Home economics classes , anyone remember?

[Aerides]

In the UK, in what's basically 6th/7th grade, 80-81 I took a rotating class. Every 6 weeks we swapped from cooking, metal shop, wood shop, pottery, etc., Whole class mixed of boys/girls. It was very cool. I made a nice pencil box, cut and stamped a metal key chain, all sorts of things.

Then I came to the US in 82, end of 7th grade. Nothing like that was even on electives besides typing and theatre irrc. There were some car shop classes, and a farming program, but those were clearly not on the college path route, and were half day things so you couldn't just do them on the side.

 

[EastWest Gal]

Not required when I was in school. My mom taught me how to sew and when I was 15 I made two square dance dresses on my own (20 foot ruffle at the bottom). Sis and I were involved with cooking, by the time I was in high school. It's simple, just follow recipes.

DS had to take Family and Consumer Sciences in middle school-cooking and sewing. Not much about consumer sciences. He's upset that they didn't teach financial basics, other than filling out the simplest federal income tax form.

 

[braumeister]

In the UK, in what's basically 6th/7th grade, 80-81 I took a rotating class. Every 6 weeks we swapped from cooking, metal shop, wood shop, pottery, etc., Whole class mixed of boys/girls.

Wow, that's very impressive. What a great system!

 

[twaddle]

I had wood shop, metal shop, and small engine repair when I was a kid. They were probably the most useful classes I took at any point (including grad school).

 

[KB]

Schools didn't have personal finance classes when I was in school. My Dad was a 'financial guy' and taught me about checking, savings, credit cards and avoiding debt. He was very big into no debt and drilled that into me.

I have to say, the most debt other than a mortgage I ever got into, was about $2000 of credit card debt. It took a long time to pay off, and that was my lesson.

I started my kids off with checking accounts and ATM card about age 14. When they were 18, I added them to my credit card to enable my credit history to be applied to them. Then we got them beginner credit cards with low credit amounts at about 18.

One son was very careful, one was not. But I already knew their spending history from watching them spend their allowance. Both are in their 30s now and very good with money. They have taught their friends about money too. Apparently not all parents do finances with their kids.

 

[aaronc879]

In around 1990 it was still called Home Ec and I took the class. We had the choice between shop or Home Ec. Maybe 25% of the class was guys. I didn't learn much that carried over to later life as I never cook or bake.

 

[Gumby]

Now I'm on the edge of my seat.. You can't stop there.
The burning question is:
Did it work ?

Like a charm. I recall the time we learned how to take your body measurements so you could either make or buy clothes that fit properly, and then we were supposed to practice on another student. I got measured far more times, and more enthusiastically, than was necessary. They would also argue over whose kitchen I got to be in when we did cooking.

Eventually, I got a steady girlfriend out of that class.

 

[OneMarcilV]

I remember that typing was also one of the classes that the young ladies were taking in my school. I took a shop class my senior year because I had enough credits to for graduation but it was before the time of early release. You had to go to a class for the cpmplete school day. The shop teacher called me aside on the 1st day and told me in no uncertain terms that if I caused him any trouble I would be gone in a heartbeat. I assured him that I just "want to serve my time and go to the Army"!! He let me stay in, at the end of the 1st month made me the "foreman" and I passed that class with an A+ & he didn't have any trouble from anyone in that class.

I hated typing class. I did love the sound of the keyboard clicks.

What made me not like typing is we were nor a;lowed to look at the keyboard.

Bad enough to have to remember where the different keys fell into place but hitting each one and actually typing a word.

I never grasped that. To this day I not only look at the typewriters keyboard also type with two fingers.

I use a Underwood typewriter that was made in 1923. That typewriter has no 1 key have to use upper case I.

 

[Nick12]

I hated typing class. I did love the sound of the keyboard clicks.

What made me not like typing is we were nor a;lowed to look at the keyboard.

Bad enough to have to remember where the different keys fell into place but hitting each one and actually typing a word.

I never grasped that. To this day I not only look at the typewriters keyboard also type with two fingers.

I use a Underwood typewriter that was made in 1923. That typewriter has no 1 key have to use upper case I.

Sometimes we had to carry the typewriters in their cases. It surely built up my arm strength!

