What useful practical things did you learn at school?

[Yourinmyspot]

I remember in cooking or home economics as it was called then, things like always using the back rings on the cooker and leaving pan handles turned inwards. I still do this and only use the front rings if more than two pans.

Also always remember being taught things like storing cooked meat above raw in the fridge and coming up with my own rhyme to remember ‘cooked above raw, or your bum will be sore’.

We were also taught how to wire a plug and I remember how pleased I was when I did my own plug at home, my Dad was impressed.

What are yours?

Not a great deal, most of my secondary schooling was a grammar school, we were told a woman or paid staff would do household and DIY activities for us, what a lovely thing to teach kids.

When I moved to a comp we all had compulsory touch typing lessons, I’m still a very good touch typer, it was also very hand for uni lectures as I could make good notes on my laptop without having to use short hand.

@Nellieinthebarn Don't suppose I could borrow you next weekend could I? Will need to calculate roughly the area of my living room for a new carpet so they can give me an accurate quote and it feels like it's on a par with brain surgery. Thank Christ for Google.

Sewing. My mum used the sew on a foot powered machine but I really learned at school. I made a lot of my own clothes as a teen.

We had a talk on cults. Scared the bejesus out of us.

How to read a map (Geography)
Dressmaking (although I'd already learnt that at home)
Flower arranging (is actually quite useful as I can buy a couple of random bunches and arrange them with greenery from the garden)
Embroidery - useful when mending and jazzing up boys clothes for little girls
French (although my penfriend taught me how to swear...)
We also had uni prep lessons once a month - people came in from one of the banks and talked to us about opening a bank account, how interest on credit cards worked and how to budget amongst other things.

I probably learnt more useful stuff at Guides though - knots, firelighting, etc

Oooh, quite a lot now I think of it. Mostly helpful around the home and when travelling abroad, not so much at work or elsewhere in the UK:

Sewing
French and German
Roman numerals
Singing (was in choir. Useful for karaoke now)
Percentages and basic Excel
Astronomy
Reading OS maps in Geography
Graphs
The difference between qualitative data and quantitative
Loads from my Psychology A Level, including various social experiments and child psychology
That it's 'Parliament' not 'Parliment' despite the pronunciation
Decades are spelled the 30s, 40s, 50s etc. not the 30's, 40's and 50's

And that the smiley and confident people will get chosen first for everything good, will be more popular, and recognised more (this has proved as much true at work as it did at school).

My physics teacher taught us how to brew vodka and how to fiddle the electric meter.

😂 so did we. But we also had quite intense groups of mainly Christian young people who would come and preach the virtues of religion at us and sing self written pop or rock songs about Jesus. They had a similar impact.

One thing that I've always remembered was when I was 10 and the biology teacher taking us for a walk in the woods adjacent to the school. She pointed out the green algae on trees, told us it was called Pleurococcus and that it always grew on the north side, so if we ever got lost in the woods we'd know which direction was north. For some reason it's always stayed with me.

Car maintenance
How to brew coffee
How to host a guest
Self defence
Wine tasting and pairing

A (state) girls school which believed in practical education as well as academic... we did 4 A levels plus an AS level as well as their own General Education course.

How to wire a plug

Besides reading, touch typing as been absolutely the most useful thing I learned at school!

Density equals mass over volume.
I've used this loads.

First aid and basic sign language.

Home economics was useful, typing more so

Ffff jjjj kkkk

Loads now I come to think of it, from the 70s and early 80s. Am sure there are more, but off the top of my head:

Wiring a plug (I think this wasn't on the syllabus, but we had a slightly eccentric Physics teacher who did his own thing).
Other useful home electrical skills, such as replacing a blown fuse or a light switch (see teacher above). You used to be able to buy fuse wire at corner shops - no idea if you still can!
Home Ec - basic nutrition, food safety/hygiene, and economical cookery like pastry and soup making. I've always been able to make a family meal from almost nothing.
Simple stats and how to question them - just knowing the difference between mean, mode and median averages has been surprisingly helpful over the years.
Fractions and percentages. Very useful for mortgages and savings etc.
French A-level - can still get by at a functional level if I have to, even though it was nearly 40 years ago.
Times tables up to 12 (learned by rote in primary school) and mental arithmetic have been endlessly useful.
Addressing and ending business letters correctly. A bit of a lost art!
Basic science. 'Cleaning' with visually dramatic bicarb and vinegar combos makes a foamy but neutral salt and water mix. Either ingredient would probably be more effective used on its own.

Reading thread we did more cooking and baking at home too, and sewing at home

Debating was useful

At primary school, the most valuable thing I learnt was how to organise my time and work efficiently. We didn't have formal lessons (late 60's/ early 70's) but the teacher would write the list of subjects on the board each day and we basically taught ourselves from books. We all took the 11+ in those days and I passed well and went to the grammar school.
At grammar school, academic subjects aside, definitely cookery and sewing. We were taught how to launer and iron different items of clothing as well as how to cook actual meals from scratch.

we are in Scotland and rather than actual maths at National 5 my son who has additional support needs did what they call applications of maths which covers all this. He got a B whereas he’d probably have failed proper maths.

for me I’d say it’s been learning to type. My mum made us choose a “practical” subject “to fall back on” in case we never got into Uni. Which was massively unlikely but anyway…I did secretarial studies and who’d have known that being able to type would be such a big part of so many jobs!

I went to a grammar school. I learnt cookery (was rubbish at it!), sewing, embroidery and dressmaking. Like @ThatsNotMyTeen RSA1 shorthand and typing - the latter was a godsend once computers came on the scene - my students are always very impressed I can touch type without looking!

I learnt a lot of additional skills such as making and cooking on a campfire and food hygiene from Brownies and Guides.

Wiring / circuitry
statistics / economics
public speaking
swimming
music / musical appreciation
arts / pottery / creative bits
languages / language construction

I loved school - I can’t think k of much that hasn’t been useful in some way, be it in a literal practical sense through to how I interpret the world / problems

My physics teacher mentioned that satellite dishes always point to the south (if you're in the northern hemisphere; it's actually towards the Equator). That can be useful if you need some orientation in town.

At primary school, whether giant cube spiders would take over the world. (Actually the relationship between surface area and volume: if you double the height of a cube, the surface area and volume change in different ways, so as the spiders have no lungs and breathe through their skin, the larger ones will suffocate.) Utterly absurd, but I remember it!

Structured planning of a story, and writing interesting descriptions. I always found describing things rather boring, and I wish they had said "look at how your favourite author describes things".

At university, they taught us (purely for academic purposes) how you can kill yourself with an AA battery. The answer is not for the faint-hearted.

Just remembered one. We had an option to do motor mechanics for a term in sixth form general studies. It was basically taking apart a moped and putting it back together again, right back to component parts, so tyres off the wheels, gears off, pedals off, brakes and handles off, and the engine stripped as far as possible (short of actually taking the main block apart), so removing spark plug, electrics, oil/water pipework, throttle cable etc. It was absolutely fascinating and a great introduction to knowing how a car works and for basic car maintenance.

I had a biology teacher who came back to teaching having been a research scientist. He told us that breakfast cereals were really bad for and lacking proper nutrition and 'you'd be better off eating the box' 😂

I taught it to my children.