So here we are.
No this is not a joke or a story produced by The Onion or The Babylon Bee.
The Greatest Generation have now produced grandchildren so inept that universities are launching “adulting” classes. This is what you get when government attempts to do the right thing. Generations of people who can't read, write intelligent sentences, or think critically.
The Daily Mail reports that Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada has launched 'Adulting 101' for “students who can't perform the most basic life tasks like changing a tire, buying groceries or doing laundry.” (See below)
This news was preceded by a New York Post story that the preeminent university in all the land, Harvard, has launched a new remedial math course. Called Math MA it is one year long, meets five days a week compared with the regular two days, and likely doesn't carry any graduation credits. Remedial math at Harvard.
Is anyone surprised? I'm not the least bit surprised by any of this. Seriously.
Our children, a daughter and a son, are now in their thirties. During their years at home in a traditional, Western, nuclear family, they were taught basic, common sense tasks such as doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, wiping after going to the bathroom, bed-making, basic carpentry and home repairs, and simple automotive repairs and servicing. Both kids rolled their eyes at doing some of these things. My greatest failure in this endeavor was my inability to teach our daughter how to drive a standard transmission car. I had taught my wife, and I taught my son. One failure I have to accept. I'll teach my daughter's daughter!
But, that failure is but a shadow in my wife's and my efforts to give our offspring basic life skills. Overall we succeeded.
And this was no better demonstrated to me, and starkly so the failures of the generation in which they were raised in, than one Autumn 2006 day when we received a phone call from our daughter. She was then in her freshman year at college.
A home football game was played the night before. That meant the vast majority of people on campus were at the stadium which cleared the way for a group of local teenagers to stroll through campus slashing the tires of over three dozen cars. Our daughter's car was one of those cars. She called home to see if I had a lead on an honest tire merchant in the small town where the college is located. I did, and she got a good deal on a new tire.
Happily, though, through my efforts at basic, common sense instruction, she pulled out her car jack and lug wrench and changed the damaged tire on her car with the spare. She then found herself doing the same for three classmate boys who were clueless in changing a tire. THAT was nineteen years ago. And while they may have been eighteen, they were still boys. A man knows how to change a tire.
But, how could I have possibly seen the harbinger of things to come back then. Now these universities and colleges are making money by charging for “adulting” classes. But perhaps I should have. I went back to college during the time my daughter was at hers. I went to Limestone College, a venerable liberal arts school founded in 1848, at a branch campus they had opened near our home. One of the required courses was a one-credit-hour class on – and I kid you not – the course catalog. THE COURSE CATALOG! Limestone was the fourth school of higher learning that I had attended. (Yes, it took me 31 years to get my bachelors degree).
I questioned the requirement and was told that it was now required by the accreditation authorities. I threw up my hands and passed the course with a 4.0. Sadly, Limestone College closed the doors a month ago after 177 years. Maybe the course catalog had a role.
The United States for years had the finest education system in the world. It is now dead last among modern, industrialized nations. It's frightening to believe that it's happening in Canada, too.
The great Thomas Sowell has been speaking and warning of the consequences of the things happening in the education, social, and government systems for the past 40 years. The real question today is how do we fix it? The 'radicalism' of the fix is likely more than the populace believes it can bear. I'm hopeful, but realistic. I'm frightened for the US, the West, and the planet as a whole.
And I can't really come up with a decent ending or summation for this particular blog entry. Make one up of your own.
Additional reading:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14754261/university-launches-adulting-101-course-teach-basic-life-skills-canada.html
https://nypost.com/2025/04/05/opinion/harvard-univ-the-ivy-league-teaching-remedial-math/
