The 26-year-old Chicagoan, who's been slowly rehabbing the condo he bought last year, is part of a generation of young homeowners who admit they often have no clue how to handle home projects.

For them, shop class was optional. It also was more common for their parents to hire contractors, leaving fewer opportunities for them to learn basic repair skills.

With low interest rates allowing more young adults to buy property in recent years, many inexperienced homeowners are desperate for advice when the furnace goes out, the roof leaks or when a home project that seemed like a no-brainer goes terribly wrong.

"They know they've got to buy real estate; they know it's a good investment. But that doesn't help you when you swing a hammer and hit a pipe in the wall," says Lou Manfredini, a Chicago hardware store owner who gives do-it-yourself advice on local radio and nationally online and on TV. "Unfortunately, homes don't come with an instruction manual."

Contractors say it's not unusual for them to get frantic calls from young do-it-yourselfers who get in over their heads.

Sometimes, the mistakes are silly.

Michel Hanet, who owns a door replacement business called IDRC in Scottsdale, Ariz., has arrived at homes to find doors hung upside down. He's also discovered more than one sliding pocket door that won't open because someone nailed a picture on the wall and into the door.

"The younger generation are more likely the ones that are getting into trouble," Hanet says. "The baby boomers have the money to do it, so they just call and say 'I don't like my doors; just come and replace them.'"

Kirsten Pellicer, the 30-year-old vice president of Ace hardware stores in Longmont and Boulder, Colo., sees many young customers looking to tackle projects on their own, often to save money.

"We rarely get requests for 'Do you know a good handyman?' from the younger set," she says.

For Carter, the young Chicagoan, it's all about being brave enough to try - and sometimes fail.

With the help of a buddy who has rehabbing experience, he's put in hardwood floors, knocked out a wall and completely remodeled his condo kitchen.

In the process, he's also managed to nearly flood the kitchen after forgetting to completely seal off a refrigerator water line; had a sliding closet door he was installing shatter a light bulb over his head and crash on top of him; and been fined by his condo association for a couple of other mishaps.

"The one thing about home remodeling is that it is intimidating. But in the end, you find it's definitely worthwhile," says Carter, whose day job is at a large accounting firm where he secures computerized financial data. "You just have to accept that you're going to screw up."

Dave Payne, a 26-year-old condo owner in suburban Atlanta, knows what he means.

Payne made the mistake of trying to spackle over wallpaper in his condo bathroom, leaving uneven chunks where the wallpaper pulled away from the wall.

"There were just times when I wanted to pull my hair out and hire someone when I looked at my ruined walls," he says.

But after hours of "spackling, sanding, spackling again, sanding again, then priming," he's hoping no one will notice.

Increasingly, hardware professionals and others are addressing the need for know-how.

Some community colleges and stores such as Lowe's and Home Depot offer classes in projects from changing a faucet to tiling and putting in a dimmer switch.

"It gives them some exposure, so if they want to do it on their own, they have a starting point," says Peter Marx, a remodeling contractor who teaches home repair at North Seattle Community College.

Others find help online, including at the Ace site, where Manfredini

- the Chicago hardware store owner - answers questions.

Home-centered television networks, including HGTV, are also in vogue. HGTV executives say shows such as "Design on a Dime" and "What's Your Sign? Design" - a show that builds on the unlikely combination of astrology and home decorating - have helped boost its recent ratings among young adults.

While 27-year-old Amy Choate occasionally goes online or watches TV shows to get home-improvement ideas, more often she uses a resource closer to home: her mom.

Among other things, mom showed her how to fix wall cracks in her Chicago condo.

But Choate has no intention of tackling an upcoming kitchen rehab. She'll leave that to a professional.

"I'd probably do it wrong," she says, "and end up paying twice as much."

___

On the Net:

Answers (at) Ace:

Depot clinics: 's clinics:

[Ron Moore]

I always thought it was somewhat disgusting to see an open garage with no workbench or tools of any kind in it. Just space for CARS! How productive or creative can this person be? What are they going to do when they retire? What skills are they teaching their kids? When I was young, a garage full of tools and such was like a beacon in the night. Had to look, ask questions, wanted to get to know the person and try to learn. Nowadays, kids couldn't care less. I have noticed that the more expensive the neighborhood, the less garage creativity is visible. Respectfully, Ron Moore

"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

[Sue]

Kids being raised by single moms who didn't learn to work with their hands because it wasn't a woman's place to do these things. For awhile I owned a hardware store in Alaska. I knew absolutely nothing about hardware when we bought it, but I eventually learned what the stuff was called. Never did learn what to do with most of it. Luckily, I now have a very kind, generous gentleman friend who does a lot of the repair stuff for me. Some I could do but have this great fear of making whatever it is worse than when I started.

