Can We Please Stop Using Just-in-Case as a Rationale for Teaching Useless Skills?

My 3rd child reading to my youngest

Can We Please Stop Using Just-in-Case as a Rationale for Teaching Useless Skills?: It's the same, tired old excuse.


I have been becoming more and more minimalist in my homeschool.

You can't teach everything. No one can. Government schools only teach what they have chosen to believe is important. Private schools and canned curriculums follow them. But why should I? If everyone will have gaps in their education (which they will), then why not choose to leave out those things my kids will likely never need? Or those things my kids could learn in a day or two as adults at the time they actually need them, instead of spending half an hour a day, everyday "drill and killing" it now?

There simply isn't enough time to do everything. So I am increasingly picking the best and leaving the good alone; focusing on the basics and letting the kids have more time to pursue their own paths after "school" is done. (Have I mentioned that two of my kids now have self published books, one has a youtube channel with 500 followers, one has now built two computers from scratch, another is teaching himself to be a paramedic, several have their own blogs, a couple of them have learned to make movies, another keeps surprising us with, ummm, "interesting" things she has found to cook on Pinterest (and they taste good, too), and even my 11 year old has worked to perfect cookie making. So, why would I want to stop all this so they can "learn" stuff strangers 100 years ago decided were "important" and all of us who did learn them forgot them the minute we had a diploma in hand?)

Anyway, good article linked above.