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Comment by s-lambert | Hacker News Reader

> 1 - a high school education in the US no longer results in someone functionally prepared for citizenship (manage a budget, understand how to vote, keep themselves fed and clothed, understand a newspaper etc).

Besides understanding a newspaper, which arguably schools do teach since they teach you to read and do analysis on text in English classes, did high school education ever cover the rest of this?

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Yes, they were called “home economics classes” (or “home ec” for short). They were snobbishly looked down upon by anyone college bound when I went to high school, which is unfortunate.

They literally taught sewing, cooking, balancing a checkbook and budgeting, child care, basic auto mechanics, and some welding iirc. These are all super useful life skills and the sad part is that all of us brilliant geniuses that went on to college never got the equivalent covered.

Auto mechanics and welding you got in shop classes, not home ec. I was likewise tracked away from both, on the idea that I was too smart to need to know such things, and I haven't yet stopped resenting it.

Not too late to teach yourself those skills! I didn't start getting into auto-mechanics until I was well past college.

Planning on buying a cheap welder soon and teaching myself how to weld in the next 6 months (at age 50).

Oh, I've acquired most of those skills on my own in the interim. I just haven't stopped being annoyed that I was denied the opportunity to do so as part of my formal education, on the basis of an incorrect assumption that I was college bound and a wrongheaded idea that such people should not have dirt under their fingernails.

I've come to understand that I'm a downtown living, college educated, hipster. Wanting to change my own oil and do my own repair I found a garage that charges $140/day to rent a bay and tools. Can't exactly be a shade tree mechanic at the dog park.

Yeah. I HAVE done major auto repair in an apartment complexes parking lot, but a lot of buildings do not tolerate that sort of thing.

I have also done an oil change in the parking lot of a local auto parts store, and they were totally cool with it.

$140/day seems steep but kudos for taking the initiative.

I feel like it'd be weird to find an auto parts store that wasn't OK with doing repairs in the parking lot. On the one hand, you're going to get a lot of people coming in to buy parts for ad hoc stuff. And on the other, if somebody finds halfway through a battery swap or whatever that they're short a tool they need, where are they going to go to get it?

$140/day seems steep to me as well. But if the tools are proper I can be in and out before the sun sets. If I do it in my parking lot I'm still spending $3-400 in tools. And I'll still need an air compressor.

They have a special rate for oil changes, $40. But you only get an hour on the lift. Just enough time to refill, replace filters, and rotate tires.

I do all my work on the street because I don't have a garage or driveway. I live in an upscale neighborhood ($2m homes average). There's not much of an issue with it. People look but that's about it.

Doing work in the parking lot of an auto parts store is very normal.

If you're teaching yourself to weld buy the cheapest 220v DC stick welder you can find. MIG sucks for beginners because it doesn't teach you anything except how to pull a trigger.

That was the plan. Got to get the 220v run done first though. :-) Or find a cheap generator that will do 220.

I wanna be like you, I'm at 29 but continue learning and being curious.

I learned how to weld at my local community college for less than $500 (course fees, all of the books are very inexpensive). Highly recommend the experience if you have a community college close by.

I've often wondered how much it would cost to learn HVAC stuff myself and then set up a "business" so I could purchase the the necessary items to DIY AC fixes.

You can get books from my local library that can lead towards getting a license in hvac.

Without a license, you can learn to safely change capacitors, contactors, 24v transformers, and thermostats.

The only knowledge I distinctly remember gaining in high school was from a class called "consumer auto". I learned to change my oil, replace the brakes and flush the lines, check the fluids, etc.

As a broke college student DIY auto repair was a great way to save money. As someone with a job, it's more of a hobby.

But learning how to fix a basic machine is an amazing lesson in design: you see how mature technology is made to be maintainable, which isn't something you get from a lot of modern electronics.

Where I went to school everything you just said was a mandatory class from middle school on. They taught you how to make snacks on your own and do the basics of cooking, sewing, and cleaning for a middle school age kid. They also had budgeting classes or a portion of a class, can’t remember. Home EC and typing was 100% mandatory in middle school.

