Lessons you had in school that you’re not sure still happens

[Soubriquet]

I remember doing cookery, woodworking and something with a solder iron. I can still remember the smell of the solder burning.

I did those in year 7. I also remember having to rush to local supermarket with my parents cos I needed last minute ingredients for my cookery lessons

My dd is in year 8 but she doesn’t do any of these lessons

We didn't get to do woodwork, and sewing was only permitted for those who did GCSE Textiles. Our French lessons were a shambles, and academic people were steered away from Child Development and cookery.

Our local secondary school offers GCSE Agriculture, which is fairly unusual these days, but as it is the only state secondary school for miles, a lot of children from farming and rural backgrounds go there.

I'll throw in Scottish country dancing. It wasn't anywhere near Scotland, but it was great fun to throw people around the gym and pass it off as dancing!

Tudor dancing definitely wins! Some teachers probably liked the more flexible approach back then , it’s all pretty rigid now I suppose.

My daughter's primary (she's 17 now) did the topic style teaching.
A different topic every half term.
English and Maths were taught as stand alone subjects but almost all the other subjects would be based around the topic.
I think that's the norm for a lot of primary schools. Apologies if I am wrong.

In primary school we did 'Music and Movement' which I seem to remember involved the teacher playing a tape and we all had to dance (in vests, pants and plimpsols!) around pretending to be a flower or similar. We also did 'Singing Together' which was singing folk songs from a book along to a tape.

In secondary school the girls did cookery and needlework from 1st to 3rd year (Y7-Y9 in today's terms) and the boys took technical drawing, woodwork and metal work. In y10 both girls and boys could choose to do Home Economics, Textiles or DT but almost all girls chose HE or Textiles and all boys chose DT - this was cited as a reason to keep things as they were in the earlier years.

I am only early 50s!

My 15 year old did woodwork, cooking and sewing at secondary school under the names Resistant Materials, Food and Fashion and Textiles.

That sounds better than what I learned in HE in 1993! (Make up aside) we learned how to make a scotch egg and quiche from scratch 🙄
Learning cooking basics and to budget is far better!

In the late 70s/early 80s, the boys did woodwork, metalwork, and technical drawing. Girls did typing, office practice, domestic science, and childcare.

You could only do any of these subjects if you weren’t in the first sets for maths and English though.

I wanted to do tech drawing, but wasn’t allowed because I was female and in the first sets.

I’m still bitter.

I’m hoping times have changed!

What I will say is that I don't think they're learning much at school anymore about cooking etc. My kids learned at home because what they did at school wasn't very helpful.

We had Rural Studies, which could also be taken as an O Level/ GCSE. I've not met anyone else who had this at their school! This was in the 1980s.

knitting, sewing and domestic science. Also typing and shorthand. Probably none of these are done today apart from sewing maybe

I think it depends more on the school. I went to 4 different secondary schools.

school 1 did cooking, woodwork, metalwork, and graphic design.

school 2 did woodwork and metal work

school 3 did pottery, sewing and cooking

school 4 did nothing like that.

I did typing, for about a day a week for two years, it was a very useful lesson and I enjoyed it, I also did Pitmans shorthand. This was in 73/74, at our girls secondary school where you either were probably going to do an office job or work in one of the local factories, usually it was the offices of the local factory's that girls worked in. Very few would have stayed on for A levels at my school

I wonder if we went to the same school 🤔

Home economics (sewing the gingham apron for us to use in cooking - sounds very Sound of Music now. I also remember a lesson on how to cleanse, tone and moisturise. Essential skills for us girls while the boys school did wood and metalwork). Also Latin, Classics and a lesson in year 7 called ‘library’ where we were dictated the entire Dewey decimal system to copy out over the course of a year.

Mine did all of these, knitting and crochet only in year 6; youngest now goes to crochet club in senior school

I vaguely remember knitting a dishcloth in Primary school with stringy type wool

DH did Country Dancing at Secondary school.

I know this as it recently came up on Facebook... of the videos of the current pupils doing the traditional Country Dancing!

Apparently they all hate it in Yrs 7-9, avoid it in 10&11... then in Sixth Form insist on it still happening as its Tradition.

(State Grammar School)

I did woodwork and metal work, with all the proper machinery. I still can’t belive a bunch of teenagers was allowed to use actual fire for brazing etc. especially as the teacher could t control the class. Fortunately there were no accidents. Made me sad when I went back to the school last year and the work shops were normal classrooms

I loved country dancing! 😀

I did woodwork and technical drawing ? Metal work was an option for senior years.

We also had a bit of ballroom thrown in with the Scottish country dancing.
This was 45years ago and it was hated by all.

Yup still do that

Touch typing in 6th year with paper over your hands. How to format a letter so when you folded it in three, the address showed in the window!
Also sewing in first year. Started off following lines on paper with no thread in needle of machine to get ' driving licence '.

They still do woodwork, cooking, textiles in DT. Also 3d printing, graphic design…

if anything I was quite surprised how little it moved on since the 90s

In primary we didn’t have sewing machines. I learned to make, first an apron, then a skirt, by hand sewing the seams. They were about 1mm long back stitched. Very boring!

Technical drawing - very, very carefully drawing plans of things with an extremely sharp pencil and your paper on a proper drawing board. We had a couple of lessons on how to draw the border of the piece of paper before you even started. Hanging over us was the threat of being humilatingly yelled at for being stupid and disobedient and given detention if you used a ruler to draw a line (rulers for measuring only - measure the distance, mark dots for beginning and end, then use your set square to run your pencil along to connect the two).

Teacher begrudgingly told me my drawings were "the best he'd seen, for a girl".