ive just remembered that my primary school taught us all basket weaving as a regular activity/lesson.

[Pagwatch]

it wasnt just an occasional project. we each had terms of basket weaving in the library taught by the headmaster.

why did i need this skill? did your do any off lessons like that or just my village school

I made a skirt but I think that might have been first year of secondary 🤔

@Mrsjayy

I made a skirt but I think that might have been first year of secondary 🤔

My skirt making was in the second year of secondary, the girls did needlework and 'domestic science'. The boys did technical drawing (and probably metalwork/woodwork). In the first year of secondary though, we all did half a term of six different things... pottery, woodwork, metalwork, cooking, ....probably some sort of textiles and painting. 1972.

Lace making
Dress making
Pottery
Knitting including knitting a sock on four small needles in a circle
Sewing/ darning/ button holes
Cross-stitch

Some people adored all this stuff and it became their time to shine. I hated it as my dexterity was not great.
There is a guy living near here who was sent to pottery classes during school as he had dyslexia and it was for children who were struggling. He is now probably the most famous Potter in lreland and his work goes all over the world. He tells that story about himself.
So for some people it could became their life's work and for others it was fun and far better than the focus on too much academics these days.
And Primary Teachers had to be masters of many abilities.

Macrame owls
Tapestry butterflies

We all did them, boys and girls. I loved primary school in the 1980s.

Country dancing
Maypole dancing
Italic writing
Raffia mat weaving.
Competitive annual Sunny Smiles flogging.
Leeches in jars under the stairs to the upper floor (possibly forgotten by whoever dumped put them there.
Weekend sofa surfing class guinea pig.

Was a blast

We did A LOT of basket weaving at nursery school using plastic bases and raffia -looked like the picture attached.

I have no idea what the point was, possibly to develop fine motor skills

@Borracha

My primary school had a paddock where we kept sheep, a donkey, a pony, geese, ducks and chicken. As kids, we were responsible for feeding and cleaning them out at playtimes and parents did it on a rota basis over the weekends and holidays.

One of the sheep was called Bunty and she was a bit lairy. According to the legend, she had hospitalized a number of parents and teachers who has got in her way. Also the music teacher reportedly gave mouth to mouth to a chicken.
I can remember us all being called out of class during lambing season to watch it happening in all it’s bloody glory. When the sheep were shorn, we learned how to spin with the wool. We also used to collect eggs from the chickens and I can remember washing chickens in the sinks in the Reception class toilets.

It all seemed so normal at the time, but it wasn’t really.

I was about to say almost exactly the same!

There can’t be more than one psychotic Bunty can there?

And don't forget 90 children sitting crossed legged on the cold hard parquet floor to watch the tv-on-legs.

Schools programmes that were on live TV like How We Used to Live.

Also PE to Music and Movement

And music lessons Singing Together from the radio.

The day we got our first school computer (a BBC micro), it was wheeled to each class on a trolley.

Funny how I remember all the "technology" most, and have blanked out country dancing and cross stitch

we made macrame plant hangers at primary
we were still doing country dancing throughout secondary

Yes basket weaving is a completely useless but.... if students still did it in primary school then I would not have Year 7s unable to use scissors (and maybe cutlery!)

@MajesticElephant

On a boring and serious note, I think schools need to do more of this. The royal college of surgeons came out a few years ago saying that up and coming surgeons are lacking the physical dexterity that comes from crafting.

I once had a lovely student who wanted to be a surgeon (he was Year 12 in a grammar school) I had no doubts he would make it. One day he was looking for a specific book and I said it was on the left - he took a few seconds (longer?) to work out left and right I didn't help at first as I was I showed him the easy way of remembering- the L you can do with your thumb and forefinger but also said (half joking) if ever I am being wheeled into a theatre and you're my surgeon I will make doubly sure there is an arrow on the bit of me you are to operate on!

@CathyorClaire

Country dancing Maypole dancing Italic writing Raffia mat weaving. Competitive annual Sunny Smiles flogging. Leeches in jars under the stairs to the upper floor (possibly forgotten by whoever dumped put them there. Weekend sofa surfing class guinea pig.

Was a blast

Those 'Sunny Smiles' photos Can you imagine doing it now!

I transferred to a new primary in year 6. I'd come from one where the whole class went out and played spontaneous rounders on sunny days.
In this one, the girls did needlework inside while the boys got to play rounders outside. I was like wtf the whole thing was stuck in the dark ages.

@mumofEandE

Yes basket weaving is a completely useless but.... if students still did it in primary school then I would not have Year 7s unable to use scissors (and maybe cutlery!)

Sacrilege! Basket weaving and pottery together mean the making of containers, which are incredibly important historically for food collection and storage. Now it’s all plastic of course, which isn’t very environmentally friendly: but do you honestly have no baskets in your house?

I completely agree with those enumerating the many virtues of craft work for all. I find it enriching, if not economically so. Sadly consumerism rules.

Maypole dancing

We did basket weaving too! Plus both country and Indian dancing (school had 50% Asian pupils) plus singing in Welsh!

Sacrilege! Basket weaving and pottery together mean the making of containers, which are incredibly important historically for food collection and storage.

People think about technological inventions such as stone and metal tools, the wheel etc, but I sometime reckon one of humankind's earliest and most transformative leaps might have been the invention of the bag... something to carry food in other than one's own stomach, mouth or paws. Perhaps we shouldn't downplay needlework either.

And don't forget 90 children sitting crossed legged on the cold hard parquet floor to watch the tv-on-legs.

Did anyone else see the first moon landing thus? - I don't think I realised until much later it must have been a recording (they had a big video tape machine)

The secondary I went to had 'enrichment activities' you had to take part in one evening a week. As far as I can tell, they were basically made up of the general hobbies and interests of the teachers involved; apart from having to do compulsory first aid in year 7 (which is an excellent idea), there was a G&S club, Latin, animal handling, knitting, costume making (for school productions) etc. A friend of mine and I were quite involved in doing the costumes for school production and one term the textiles teacher ran a course called 'clearing out the costume cupboard' specifically for us which basically meant we spent an hour each Tuesday evening pissing about trying on all the various costumes from productions of years gone by, while he did all the hard work 😁

DD1s primary does a lot of extra after school clubs of this sort - she can do crochet (run by the headmaster), chess, cooking, Spanish, gymnastics, those sorts of things, as well as learning the ukelele during music in school time!

We did country dancing and I spent hour after hour making aida table mats with cross stitch, zig zag stitch and other fancy stitch borders.

This was at several schools, too. We moved a lot.

What's the for Hippos. Why shouldn't children learn a centuries old folk traditional?

Oh, yes, pottery, too. 8nmade a beautiful boat, when I was 5. So proud of it. In floods of tears when the fired one I had given back to me to paint was a very blobby blob. Obvious sabotage.

This was a class of 30-ish eith 2 members of staff who never seemed to notice the kids playing doctors and nurses under the table mind (that would be a fast tracked call to children's, services, these days) and wouldn't let me play with metal meccano, as that was for boys.

Yes, I got a certificate for our poetry recital. Our class didn't win but got a certificate of merit for our efforts at Hull City Hall. My mum just rolled her eyes and was horrified at the nasty polyester outfit I had to wear.

My pottery effort in infants was an ashtray in the shape of a swan. Well, it looked more like a deformed duck tbh, and was brown. Hard to imagine a child making an ashtray nowadays. (I don't think my parents ever knew it's intended purpose and anyway neither of them smoked cigarettes )

We did batik and pokerwork. I can't imagine supervising twenty four eight year olds with hot wax or burning designs into wood!