The girls were not allowed to take shop back in the 50s. I was happy to see this had changed by the time my grandchildren were in high school. My grandson learned how to cook...a great skill for any man to have.
I learned in the first semester how to sew a straight line, how to cut a pattern, and how to make an apron and then a skirt.
In the next semester I learned how to bake a cake, make cookies, and actually make a casserole with biscuit dough and hamburger. It was called something like Hamburger Biscuit-Rolls. The biscuit dough was coiled around the hamburger crumbs...with plenty of garlic and various other seasonings. I'd make a gravy with the hamburger grease left from browning it. My mother asked me to make this dish about every other week from then on. I had already learned how to make cupcakes with a mix, and sold them to my classmates on our break during 7th and 8th grades. So making cakes and cookies was just falling off a log to me.
Fortunately I only had to take Home Ec for that one year in high school. I had also had the same courses while in 7th and 8th grades.
My friend Rosie and I decided to cut class and go exploring in our neighborhood when we were in 8th grade. We were caught the next day, and admonished royally...told that we might not get to graduate with our friends. Of course I remembered that it was a dumb way to play hooky, a small classs where I'd obviously be missed.
So many years ago when I quit working in an office I decided to learn about wood. I painted and drew on it, making scenes and portraits. Then I finished it with polyurethane. One huge piece of birch plywood had a woman meditating at the beach looking at a sunset. I then cut the whole piece of wood into puzzle pieces, and then attached them back together to hang as a puzzle picture.
It was part of my one-woman-show in a little gallery in Tallahassee FL, where I was living. My friend, a chiropractor, bought it from me to hang in his waiting room. I didn't do anything else crafty for a long time.
Then I found pottery. I made it off and on, selling things through different venues, for the rest of my life until 2 years ago. That came to about 50 years ago actually, but not full time until 2008. I had to quit because of tremors in my hands and cramping that occurred in my fingers, not to mention breathing lots of dust. I've given away most of my pottery equipment, but still have a house full of my work all around me!
Today's quote:
If something fails where you thought it would fail, that is not a failure.
Being wise means having more questions than answers.
I have never met a person I admired who did not read more books than I did.
Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review. He has also been a writer, photographer, conservationist, and student of Asian and digital culture.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI remember taking the home ec classes. I was not good at making clothes from a pattern. I did enjoy the cooking classes.
Your pottery is pretty! Take care, enjoy your weekend!
I enjoyed seeing all your Saturday Critters...maybe someday I'll run into some animals. Right now that doesn't happen very much! Patterns worked for me for many years...I made my own clothes. But the last thing I remember were two sport coats for my sons for Christmas one year. A lot of work, and of course they outgrew them soon. Not really worth my time.
Delete...shop and home ec, those are terms from the past for sure.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what they are called in high schools these days.
DeleteI had a few shop classes, but they were wasted on me. I might have enjoyed cooking class. Later in like, a friend was a home ec teacher who taught a lot of boy classes. For awhile it was called bachelor survival, but that name fell out of favour although I cant remember what they changed it to,
ReplyDeleteLife skills training makes so much sense, but I think most kids don't learn how to balance a budget, or a checkbook...let along make a grocery list based on recipes they plan to make during a week. But then, I don't do that either!
DeleteOh wow I had forgotten about those cooking and sewing classes. Yes, I made an apron and a skirt. Seems crazy to me now. We made cookies too and something else I can't remember. My brothers had shop class. It's all so long ago now. I don't know why it surprises me that schools still do this stuff.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they do. Probably. My grandchildren are mostly grown now, but the youngest is a freshman in High School...I should ask her!
DeleteI did not take home economics. Somehow they let me take an extra year of French instead.
ReplyDeleteNow when I try to order poached eggs in IHOP and no one knows what they are, I think schools need to teach it again.
I dare say waitresses don't care much about poached eggs...they learn whatever the menu says! I'll check with my youngest granddaughter to see if home ec is still taught in High School. I know food science is a major in many universities.
DeleteI'm in favor of shop and home ec for all.
ReplyDeleteI wish that were the required classes, but sadly art and music have also been put aside as electives.
DeleteI had one year of Home Ec in high school. My mom had taught me to sew already. But I was not a cook. LOL But seems like we followed about the same timeline as you. Though we did start out with some embroidery...and seems like we did something else. And no girl had taken agriculture till that year, and one of the girls had plans of being a vet, and she got to take it. And she did become a vet.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a good plan, high school really needs to be starts of a career these days.
