“Adulting” has been a term that’s been thrown around over the past decade or so. Although, of course, the concept of “adulting” is something we’ve been doing since the dawn of time, but younger generations are surprisingly apprehensive about it because, well…it’s hard!
Paying taxes, changing a tire, cooking dinner – these are all things that adults do. But where and how do they learn to do it?
One high school in Kentucky is helping teach their students how to do these responsible adult tasks, something that is rare to find anymore in schools these days. Instead of simply learning biology and algebra, Bullitt Central High School held an “Adulting conference.”
According to the school’s Facebook page, the high school held this helpful conference late last year for its senior class. The goal is to teach these young adults how to use and practice real-world skills.
https://www.facebook.com/bullittcentralhs/posts/1860578667370993
There are 11 difference curated workshops ranging from how to cook in a dorm room to how to file your taxes, according to WAVE.
Bullitt Central High School encouraged the seniors to choose three workshops that seemed interesting or helpful to them. The purpose is “to gain more knowledge and skills pertaining to their lives once they leave us here at BCHS.”
Christy Hardin, director of the BCHS Family Resource & Youth Services Center, organized the event. She had noticed that so many students weren’t learning these “real life” skills before they headed off to college.
“I think that the idea occurred to me originally, I saw a Facebook post that parents passed around saying they needed a class in high school on taxes, and cooking,” Hardin said. “Our kids can get that, but they have to choose it. And (Adulting Day) was a day they could pick and choose pieces they didn’t feel like they had gotten so far.”
“Adulting Day” at BCHS comes as more and more millennials have started taking classes for cooking and tax prep because they were never taught how while growing up.
“I was so used to, when living at home, my mom always cooking,” Elena Toumaras, 29, told CBS New York of signing up for a cooking class. “Doing simple things now that I’m on my own, I’m struggling with it.”
The conference and workshops that the high school set up for “Adulting Day” have received lots of praise online from both student and adults that wish they had something like this offered to them while growing up.
“So it’s like Home Ec and Shop and Music and PE, What a Great Idea,” Rob Shaub said on Facebook. “Thank you for bringing this into schools again.”
“Yup. It would have been nice if my school taught us about budgeting, mortgages, insurance, filing taxes etc. instead of needless topics like Chemistry’s balanced equations and Math’s geometry,” Raven Bard said. “Seriously, I’ve not used half the things I had to learn in school in regular everyday adulting. What a waste.”
While the conference and program received an overwhelming amount of great feedback, others were quick to point out that it shouldn’t be the school’s responsibility to teach these things.
What do you think about this school’s effort to teach students these skills? Should courses like this be mandatory or should it be up to the parents to teach these things?
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
https://www.facebook.com/bullittcentralhs/posts/1860578667370993