I doubt my son can do much in the way of working with his hands. His girlfriend is better at car stuff than he is because she worked in the motor pool in the Army. At one time she was probably better with guns than he is, but he's catching up.

Sue

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Well my son can use the Yellow Pages and write checks. He know what a hammer is, but does not have the desire to find out which end does what functions.

[Leon]

Blame the home builder. The last 4 homes that I have lived in have had garages only big enough for cars. When I was a kid I recall most every "Man of the house" was able to change a tire, make minor repairs and build items from wood. This neighborhood was built just after WWII and every garage in the neighborhood had at least 1 additional room attached for a work shop, storage, and in my case the garage had 2 extra storage rooms and a maid's quarters. All this detached from the main 1,200 sq. ft. 2 bedroom 1 bath house. I do not recall any of these extra garage rooms not having some kind of work area or work shop.

[Too_Many_Tools]

Very good post Ron....I wish I had written it.

TMT

R> I always thought it was somewhat disgusting to see an open garage with

[hot-ham-and-cheese]

Critical thinking is a lost art. It's loss gave rise to the democrat party. Two chickens in every pot. Nobody asked where the chickens would come from, who would pay for them. It's part of the Robin Hood mentality. My young son liked the Robin Hood story until I told him that Bill Clinton thought we were on the verge of becoming rich. I asked him which of his posessions he would like to have confiscated so that someone else could enjoy them.

Another time my son came home from school and said we need to quit cutting down trees and building houses. I said OK. Then I asked him if he liked living in our house. He did. I told him that the building material came from trees, and that the grounds we live on were once forested. I asked if, when he left home, he wanted to live in an apartment in the crime-ridden center part of the city. He didn't want to do that.

I certainly hope so, but with the media constantly pumping our children's heads with their thoughts, how will they cope? They'll probably all turn out to be good little unthinking voters, speeding our way to socialism

[Robert Sturgeon]

By and large, no. The post-modern economy is primarily concerned with symbol manipulation -- not the creation of real goods. There is very little call for the ability to do icky stuff like using tools. What is needed in today's world is the ability to manipulate symbols (known also as the Symbolic Economy -- spreadsheets, databases, web pages, data entry, reading and writing reports, politicking, entertainment, lawyering, etc.).

A serious question, but one most of us don't like to think about, is -- what skills might be needed in a post-post-modern (a.k.a. post-SHTF) economy? And could we meet such needs, if necessary? Probably not, which leads us to the possibility of Tim May's "massive die-off," which people like Jared Diamond assure us is possible when any society/economy collapses. It is probably true that the more symbolic, abstract, and detached from the production of real goods a society/economy becomes, the more likely it is to suffer a catastrophic collapse.

Fun, huh???

-- Robert Sturgeon Summum ius summa inuria.

[Too_Many_Tools]

I think you have a good point Robert.

In my opinion the more technologically advanced a society is, the more "fragile" it becomes.

TMT

Robert Sturge> >

[Too_Many_Tools]

I think you have a good point Robert.

In my opinion the more technologically advanced a society is, the more "fragile" it becomes.

TMT

Robert Sturge> >

[Lew Hodgett]

Too_Many_Tools wrote: > It has always concerned me when the young amoung us are not taugh basic > skills such as how to change a tire, how to use a saw, how to...well > you get the idea...there are basic skills that one needs to deal with > the world we live in.

It is impossible to work on the modern car without a lot of very specialized equipment.

Few doctors make house calls any more.

Might find it a little difficult to raise and butcher your own hogs in most places where people live these days.

Times change, people change, the skills required to live in a modern society keep changing.

Think the process is called "life".

Lew

[F. George McDuffee]

If we don't get what we want, we get what we deserve?.

Although this will draw the usual cries of "off topic" etc., I feel that it is never-the-less one of the more important posts that directly impacts the readers of these newsgroups and their topics.

To put this screed in perspective, I spent the last 15 years of my working career in post-secondary education at small to medium sized community [junior] colleges. This could be a full-length article, and I have indeed written several.

History clearly shows that any society/culture/economy where a majority of its people loses (or never attains) at least a basic level of understanding of its principal and major activities is doomed in the long run (and most likely in the short run) because they are unable to control what they have created (popularly termed a "Frankenstein's monster"). Failure to understand farming in an agricultural society, science in a technical society, etc. is a disaster in the making.