 

[OneMarcilV]

In the UK, in what's basically 6th/7th grade, 80-81 I took a rotating class. Every 6 weeks we swapped from cooking, metal shop, wood shop, pottery, etc., Whole class mixed of boys/girls. It was very cool. I made a nice pencil box, cut and stamped a metal key chain, all sorts of things.

Then I came to the US in 82, end of 7th grade. Nothing like that was even on electives besides typing and theatre irrc. There were some car shop classes, and a farming program, but those were clearly not on the college path route, and were half day things so you couldn't just do them on the side.

I bet spelling was a fun thing for you. The u letter is not used like in the UK. Like a few words like favour, flavour, humour. Then words like in the US tyre us spelled tire.

 

[OneMarcilV]

Sometimes we had to carry the typewriters in their cases. It surely built up my arm strength!

Oh we never had to. All the typewriters stayed on the disks. Now books were heavy.

Usually I changed books between classes.

Hey on the note about typewriters my father gave me that 1923 Underwood.

From then on I types all my notes and kept them is folders for all subjects.

I had a table of contents in each.

I wish I had kept those.

I never did learn to write by hand very well.

My mum said I write worse than a doctor.

 

[OneMarcilV]

Now computer class and classes about technology. Yea right. The only item we had in school was calculators in which we were not allowed to use.

Computers were the size on a wall of a average size room.

But we did have windows.

Each room in the school had these. Used to look outside during classes through these.

We also had android. Studied about those in science class.

 

[scrabbler1]

Everyone (boys and girls) in my 7th and 8th grade classes had to take shop and home Ec. In 7th home Ec was cooking and shop was wood, while in 8th grade home Ec was sewing and shop was metal and hard plastic. My mom was already showing me how to cook and sew so I was pretty good in the kitchen already. My dad has a woodworking shop in the basement so I was already pretty good around tools and machines.

As for the other home Ec-type classes mentioned, there was no personal finance class. There was a typing elective in high school but I never took it. Over the years, simply being at work and typing all the time enabled me to pick it up well enough. We had 2 computer stations in HS but my exposure to them (you had to dial into a central system and place the phone into a modem, remember those?) was limited to my advanced math classes. That's when I fell in love with programming, something which would push me in that direction in college and help make my career years later.

 

[jollystomper]

I had home economics in Junior High. My parents had already taught me how to sew and cook, so it was an easy class. I kept from being bored and potentially destructive (I could be a smart aleck in school then) by the teacher. She was gorgeous in ways that were pleasing to the eyes of young teenage males, and we were very, very happy to watch her. She also had a husband, who would come by occasionally., He was in law enforcement, a former high school and college football player who was still built like someone you did not want to mess with. All she had to say was "do I need to give your name to my husband?" and we would fall in line.

I enjoyed typing class in junior high. It has made a difference in my IT career. It might be part of the reason I liked programming and was skilled in writing technical papers.

I took a variety of "shop" classes in high school, as they were required. Woodworking, machine shop, and metallurgy are the ones I remember the most. On the first day of machine shop, the teacher as part of his intro said "pay attention and you won't end us like this", and then raised his left hand so we could see it was missing two fingers. I don't think anything got hurt in his classes.

Taking computer class in high school (It was called "computer math" then) was a turning point in my life. I had taken 2 years of French, as was good enough be be tutoring other students. My junior year, for one of my electives I had to choose either a third year of French, or the computer math class. I chose computer math as (a) I was already like math in general and found it easy, and (b) the computer math classroom was only one of 2 rooms in the school that had air conditioning (the teachers lounge was the other). And the rest is history...

 

[Bigdawg]

My father learned the basics of cooking and sewing in a home ec class during the depression. He said all the boys signed up for it because it often included a meal!

^This. I already knew woodworking from being in the Boy Scouts. Loved the meal plus the majority of the classes was young ladies. Win-win.

 

[OneMarcilV]

I had home economics in Junior High. My parents had already taught me how to sew and cook, so it was an easy class. I kept from being bored and potentially destructive (I could be a smart aleck in school then) by the teacher. She was gorgeous in ways that were pleasing to the eyes of young teenage males, and we were very, very happy to watch her. She also had a husband, who would come by occasionally., He was in law enforcement, a former high school and college football player who was still built like someone you did not want to mess with. All she had to say was "do I need to give your name to my husband?" and we would fall in line.

