Thermostats and Why Our Schools Are Failing Us

First of all, in the effort of full disclosure, I keep my house at a lower temperature to save energy and money.  I set my thermostat at 63 during the day, wear several layers and even let it go lower at night.  It seems to work.  Despite my older home with little insulation, my gas bills are pretty low.  This year's more mild temperatures helped too, but during the most recent cold snap when lows got into the single digits, I observed some scary behavior which I will get to shortly.

When I was in college, I had several roomates, not all or most, but several that reacted to temperature.  If they were cold, they put the heat on 80 degrees they as soon as they were hot, they put on the A/C down to 68, back and forth.  I knew that thermostats set a floor and no matter your preference you generally picked a temp and stuck with it.  68 degrees indoors is 68 degrees indoors whether it is 30 degrees outside or 5.  It was clear that despite graduating high school and getting into college that they were still clueless about how a thermostat actually worked.

Recently, some people I know (adults in their 30s), also high school graduates, were complaining that when it got really cold that they couldn't turn their heat up.  It was 68 degrees in the apartment and they were desperate to get 74 or 76 during the cold snap.  Because of the older house their apartment was in and the older furnace combined with already being about 60 degrees difference from the outside, the temperature struggled to get up that high.  While they are entitled to whatever temperature they want in their home, it is still quite puzzling as to why 68 degrees was fine for them when it was 25 degrees outside, but not when it was 5 degrees.  It just doesn't make sense.  Rather than logic, there was a knee jerk reaction that more cold outside had to mean more heat inside.  What kind of a country are we in that this cluelessness about basic home features is so widespread?  It is especially horrifying with climate change and energy costs being such hot issues.  Kids go to school full-time and don't know this.  This is why homeschooling is so important.  While book smarts are very important, so much time should be spent on it that there is no time for basic common sense day to day living skills?  Really?  Time for us to wake up.