It does not matter if the lack of understanding occurs because of failure to teach and pass on hard-won knowledge, or new "things" are introduced into the society/culture without a basic understanding by the majority of the people *AND THEIR LEADERS*.

NOTE: Simply knowing "stuff" is not the same thing as knowing the

*RIGHT* "stuff" in this context. Indeed, it appears one of the most definitive symptoms of this emerging and progressive problem is an endless expansion of "education," with no rationale or justification, into areas of limited or no utility, and in many cases into areas more properly called magic, the occult, and theology (in the sense that the assumptions and tenets can not be proved or disproved by physical evidence). Consider how many of our current "hot button issues" fit the occult and theological templates of unseen forces and arcane knowledge limited to specialist practitioners.

In the United States most states require a minimum of 180 days and/or 1080 hours of student attendance per year. It should be obvious that as this time is now fully "booked," when additional "stuff" is added, something else must be dropped. With the imposition of "Academic Trivial Pursuit" AKA "no child left behind," what was imposed was instruction in the skills necessary to score well on standardized objective tests [bingo cards] and short-term rote memorization and rapid recall of "factoids." What is being dropped are all vocational or "shop" classes. In addition to creating a generation that has no knowledge of how things work, the abolition of the vocational classes has lead to a huge upsurge in male dropouts who were attending school only for the vocational classes.

This is yet another example, where a critical public asset or facility, in this case free compulsory education, has been hi-jacked by the elite so they can impose their ideology and skim the benefits (i.e. college preparatory education) while the vast majority is deprived of the benefits (i.e. preparation for life rather than for yet more education) although the majority is expected to keep paying [more] for it.

The cure for this is local action, where the voters (parents) fire the existing school board, and where the new school board then fires the existing superintendents and principals, and so on.

Unka George (George McDuffee)

...and at the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: ?A Fool lies here, who tried to hustle the East.?

Rudyard Kipling The Naulahka, ch. 5, heading (1892).

[Trevor Jones]

Lew, I'll call BS on the "impossible to work on cars without specialized equipment"

It is in fact not only possible, but pretty easy to do. A simple set of hand tools and a Haynes or Chilton manual for your vehicle, and you or anyone else is quite capable of changing the oil, belts, or various electrical components like starters or alternators, at home or on the roadside.

Those are the stuff that make the bread and butter money for the dealers. They are also the things that the average driver should be quite able to recognize while they are starting to fail, too.

Even simple stuff like changing a flat seems to stump people these days.

Advanced diagnostics on the emissions control stuff is only a little more difficult, now that most manufacturers are using somewhat standardized on board diagnostics (OBD)in the computers. A simple code reader and reset tool can be got for way less than $100, and you can get a very nice diagnostic tool for less than the price of a set of good tires. Most OBD systems allow you to read the codes without tools, if you know how (hint: the manuals usually list the codes and tell how to get them)

Specialization is for insects!

Cheers Trevor Jones

[dcaster]

With the

I agree with most of what you said. I do think that we need some method of measuring the effectiveness of schools. So we do need standard objective tests. And we do need to teach a certain amount of " factoids " as well as principles. Knowing a certain amount of facts allows one to concentrate on the larger problem. I would hate to go thru life having to look up the value of Pi when I need to know the area of a circle or go find a calculator. But we also need to teach understanding what accuracy is needed when using Pi.

The current tests may not be what is needed. But one needs to be able to put numbers on things in order to optimize. Sure more teachers are good, but what is the most cost effective number of kids in a class? And does it vary by age. Does it vary by the subject being taught. In high school the class size is about 30 to 35. But suddenly in college the class size might be 300 to 400.

And I think we need more competition in schools. The existing school board may or may not need to be fired. But there needs to be more charter schools and vouchers for private schools so students have choices. We need schools that prepare students for college as well as schools that prepare students for living without a college degree. Without competition the public schools are going to go for the one size fits all. It is a lot easier to administrate.

