Life Skills Overlooked

One of the books in my stack of library books is Help for the Harried Homeschooler. Although catered for Christians, apparent from the quoted verses of the Bible, I find the values to be similar.

I was particularly struck by one section talking about how to handle homeschooling in the midst of moving. The author appeases anticipated worries of homeschoolers over their children missing out on academical learning during the process of moving by highlighting the advantage of learning life skills.

I have to say, even though I have changed my mindset with regards to approaching learning, I am still a schooler at heart. It has been too ingrained in most of us, that it's kind of difficult to view non academic learning as learning. So I would be one of the homeschoolers addressed in that section.

It made me ponder, though. Life skills; labelling packed boxes, observing the process of changing addresses, organizing boxes, and everything else associated with moving, definitely are important skills too. This has truly been an enlightening journey for me, to discover and rediscover, and step outside the box, and see schooling and learning from a different perspective.

Mothers sometimes spare their daughters from any work in the kitchen or house because their daughters have to spend the time studying so they will get good grades, and achieve what the mothers never got to achieve when they were growing up. I won't get into this issue, but just wanted to put it out there, again.

Why do we often overlook life skills? Life skills are important, and I always found myself stressing over the kids not learning anything academic, thereby overlooking all the learning they are going through in our daily lives. Is academic the only thing that matters now? You still have to know how to manage a house, the car, yourself, your surroundings.

Homeschooling provides more than an education. It provides the tools to live life, inshaallah. When the children are not learning anything that seems academic, they are not 'not doing anything beneficial'. Their play are medium for learning, and it is this freedom to live life naturally that homeschooling provides. Domestic skills are very low nowadays, and from my observation, most women now are often at a loss at home, and this is when they exclaim at their stay-at-home mothers counterparts,

"I don't know how you can stay home! I'd go crazy!"

We have been trained and raised to value academics over life skills, such that most women nowadays are lacking the skills needed to fulfill their natural roles in the society. May we not make the same mistake, for our girls and our boys, inshaallah.