Community Chat

[Mominohio]

Just responded in Among Friends to a post about people not knowing how to make change after a purchase.

Got me to thinking about all the simple basic skills that are being lost.

Making change

Cursive writing

Reading a map

Putting pencil to paper

Here is a story about the last one (sorry if I have shared it elsewhere)

About four years ago, my son came out of a high school basketball game, worried about a player that had be hurt and taken to the hospital. He lamented that because he wasn't on FB, he wouldn't know updates on the kid. I asked if someone could call him. He said yes and went back int the school to give a girl his number.

When he came back out, I asked if he found her and gave our number. He said, that he did find her, but she couldn't take his number, because she didn't have her phone on her (to enter his number into)!

WHAT??!! You are in a school. How many pieces of paper and writing instruments must be laying around there? No one could even take a pen and jot his number down on their hand or arm? 

It scares me what people can't do or figure out now a days.

Care to share a story about skills that just a few years ago were 'universal' but seem to have all but disappeared?

[Meowingkitty]

I used to work with a girl who gave her step daughter, aged 13 or so, a watch. She had no clue what is was or how to tell time that wasn't digital. 

[Winkk]

I totally agree.  A lot of younger people don't know how to do anything unless it's computerized. 

[Laura14]

When my two nieces sat next to each other on the couch and started texting back and forth to one another, I lost all hope in mankind.  

[Jacie]

I always check my change, the kids are clueless. Three out of four times at my local coffee shop they blow it.

[jackthebear]

well people don't ride horses to town anymore either, life moves on

[PenneyT]

I'm just trying to keep up with NEW skills, lol! 

I guess that basic cooking skills are waning.

But I think that most skills that are 'lost' are lost because of time. People are so busy now, largely because of the need for two incomes. My mom used to embroider; I don't think people have as much free time. And kids now have to become tech-savy so quickly. Older folks may see modern technology as add-ons or optional, but it's really not. The basic skill sets now are so much more advanced when people go to apply for jobs, for example, that I'm glad children are getting trained early for what is now required knowledge.

[Desertdi]

Times have changed...........I take shorthand, and operate office machines such as teletype machines, addressographs, multiliths, accounting machines such as the Marchand................     Nobody has even HEARD of this stuff....at least not in recent history (!)

[depglass]

I once went to our small town museum in the Carnegie Library building.  Four women were standing next to a telephone switchboard, the kind where two wires were put into a board with holes completing a connection.  I worked on one of these in the 60's and really felt old explaining what it was.  That's when they still had person to person calls, the person wasn't there, you didn't pay for the call. 

[bri20]

there are many lost skills. I hate to see young kids out down though