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#283206 - 01/02/17 03:37 PM Millennials lack basic survival skills ...
Russ Offline
Geezer

Registered: 06/02/06
Posts: 5357
Loc: SOCAL
Interesting read at: Millennials lack basic survival skills compared to older generations. Being a member of one of those older generations (boomer) I wondered how many here would agree.
Quote:
...A survey shows millennials are missing out on practical skills such as map reading or fishing, compared to their grandparents’ generation.

More than half of young adults were unable to tie a single knot and 40 per cent had never swum in open water, despite Britain being an island nation. ....
I know that many here make a point of introducing their off-spring and others to camping and relevant skill-sets, but how much of that training is otherwise useful in daily life?

I was raised on a small farm and worked on much larger farms; if you didn't know how to do something, members of the greatest generation or their elders would bring you up to speed in short order. My father was skilled in carpentry, welding, plumbing, wiring a house and he taught knot tying and splicing skills to my cub scout pack; his job involved none of that. The only thing he didn't let me do was welding, although he did turn me loose with his cutting torch once, that was fun. I learned map reading on my own, seemed fairly self explanatory. After I joined the Navy I learned what I had missed and then I learned celestial navigation. But all that was also back when television sets had tubes so things have changed.

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#283207 - 01/02/17 03:54 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
wileycoyote Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 03/01/11
Posts: 309
Loc: north central west TX
i too have observed that millennials lack the abilities to do even menial skills. some can't change a light bulb or drive a nail. they figure on paying others to do these lowly degrading tasks. i hope they can all afford it. very sad way of living.

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#283208 - 01/02/17 04:32 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: wileycoyote]
hikermor Offline
Geezer in Chief
Geezer

Registered: 08/26/06
Posts: 7705
Loc: southern Cal
On the other hand, they do have skills. My millennial is still hangin' round the old homestead and she will be missed dearly, because she is the acting IT officer.

Needed and relevant skills change with the generations. I can't make a decent buggy whip and my mule packing skills are minimal (although I did do some of that back in '57). None of us can fashion an arrowhead from chert very well, either...There are folks around who can do all of these things, but they are rare, exotic proficiencies these days.

Change a light bulb?? Obsolete!!! Don't you have LED's?

Somehow I think they will survive just fine....


Edited by hikermor (01/02/17 04:40 PM)
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#283210 - 01/02/17 04:54 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: wileycoyote]
haertig Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 03/13/05
Posts: 2322
Loc: Colorado
My son lives in an older house, and I make a point to include him in all repairs (not that I'm very good at that myself). There are a LOT of repairs that he's getting to learn. He's at least "normal" when it comes to doing tasks. My daughter, on the other hand, has surpassed me. She's really good at figuring things out. She also likes to learn the traditional ways of doing things. The other day she was "rendering fat". I have no idea what that means, or why you'd want to do it. She grinds her own wheat and cooks everything from scratch. Makes lots of her own clothing (sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc.)

As far as survival in the wilderness, my daughter would do OK I think, but I'd be praying for my son. He's not really the outdoors type, so just hasn't been exposed to things like starting fires, etc. The daughter ... she's always out climbing or hiking or SCUBA'ing. She loves the outdoors and handles herself well there. I don't think this is really a generational thing. I think it's just where their interests lie that makes the difference.

I guess my kids are millennials. Ages 27 and 25. I don't know the year-of-birth brackets for the different generations. I think I'm on the tail end of the boomers myself (born in the mid 50's).

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#283211 - 01/02/17 05:44 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
gonewiththewind Offline
Veteran

Registered: 10/14/08
Posts: 1517
In my experience, when a generation or age group (usually the younger) lacks some skill, knowledge or motivation, it is because of how they have been taught. There are now few social incentives which make it desirable to learn such things. It is up to us to teach them.

Society changes, and skills that were essential to one generation may not be for the next. People will adapt to their environment and situation regardless of age. They just need to see a need for it, to be motivated to do it.

It was always a pet peeve of mine that older and more experienced people blamed younger (and yes, I was usually in that younger group) for not knowing something, and yet that older generation never took the time to try to teach it. It was very prevalent in the military, and I was in hot water on many occasions for criticizing those older ones for not showing the essential leadership and teaching them.

In all of my time I have always been proud of the willingness and ability of most service members to deal with the situations that they face.

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#283213 - 01/02/17 06:14 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
quick_joey_small Offline
Addict

Registered: 01/13/09
Posts: 571
Loc: UK
The Daily Express is a joke newspaper that simply makes stuff up. Our media are far worse than yours in the US. If it's from an unnamed source; the source doesn't exist.

A glance at teenagers trainers will tell you they can tie a knot.
qjs

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#283214 - 01/02/17 06:52 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
Teslinhiker Offline
Veteran

Registered: 12/14/09
Posts: 1418
Loc: Nothern Ontario
Every generation says the same about the next generation. As I was growing up, my parents said the same about my generation and my grandparents said the same about my parents. And now, I hear it from my generation down to next. I think it can be traced all the way back to the caveman days when Uggag and Orkk lamented that their sons could not light a campfire unless they had rock and flint.

IN all seriousness, Hikermor summed it up best. "Needed and relevant skills change with the generation."

What you or you parents and grandparents learned 50-60 or more years ago, much of is not relevant nor safe today. Also many of those old timey skills and knowledge have proven to be downright dangerous and have brought about massive changes in not only building or electrical codes to medical diagnostics and treatment to automotive safety design changes to survival skills to name a few.
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Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

John Lubbock

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#283216 - 01/02/17 08:09 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
M_a_x Offline
Veteran

Registered: 08/16/02
Posts: 1203
Loc: Germany
I suspect that the numbers are either made up or "tuned" by cherry picking.

Originally Posted By: Russ

I know that many here make a point of introducing their off-spring and others to camping and relevant skill-sets, but how much of that training is otherwise useful in daily life?


The survival skills are a nice medium for the core skills.
The most important points for daily life are a method of learning things and the experience that learning can be fun. With that foundation most required skills can be aquired.
That´s really important as schools tend to take the fun out of learning.
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If it isn´t broken, it doesn´t have enough features yet.

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#283217 - 01/02/17 09:40 PM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
Tjin Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 04/08/02
Posts: 1821
Well times change, so does required skills. Don't know how to do something; these days you can just google how to do it or watch youtube for tutorials.

More complicated stuff, well plenty of free websites like eDX, courseca, futurelearn, etc with universities giving courses.

Knowing where to find and learn a skill is also a skill. And millinia's are doing that pretty well.

Pratical skills like map reading or fishing. Well for most things just grabbing your smartphone get you from a to b pretty quickly. (not in the wilderness, but how many young people do actually go to the outdoors?).
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#283218 - 01/03/17 12:55 AM Re: Millennials lack basic survival skills ... [Re: Russ]
wildman800 Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 11/09/06
Posts: 2846
Loc: La-USA
Were you a Quatermaster like I am?
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