Training in leisure and d-i-y skills for unemployment or retirement

Very little middle-class experience prepares the individual for leisure. Part of the trouble, of course, is the misemphasis in our educational institutions.

Perhaps the curriculum ought to be changed, or maybe just retitling some of the courses would help. Instead of teaching geography, for instance, we ought to teach 'travel'. Botany and geology could be called 'enjoying a walk'. Civics and government courses would be renamed 'political discussion' and would teach us how to talk politics without boring one another to death.

They should be taught all these elegant 'leisure'-class things, but they should also be taught 'working'-class skills as well. Everyone should know how to have the fun of tinkering with automobiles without making them worse. Everyone should be able to experience the joy of quickly fixing something (a faucet, say, or a light switch) instead of the chagrin of calling the plumber or electrician to repair what you spent frustrating hours on in your incompetence. We should all be taught carpentry and construction, landscaping and gardening.

The curriculum, in short, would be a combination of what used to be taught at elegant finishing schools on the one hand and the commercial, industrial, mechanical courses given at public high school on the other.