There are a lot of skills that have disappeared within our own life span. Where they exist today, it is often as hobbies and creative pastimes, and not essential skills.
Things like making pickles and canning fruits and vegetables. I remember how quickly that stopped when home freezers became affordable in the 1960s. Really good picked fruits/vegetables are now artisan items with a premium price.
Baking bread. That got left behind even a littler earlier - grocery stores sold industrial bread by the 1950s. Then bread machines came along to automate things. A double attack.
Sewing, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, and quilt-making. Knitting and crocheting remain active pursuits. Whenever I am in Michael's I walk the yarn aisle and marvel at all the textures and colours. But take embroidery and quilt-making - they are no longer in the mainstream. Remember doilies? Once on every dresser. And sewing clothes? It is now a niche hobby.
Basket weaving and chair caning. I would guess that if we lived in Denmark, basket weaving would still be popular. But here, not so much. I would put basket weaving as a skill in homesteading times - the 1800s.
Food Storage in a cold cellar. Those storage methods have been replaced with refrigerators and just-in-time grocery purchase. They dropped cold cellars out of the standard house by the 1960s.
Hand-washing clothes and using a clothes line to dry clothes. You won't find clothes blowing the wind. Long-gone.
Knot tying. We can still manage shoe laces, but everything else is gone if you aren't a sailor.
Navigation. Here's one that is pertinent today - we have a hard time following a map let alone use natural landmarks, the sun and stars to get places.
And perhaps the most important skill? Entertaining yourself. In ways that don't involve anything electronic. Think of being without power. That would be scary for many.
No wonder the population is angry in Cuba. Learning to cook on an open fire, hand-washing clothes, having no food storage methods, and the insult of no entertainment. Put that on top of the crushing U.S. embargo on trade that has existed since1962 and has ruined their economy. In 2023, the U.N. General Assembly called for the 31st time on the U.S. to end the embargo. That's a lot of persistence and resistance.
Here's a picture of Cuba that Canadians typically enjoy. That gorgeous turquoise water below a setting sun.
Cursive is the term we used for writing script or longhand. There's formal and casual cursive. There's looped, italic and connected. Everything we know about cursive, though, is not very important - it has left the curriculum of today's school classrooms as we really aren't writing much anymore.
What other skills are no longer needed?
reading paper maps
writing cheques and balancing a cheque book
telephone etiquette
sewing
ironing
Add these to the list:
long division or any arithmetic
metric conversions
finding true north
clipping coupons
remembering .... e.g. phone numbers
I asked the all-important question: What are the replacement skills that we need to learn now?
Here's one list I found:
expert data analysis
advanced social selling mobile expertise
multi-platform UX (UX is user experience) design
network and information security
creative thinking
It is the last one that worries me. It is not in the same class as clipping coupons. I am warned that the fourth industrial revolution is here next year - in 2020 - bringing advanced robotics and autonomous transport, artificial intelligence and machine learning, advanced materials, biotechnology and genomics. What will we need for these areas?
And then I also wonder: what skills will seem like clipping coupons in 2030?
Today's pictures are of the Kingston waterfront sculpture named "Time" - created by Kosso Eloul in 1973 to celebrate Kingston's Tercentenary. There was so much driving rain though - you can see the spots on the lens. There are too many to photoshop them away.