I enjoyed typing class in junior high. It has made a difference in my IT career. It might be part of the reason I liked programming and was skilled in writing technical papers.

I took a variety of "shop" classes in high school, as they were required. Woodworking, machine shop, and metallurgy are the ones I remember the most. On the first day of machine shop, the teacher as part of his intro said "pay attention and you won't end us like this", and then raised his left hand so we could see it was missing two fingers. I don't think anything got hurt in his classes.

Taking computer class in high school (It was called "computer math" then) was a turning point in my life. I had taken 2 years of French, as was good enough be be tutoring other students. My junior year, for one of my electives I had to choose either a third year of French, or the computer math class. I chose computer math as (a) I was already like math in general and found it easy, and (b) the computer math classroom was only one of 2 rooms in the school that had air conditioning (the teachers lounge was the other). And the rest is history...

I hated math. Algebra was the only thing that I took in school. Calcilus, trigonometry and that sirs looked all Greek to me. Well...so did algebra.

 

[jollystomper]

I hated math. Algebra was the only thing that I took in school. Calcilus, trigonometry and that sirs looked all Greek to me. Well...so did algebra.

I loved math from an early age, and expanded my enjoyment of it through school. For me it was one of the "great equalizers". People who thought you unintelligent because of the color of your skin started to change their view of you when you could solve math problems they could not .

 

[omni550]

I loved math from an early age, and expanded my enjoyment of it through school. For me it was one of the "great equalizers". People who thought you unintelligent because of the color of your skin started to change their view of you when you could solve math problems they could not .

People who thought you unintelligent because of the color of your skin or your gender started to change their view of you when you could solve math problems they could not .

FIFY

omni

 

[Nick12]

Home economics and shop classes to include auto body helped attain stronger life skills in the future. DIY in the long run can help someone save more money and invest and or pay off debt.

 

[Sue J]

I loved my junior high home economics classes. One year was sewing, another was cooking. In the sewing class I learned a lot of mending techniques that I still use. The cooking class included basic techniques and food safety that I still use.

Somewhere in those classes we also had a unit on fingernail care and how to sit like a lady. Nope, don't use any of those!

Another poster mentioned a shop teacher with missing fingers. When our sons were in middle school the shop teacher really did have a missing finger! But it wasn't a shop injury, every year he had to explain an unrelated accident.

When our sons were in high school one of them had a wonderful class teaching basic home maintenance and repair. This included drywall repair, basic electrical wiring, soldering, wall construction and plumbing. Our younger son soaked up every bit of that class and uses the skills all the time, enhanced now by YouTube.

 

[OneMarcilV]

I loved math from an early age, and expanded my enjoyment of it through school. For me it was one of the "great equalizers". People who thought you unintelligent because of the color of your skin started to change their view of you when you could solve math problems they could not .

Colour of ones skin doesn’t mean anything. Everyone has the same brain type and learning capacity.

 

[jollystomper]

Colour of ones skin doesn’t mean anything. Everyone has the same brain type and learning capacity.

Yes, but people are people... it can become a different view when one is personally, or perceives to be personally, impacted .

 

[jollystomper]

People who thought you unintelligent because of the color of your skin or your gender started to change their view of you when you could solve math problems they could not .

FIFY

omni

I did not include gender as I was just referencing myself, but I agree, particularly back when I was in school. Fortunately I grew up with a mother and 3 sisters who were very good in math so I never personally questioned that aspect .

 

[Walt34]

.... So I took Home Ec and Child Care, because I was the new kid in town and I figured I'd have a better chance of meeting girls that way.

That is the main reason I took a class in typing. Other reasons were that I knew they couldn't make me buy a typewriter and therefore there wouldn't be any homework. (I was not exactly a diligent student.)

A few years after I graduated they dusted off the "Home Economics" curriculum, slapped a "Bachelor Survival" label on it, and made the boys go through that too. I would have been happy to take that class. When I got my first apartment and went to a grocery store, if it didn't come out of a box, can, or jar, I didn't know what to do with it.

 

[Ronstar]

.....When I got my first apartment and went to a grocery store, if it didn't come out of a box, can, or jar, I didn't know what to do with it.

Same thing here. When I got my first apartment, I remember calling my grandmother asking how to make a baked potato.