you know, i agree with everything you say about modern ( mal ) education.

but you know what?

nobody forced you to never take an apprentice. that was a decision *you* made on your own.

and, oddly, i’ve noticed the same thing since my parent’s generation ( war babies, born in the 1940s ) in the US. my parents grew up reading and playing music. my mother was good enough that she played a xylophone recital on a cruise boat.

that’s relevant because the “music teacher” at my elementary school was throwing a temper tantrum over his pay and refusing to teach music as i was growing up. all he would do would be to throw a record on the player and have us do stupid shit like pretending to square dance. and the school principles and my parents knew about it, that NONE of us were being taught how to read music or play any instrument.

and no one did *anything* about it. literally anything. they didn’t hold the music teacher to account. they didn’t hold the principle to account. they didn’t even make the slightest attempt to teach me themselves … EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW PERFECTLY WELL how to read and play music. we even still had my father’s trombone. so i grew up, not merely not knowing how to play an instrument or read music, but not even knowing that it was an expected skill set in a mediocre education.

my father has been racing circle track since the early 1970s and he’s been working on cars since the 1960s. he has never once in my life even attempted to show me how to rebuild an engine. he’s a master carpenter … and has never shown me anything other than the most rudimentary woodworking skills, etc, etc.

and, just as you haven’t noticed anyone in your gen taking an apprentice, this seems to be a fairly common in the US as well. it’s so bad here that you practically have to have a college degree for most entry level jobs.

but this doesn’t apply to EARLIER gens.

when my ‘rents split and my mother moved back to the family area, my paternal grandmother about lost her mind when she found out that my sister and i couldn’t read music or play. so she attempted to teach us piano.

there were other issues there and i was already 16 so … fairly old to be learning new languages from somebody i couldn’t stand. and my paternal grandfather was likewise quite happy to instruct in things like wood turning and gardening and motorcycle riding. ( maternal grands had issues, grandpa had the Parkinson’s and grandma had died around 1980, before we returned to the area )

so there’s a question there:
what is it about the way *your* gen was raised that you all have *chosen* not to pass your skills onto your children and the younger generations? you freely admit that YOUR elders passed their skills onto you.

why is that? because, seriously? that’s fucked up.

and you can complain about the younger gens incompetence and their general stupidity all you want. and it’s even true.

but THEY were raised doing the things they were told to do, the way they were told to do them. and you all didn’t have a problem with THAT, back then when they could have learned something useful but were taught instead to be useless fucking idiots.