Advice needed.

securityguy

Newly_retired wrote: »

And that, in all my years of teaching, is the closest I have ever come to thinking that lessons in life skills was useful. The rest could get such skills from their parents or find out, or not, in their own way, at a time when they needed to know. It has never been part of the curriculum.
Apologies for the digression.

Indeed. Proposals about teaching "life skills" are mostly patronising middle-class nonsense, in which other people's children are taught stuff you don't want taught to your own children, but you're sure is necessary for the less fortunate (add as many sarcastic air quotes to that as you wish). A good test for any educational proposal is "will this be being taught at Eton, do you think, and if not, why not?"

Yorkshireman99

Newly_retired wrote: »

Many years ago, in a state school in a deprived area, I once had the opportunity to teach whatever I fancied to a class of girls, simply because there were too many of them for the cookery room. I taught basic life skills, including how to write a letter, how to budget and manage money, and we also discussed how to approach some of life's big decisions.
In actual fact, out of a list of about 12 names, attendance was normally 5 or 6, different ones each week, as the others were either truanting, or had to look after a younger sibling or even a parent who was ill.
I have to say the girls were amazed at what they learned in these lessons, never having heard the like before, but what good it did them, I shall never know.
And that, in all my years of teaching, is the closest I have ever come to thinking that lessons in life skills was useful. The rest could get such skills from their parents or find out, or not, in their own way, at a time when they needed to know. It has never been part of the curriculum.
Apologies for the digression.

Whatever academic subjects are taught the modern world requires much more teaching of what really matters to cope with the harsh realities of life. Some of the answers given in the forum seem to have been made to deliberately mislead by a few self opinionated idiots. Hopefully readers get proper advice rather than relying on their outpourings.