Shop and welding was long gone by the early 2000s but my school had a big greenhouse so I took Horticulture.

Aka the "be a good wife" classes for girls.

My recollection of home ec was it was majority boys and mostly athletes. Most of the girls felt they didn't need the class (already had the life skills those courses covered) or were college-bound and didn't have time in the schedule for it.

A good friend of mine, who later went to the NFL, was so excited he learned to bake cookies. He also learned to read the stocks section and was super excited to try investing.

* He's doing quite well now. Football paid for college, NFL paid for law school.

It was when I went to school in the UK especially in the lower streams i.e. those expected to leave at 16.

It was considered a bit advanced that some boys took it don't think girls shop classes.

>did high school education ever cover the rest of this?

No. But the upper middle class from which most of HN's inhabitants come could more easily be ignorant of it back then.

You had the token home ec and wood shop classes but eeryone who wasn't super interested did whatever and got a B and didn't really pick up any lasting knowledge in the process (art and music have similar probably the best point of comparison today).

That class was called Home Economics.

Here in Canada mine did. They were optional courses inside of requisite streams, however.

[In the Ontario public school system, specifically] we were required a Civics-classified course in our upper years which resulted in me taking Canadian History rather than general civics—but understanding how to vote has never been a burden here.

Budgets, etc, were covered by a maths course called "Math for Everyday Life" which was, unfortunately, in the "enter the workforce" rather than the College or University stream so most avoided it because it appeared as if it was next to remedial. I took it. It was alright. I don't remember specifics, but it's likely responsible for a lot of my intuitive understanding of things like budgets, credit systems, mortgages, etc. While it wasn't in the higher streams, it did fulfill the requisite for math in order to graduate.

As far as English courses, we were required to take one of College or University streams throughout high school for reading a mix of literature critically, dramatically, and to engage in debate. You could also optionally take a Creative Writing course beside that which had more reading, more debate, more in-depth grammar and creative exercises (which if you ask me only improves reading comprehension) as well as a final project of developing a small body of related work, presenting it and defending it in a proposal.

And I attended rural schools, one of which was being progressively closed as I attended (thanks Mike Harris), so it wasn't just a matter of being in a city rich with resources, or of a certain class.

That said, it's unfortunate that I hear a lot of people claim those kinds of courses are not offered here (and worse, use that as reason for complete reform or selling our public system to private interests), and many subjects are not covered—but they are, and I've just noticed not many people take them. Canadian History, and our amazingly jaded teacher, covered in detail the dark side of the country's history and some of the complex network of politics of the First Nations, and the Math for Everyday Life course (while I wish I had dug into more complex topics with as much fervour) made the basic stuff a little more natural in my understanding.

Any of the wood shop/home economics (joint course, you had to take both) courses mentioned we had taken in the 7th/8th grade rather than high school. There was an auto shop, but I can't comment because I didn't take it. Car ownership seemed well out of reach so I didn't care as much at the time!

Ontario used to have a fifth year of secondary education (grade 13) which was phased out in 2003[1]. The expectation of secondary school students in Ontario prior to the abolition of the OAC year was that there were additional periods to use for electives.

I look back fondly on those years and absolutely loved free periods, in addition to the many electives I took that were not purely science or math.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Academic_Credit

I remember that. The last cohort of grade 13/OAC was when I entered high school. It definitely would be helpful, rather than racing kids into post-secondary. I ended up taking a year to work, myself, and saved some money, and spent a lot of time in music. Instead of heading off to U of T after that I rather wish I'd stayed that course (didn't even finish with the degree anyway but assumed the debt because I thought I should go)...

In the 1970s when my wife and I were in High School there were some gender biases. My wife (from Syracuse NY) had been cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc. because both her parents worked. She wanted to take shop instead because she was studying for the physical sciences and math. The high school administrators refused and forced her to take Home Economics. She was not pleased...

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