I insisted that both my kids learn to drive, take their test on a stick and(Neon 5 speed) and change their tires and oil.
They both currently drive automatics and wouldn’t consider changing their own oil but when a friend at college offered to lend his Jeep to move her dorm stuff to storage but “Girls don’t know how to drive a stick”, she set him straight.
My Father taught be to drive a clutch when I was 13 years old. I taught my 2 Sons when they were 15 (1982 and 1986). 1973 Ford Mustang 250 cu in I6. 3 speed M/T. No clutches were harmed! My oldest needed a car in 2011. He had not driven a M/T since 1990. When I gave him my 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse 5spd M/T I took him to a deserted parking lot for a refresher. Not needed. He was perfect. I am confident OP’s daughters will be fine. It ain’t rocket surgery.LOL
Yes. But some of us still prefer it. My main reason is that at my age it helps keep me focused on my driving. I start my car in the driveway in neutral with my foot on the brake. When idle decreases to 1,000 rpm I shift to reverse and slowly roll back to the sidewalk then stop which is required by state law. I look both ways for pedestrians on the sidewalk then traffic on the street. If I go to a local small market I coast into a parking space in neutral while braking. I then shut off the car. shift to 2nd and set the parking brake. When I worked at a grocery store at 15 years old a geezer like me drove his 1957 Chevy through the front of the store and almost into a check stand occupied by a clerk. Fortunately the car high centered on the 2 foot high wall under the window with rear wheels off the ground as he still had the accelerator floored. I opened the door and turned off the ignition. I made my self a promise I would quit driving before I ever got to that point of incompetence.
Here in NY, our driving test, is basically a parking test and our local test sitesare in 30 mph speed zones. If I had my way you would have to go to a local racetrack, rent an old racecar and get down to a minimum lap time.
To old mopar guy, I suggest you don’t go to Europe and rent a car, they are mostly manuals and diesels to boot.
You must be a good teacher, Sarge!
I learned to drive stick back in high school. We were lucky to have a progressive school system for the times. The school provided driver’s education classes. The classrooms had simulators and the local car dealers provided a new fleet of driver’s education cars every year for driving instruction. The year I had it, they had one car no one else wanted to drive. I couldn’t believe my luck, a Charger with M/T! I certainly took a lot of life off the clutch learning in the parking lot but by the time I hit the road in it, I was pretty good. Talk about fun to drive for a 16 year old! Getting rubber in the lot and blaming it on learning- oops! 
Stick shift cars are still a bit more common than hand crank cars.
Thank you. No driver education so we had to do a lot of learning on our own. Many of us had been driving agricultural vehicles since we could reach the pedals.
Our HS, which had an enrollment of close to 3,000 students, received ONE Chevy sedan each year for Driver Ed. I don’t know how a student was able to win the lottery in order to get to drive that car, because I was not one of those winners. My brother–who preceded me at that school by 5 years–did manage to get “Behind the Wheel” Driver Ed. However, the school did me (and apparently all of the others who were denied a seat in that car) the favor of certifying all of us as having successfully completed “Behind the Wheel” DE.
Fast forward 30+ years, and when I was a HS Counselor, a new transfer student asked me if she could get “Under the Wheel” DE. I told her that I would do even better by getting her BEHIND the wheel of one of our Driver Ed cars. Of course, she had no clue as to the difference between what she had said and what I said.
I learned to drive in a manual transmission car and had no problem getting it in a couple of minutes. It probably helped that I had been bombing around the neighborhood on a manual Sears Allstate Austrian made Puch moped for a year prior. Car drivers had to be 16, but moped operators only 15.
I wore out 2 manual Volkswagens at probably over 300,000 miles, combined, and currently own 1 manual transmission car, a manual transmission 1970 Simplicity lawn tractor (my daily driver mower) and an antique Allis-Chalmers B with manual and both electric and hand-crank starting. I sometimes use the hand-crank option just for fun.
The thing that would be difficult for many teens today in learning to drive a manual transmission vehicle are the head phones and clutching a cell-phone in one hand during the procedure.
Do you hold the phone, text, and steer with one hand and shift with the other or do you hold the steering wheel with one hand and hold the phone and do your texting and shift lever, together, with the other? Also, the head-phones make it a bit more challenging because of the disadvantage created by not hearing engine revs, not to mention a car full of energetic kids.
CSA
Back in the day a friend said he didn’t like manuals because it interfered with holding his beer.
I have that problem with the Fiero, its total lack of drink holders, and a large travel cup of hot coffee. There’s something about holding the hot coffee between my legs that is unsettling. Give me a car with drink holders or an automatic, or a car with drink holders and an automatic, better yet!
CSA
When I was a teenage driver, my parents had two cars: a 1954 Buick V-8 sedan with a manual transmission and a 1947 DeSoto 6
coupe with the “lift and clunk” semi-automatic transmission. The Buick was much more fun to drive. It had great acceleration. The DeSoto was a real slug. However, on a date, I preferred the DeSoto. With the bench seat and no shifting, Little Iodine could snuggle right up next to me. It didn’t take long for my parents to figure out why I preferred the DeSoto on a date. They insisted that I take the Buick. My mother would say “You don’t want to take Little Iodine out in that old heap”.
My mom’s 1964 Cadillac Series 62 had a front bench seat. It was both a hiderance and a help on a date, depending on whether my date warmed up to me or not. It even had a foot switch to scan the radio dial. That way I could use both hands.
@jtsanders. The 1954 Buick my parents owned had a Selectronic radio with a button on the floor to change the radio station as well as a “wonderbar” on the radio to advance to the next station. There was also a heater under the seat as well as a heater under the dashboard. My dad bought the car in 1955 and I bought it from him in 1963.
Lucky guy…
You were fortunate that the Buick wasn’t equipped with the Dynaslow transmission.
If it had been, then it would have been just a slightly faster slug than the DeSoto.
The common saying with the early dynaflows was " shift to low and go"