I used the plural of venue because it is my impression that other organizations are experiencing similar declines in participation. I also think that the national scouting organization works hard at overcoming problems leading to reduced participation, whatever their origin. Their history shows some disastrous decisions and subsequent recovery.

In meeting the rank advancement requirements (http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page) and with careful selection of the Merit Badges (http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Merit_Badges), Scouts that complete the program learn survival skills, personal skills, repair skills and are otherwise introduced to a wide range of skills and careers, many of which are listed above.

For example, meeting the Tenderfoot requirements requires doing some cooking, knowing the local poisonous plants, and spending one night in a on a camp out. For another example, look at the requirements to complete the Gardening Merit Badge – http://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Gardening

Girl Scouts may accomplish the same for girls as Boy Scouts does for boys but I’m not familiar with how they function at the level of the Scout. Girls can join Boy Scouting later in the Venturing programs and my understanding is that in other countries the two organizations are not separate.

Due to the heavy influence of a major national sponsor without which it would likely collapse, as an organization Boy Scouts does have a problem with adult leader policies being on the wrong side of a major social issue. In my experience that policy has little or no impact at the Troop level as it is under the local organization, usually a church or service club, in the community that sponsors the Troop.

If society values these skills sufficiently, venues are available in which youth can acquire them. Judging from declining participation, I’d say that it does not and that the majority of students beginning to chart their own educational courses will not either.

To “The basics of investment and personal finance” there’s also the basics of borrowing money, although you probably meant to include that.

Other things:
* some elementary stuff about children. Not enough to parent or regularly care perhaps, but I think enough that someone could take care of a older baby or young child for a couple of hours would be useful. A little bit of developmental information about what children at various ages are mentally capable of would be generally handy.

* on the children front, anecdotally women in particular are apparently under-informed about the wanting children aspect of family planning. That is, the trade-offs of having children at various ages, the way the menstrual cycle works with regard to conceiving, the routine pre-conception health precautions, when and how to seek infertility diagnosis and treatment. This is fairly well covered in the press though.

* in addition to formal behavioural norms, negotiating skills and the norms in certain high stakes negotiations (salary, car and house purchases)

* the ability to understand the kind of statistics used in general audience newspaper articles.

* the failure modes of the human body. By this I mean more than first aid teaches: things like the likelihoods, symptoms and major treatments of common chronic diseases. I made it through an upper-middle class science-y education without having a clue what my family history was lining me up for or what to discuss with doctors and so on. (This would be hard to balance with public health scare tactics in which every lifestyle decision is dooming one to an early death.)

* basic medical routines: how often to see a doctor, how often to see a dentist, the responsibilities of health professionals and when to seek a different provider

* familiarity with the bureaucracy of the medical system, including specialist referrals and such (doctors and their admin staff tend to generalise from their frequent patients and assume that one must have been through this a million times, so do nursing staff with minor procedures). In the States I guess you’d want skills in negotiating with your insurers, luckily not so much of an issue in Australia. Perhaps someone should just write this down.

I was watching South Park the other day and realized that while I find Cartman funny because he’s transgressive, my students probably don’t see it that way. They appreciate the show as insult humor, but I don’t think they are even aware of some of the social boundaries that Cartman violates–for example, in how he talks to his teachers.

This is particularly applicable in the low-income community where I teach, but there are a lot of middle- and upper-class kids who could use this too. I went to high school with some otherwise well-educated students who had no idea how to negotiate with an adult without whining or swearing.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

I think this is one reason also to have classes, to help peole understand where and when the ??dive right in?? approach is sound and when it might be dangerous or expensive.
This is the most important thing I learned from my wilderness medicine classes, and a reason that if you were actually pursuing these skills I’d strongly recommend taking Wilderness First Aid (or the longer Wilderness First Responder class). If you’re in the wilderness, what you most need to know is whether or not you can deal with the situation in question on your own, and how long you have before things go downhill; city first aid classes mostly assume you can’t deal with it on your own and you should get to the hospital in the next 10 minutes.

I would add some formalized communication skills and group facilitation. Everyone should know how to run a small meeting (even if you only ever use it for family decisions) and have some strategies for talking about difficult issues.

Also bike repair.

I once taught a disastrous workshop to the people who maintain web sites on campus. I thought they should understand how the web works. It was a nightmare! These were relatively intelligent grownups and when I tried to explain that they were copying a file from their local computer to another computer that then displayed the file properly for a web browser, they freaked out. I still think they should know it, but it’s harder than it looks to teach.

We just signed up for high school courses and were told that baking is the most popular class in school and that everyone takes it at some point, usually seniors as a balancing class to their AP courses. They also have preparing for fatherhood and motherhood courses (these are separate for some reason). Because the area served by the high school is pretty diverse, there are lots of practical courses.

I learned a lot of the things on your list from my Red Cross babysitting course. I learned how to bandage properly, do CPR, give mouth-to-mouth, knew when to call for help, etc.

I would add to your list canning and storing of food. Both of my grandparents did this and I have no clue. I’ve contemplated growing some veggies this summer and/or stocking up from the farmers market, but I’d need to can some. Both of my grandmothers did this as did Doug’s and they’re all gone now and unfortunately, our mothers did not acquire this knowledge. Sigh. The answer to all your skill needs, however, is YouTube. I learned how to unclog a drain without chemicals that way.

I also think that in general, people need to be less afraid of trying something that’s hands on. We’ve gotten so far away from not just nature, but the tools we use to conquer nature that we don’t know anything about them and we fear them.