Dan

[Mark & Juanita]

On Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:53:16 -0500, F. George McDuffee wrote:

... snip

While I believe that most of your premise is pretty close to on the mark, I'm surprised that you pick no child left behind (NCLB) as your sore point. Vocational and shop classes were being dropped long before the NCLB bill was initiated. The standardized tests and other elements of that bill were a response to the very real fact that children were graduating from school who were unable to read, write, or perform basic math. Those are skills that are fundamental, regardless of whether the person is going to college or to a career in the trades. Some means of assuring that high school graduates are capable of performing the most rudimentary elements of societal activities (ability to balance a checkbook, read instructions and ballots, etc) need to be established -- how else to do this but testing those candidates for graduation? IMO, the real culprits in taking time away from true education are those things identified as "crucial" by social engineers in the education system to effect their own view of how the world should work -- diversity education, inability to call anything "failure", and other "classes" that spend more time worrying about emotional adjustment of the child rather than instilling true knowledge, thinking skills, and information into that child. We've got to get the social engineers out of the educational system and get real educators back in. I don't care if Johnny or Jill are emotionally "well adjusted" graduates able to accept anyone who lives any sort of lifestyle and that Johnny knows that as a male he is responsible for all of the oppression and ills of society as it exists and that he must work to tear down the patriarchy and male-oppression in this society all the while working to ban any sort of technological advances in order to save the planet -- if neither of them can read or do math they are going to become drains on society and incapable of providing any sort of meaningful contribution beyond asking "do you want fries with that?"

Please, note, I'm not defending NCLB; after Bush let Kennedy write the bill and strip away the only portion that had any hope of saving education in America (vouchers that would have instituted a competitive, truly accountable educational system), I've seen no point in having the federal government get involved in what should constitutionally be a state and local issue.

... snip

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[grappletech]

A lot of it is simply due to the large population. There are way more people now, so there's going to be a higher number of younger people who don't know a wrench from a socket, making the problem seem epidemic. But the actual percentage of younger people today with basic skills probably is not too much lower than previous eras of young people. Just higher numners now, due to the increased population. Statistics/mathematics 101. I am 33 and all of my friends and I grew up helping our dads put additions onto the house, wrench on the family wagon, etc.. There were girls in our shop and wood classes. Probably

30% were girls. Plus, I took sewing!

An early 20's female friend of mine called me recently, frustrated. She couldn't get her bed apart. She was moving. I went over there. She was literally beating, with a hammer, the nuts and bolts holding the bed together! "These screws won't pop off!", she said. "Um, because those aren't screws. Even if they were screws, the way to get them out would be to use a screwdriver. But those are nuts and bolts." So I used a screwdriver and a 10mm wrench to remove the bolts. I tried to keep from making fun of her utter and complete lack of even the basic mechanical skills.

[Morris Dovey]

| History clearly shows that any society/culture/economy where a | majority of its people loses (or never attains) at least a basic | level of understanding of its principal and major activities is | doomed in the long run (and most likely in the short run) because | they are unable to control what they have created (popularly | termed a "Frankenstein's monster"). Failure to understand | farming in an agricultural society, science in a technical | society, etc. is a disaster in the making.

Agreed - but I'd like to point out that we're failing at even more fundamental levels than you've stated:

We're not succeeding at teaching the basics of problem-solving. I'm finding that, more and more, kids and young adults seem to have difficulty applying knowledge they already posess to the solution of problems they haven't confronted previously.

Our educational institutions aren't getting across to students *why* it's important to learn what's being taught. History, for example, has become the boring exercise of learning dates and names rather than the adventure of discovering what mankind can/can't, must do, and must not do in order to survive and flourish.

Too much of education is disjoint from the real world. In the past, I occasionally taught junior high and high school math. In one school I was told to do nothing more than baby sit an unruly seventh grade class. The principal knew that I was a "computer guy" and suggested that I spend the hour talking about computers to fill the time. It was interesting that this bunch of "problem" kids, was able (in _one_ hour) to design logic for a (very basic) CPU - and they were so "into" the process that they didn't want to stop when the bell rang. The only possible conclusion for me was that it wasn't the kids who were the problem.

At another high school I was called in to take over for a math teacher who was laid up in the hospital for several weeks following an accident. I decided to take in a "show and tell" for each topic for all of the classes to illustrate how the stuff they were studying was used in the real world - and encouraged questions and discussions of the applications. It was damn near magical! The kids - all of 'em - decided that math could be not only interesting, but fun. The eighth-graders (studying arithmetic and geometric series) took the bit between their teeth and galloped into differential calculus without having a clue that's what they were doing. I feel truly sorry for all of the math teachers who miss out on having the kind of highs I experienced. But the important point is that all it took was providing links between the subject matter and the real world to "set the hook."

| It does not matter if the lack of understanding occurs because of | failure to teach and pass on hard-won knowledge, or new "things" | are introduced into the society/culture without a basic | understanding by the majority of the people *AND THEIR LEADERS*.

