- What do you think is the most important practical skill? Why?
I would say cooking. It’s a crucial skill for anyone who wishes to live on their own. Knowing how to cook helps individuals become more independent and self-reliant. Being able to feed themselves at home instead of eating out also means that they can keep a healthy diet and save a great deal of money.
- Do you think people learn a new skill because they enjoy/ like it?
Yeah, I do think so. While there are skills people can’t live without, several other skills are learnt just out of interest such as painting, dancing and playing a guitar. They help make life more balanced, fascinating and worth living.
- What kinds of skills did people learn in the past?
Well, I’d say that long ago, people would mainly focus on acquiring essential life skills, including cooking, sewing, carpentry, constructing a house and so on. At schools, they learnt how to read, write and calculate, sort of basic stuffs. Several practical skills in the past seem irrelevant now as they can be performed more effectively by machines.
- Are skills in the past more difficult to learn than today’s skills?
Well, I’m not sure. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. On the one hand, old-fashioned skills such as bread making, gardening or knitting tend to take a lot of manual effort and countless hours of practice. On the other hand, modern skills like computer programming or video editing are equally time-consuming and can be even more nerve-wracking. Overall, it’s really hard to tell which ones are more daunting to master.