Actually, it _does_ matter if we consider it a problem and have serious intentions about solving it.

| This is yet another example, where a critical public asset or | facility, in this case free compulsory education, has been | hi-jacked by the elite so they can impose their ideology and skim | the benefits (i.e. college preparatory education) while the vast | majority is deprived of the benefits (i.e. preparation for life | rather than for yet more education) although the majority is | expected to keep paying [more] for it.

I'm not sure that it's been hi-jacked by the "elite". I think it's being suffocated by apathy, mis-directed good intention, incompetence, changes to family structure, and laziness - and I don't think it's possible to lay the responsibility on any single grouping of people.

| The cure for this is local action, where the voters (parents) | fire the existing school board, and where the new school board | then fires the existing superintendents and principals, and so | on.

Some of the above (and I'm not excluding parents) definitely need to be replaced with better; but I have difficulty believing that what you're advocating would amount to very much more than a bureaucratic version of musical chairs. I think we need a better solution than that.

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Lew Hodgett]

Totally impractical to try to work on an automobile today.

If you live in an urban area, many places do not permit working on a car, especially outside, even on your own property, much less a rental unit.

Want to change your oil?

6 qts of oil, an air and oil filter costs as much or more than paying for that same service down at the corner gas station, in this area at least, never mind the used oil disposal process and cost.

Sort of makes changing your own oil a non productive process.

Want to change the coolant every couple of years?

Again you face a toxic waste disposal problem which does not include being able to pour used coolant into the sewer.

The plugs on my vehicle are good for 100,000 miles and require special tools to change. Think I'll pass on that one.

Most people don't keep a vehicle 100,000 miles like I do so they don't even have to think about changing plugs and wires.

Matter of fact, most of today's vehicles have a pretty good track record for the first 75,000 miles.

Trying to do your own auto repairs today is a lose-lose proposition, IMHO.

Now you want to talk about diesel engine maintenance on a sail boat, that's another matter.

Lew

[Jay Pique]

No. I was raised completely without basic carpentry or mechanical skills, completely without knowledge of how nature worked, of how food got to the table. It wasn't taught at home or at school. The joke about the VCR blinking "12:00" in perpetuity seems sad to me. READ THE DIRECTIONS! Figure it out. Fix it. My parents seem to think that things operate (or don't) because of some malevolent force that's out to ruin their day. "Why isn't this stupid thing working again!!" Uhh, because you tossed out the directions without reading them, never maintained it and now you can't or won't investigate the problem. I could really go on a jag, but I feel like there's a huge lack of reality to a lot of what's taught these days. We weren't given real-life examples of how geometry or trig could be useful - much less calculus. It's frustrating to be learning basic skills this late in life, and I'm still a fairly young guy.

JP

[Trevor Jones]

For you perhaps, for me, not so much.

That, I'll have to leave to the discretion of the individuals involved, though I have not yet run across it in a situation that caused any serious inconvenience.

I can get the oil changed in my car for about the same as it costs me to get it done for me. I do it myself. Seen a couple botched oil plugs from the minimum wage earners at the oil change places. They won't cover costs on repairs or towing. All the places I buy my oil, aso collect for no charge. In one area that I lived, this was mandated by provincial law. In any case, there are always hazmat collection days or dropoffs.

Not really. I can visually inspect the condition of the other parts while I am so doing.

Same as oil. I can drop coolant at the places I buy, or send it through a couple different routes for recycling. Doesn't cost me, but for the time it takes.

Special as in a couple flex joints in the extension, or special like a seven sided socket? FWIW I probably would not buy a special tool for most of what I do. If the option is a $30 special tool or a bill for an hours shop time, so they can do a twenty minute job, I'll buy the tool.

I have three vehicles right now. The low mileage one is my wifes car,

250 thousand kilometers, my car has 394 thousand, and my new truck has 341 thousand. I just gave away a truck that had 425 thousand Km's on it. I put most of them there. It passed a safety check a couple years back.

Not as much as paying some joker $85 an hour shop rate to do what I can do in less time, not to mention that I don't bill out at book rate to myself. I try to keep a straight face when I hear of guys being quoted better than a months wages for work that takes less than a decent days work to do. The ones that pay those rates are keeping the economy rolling right along. :-) I don't muck with tires much anymore, and won't touch airbags or a/c (other than belts).

Let's not. Your money is already gone! :-)

Cheers Trevor Jones