DeleteBoth were offered and were optional in high school. I don't recall taking either.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have a choice, but I did take art all 4 years of high school.
DeleteI took Home Ec in Jr. high school. My Mom had taught me to sew so I didn't have a lot to learn there. Cooking class was fun as we got to eat what we made. :) But making cakes and pies and custard and such was all I remember about it. What they should have been teaching is how to cook fresh vegetables & things like that. When I moved into my own apt. I was constantly calling home to Mom to ask how long I needed to cook carrots and green beans and peas, and etc. Oh well. I know must of that stuff now. ;)
ReplyDeleteMy mom's favorite new wife story was of how she tried to cook rice...a hard lump. So at least I followed the directions on the box.
DeleteI was hopeless at sewing but did learn to cook a few things that I then proudly made for my family. However, I wish I had taken shop, if that means learning to repair and build things. I need that skill desperately these days.
ReplyDeleteAh, repairing electronics would definitely be a skill worth learning...or just lawn mowers!
DeleteI took those classes! I should have failed sewing, as I kept making horrid mistakes. I ended up making clothes for my kids, though. I'd have loved to do wood working. Both boys and girls took both just as I began teaching. Then, they cut the classes and I taught gr. 7/8 in a former home EC classroom. It was strange!
ReplyDeleteYou sure must have had some interesting things in your environment from a home ec. classroom. Sorry to hear the classes were cut...and I know many art classes were too!
DeleteI am pretty sure none of my grandchildren took any home ec classes in high school. They learned how to cook at home and didn't learn how to sew, except for one who took a sewing course when she was an exchange student in Ghana.
ReplyDeleteI remember sewing classes. In the first we learned to make a gathered skirt without a pattern. Very easy and I made several. I remember making a pink jumper in another sewing class. I sewed a lot for years and years. My clothes, then my children's clothes, then dolls for sale. Now, I have my mother's old sewing machine right here under my desk but rarely sew anything aside from baby quilts when I have a new grandchild. So far I have made 14. I hope that's it. I told my children they will have to make the quilts when their children start having children, if they do.
And then there was cooking. The only thing I remember making were pineapple muffins. I learned to cook at home.
I always wanted to take shop. When I was in my 40s the local high school had after school enrichment classes and one of them was shop. I made several dollhouses for my kids. Then, they sold all the shop equipment and turned it into a weight room. I think only one of my children took shop - my 2nd daughter. No shop offered in my grandkids high schools.
You said it, many school budgets left these skills out...and assumed the kids would learn them from their homes. Sort of wonder if they did sex ed the same way...nobody really teaching them a thing. I know art got slashed, and music. All this education to a test really is sad. I also made some grandchildren's afghans...knitted. They didn't take very good care of them and practically unraveled them. Oh well, a gift must be let go.
DeleteThat brings back uneasy memories! I was at the tail end of home ec (for girls only) and survived two years of knitting socks and never ending embroidering of table cloth - still have the latter with me - , while the boys were taught stuff with wood and sharp tools. Then suddenly everything changed and we, boys and girls, had arts and crafts with everything from painting, book binding, enamel firing and best of all, copperplate engraving. I loved it.
ReplyDeleteNever learned how to sew or cook.
Oh your arts and crafts classes sound so great! I learned to embroider from my mother, and did a zillion pillow cases...wonder where they went, because I never got them when I left home! She also taught me to quilt, which I kind of learned, but I used my sewing machine to piece together pieces for a "patch work" for my youngest son. I had to wait till I finished working to get into pottery seriously!
DeleteI never took shop class in high school since playing in the band occupied all the schedule spots for non-required courses. But my dad took both woodworking and metal shop classes, so I learned from him the joy of fixing, making, and inventing things. However I did find time in high school to join the theater productions where the students built the stage sets under the direction of the drama teacher. That inspired me to learn about tools, wood, and simple construction. So I probably learned more useful life skills there than anything in English or Algebra classes.
ReplyDeleteHa ha...I agree completely. I remember making fake stained glass panels on butcher paper to represent some kind of church for a school play...to hang on each side of the stage. Talk about a lot of paint! But it didn't require any saws or hammers!
DeleteI loved reading about your talents. My mother was apprenticed as a tailoress at the age of 14 and ran a small home dressmaking business. I loved the pattern books she had and I had an outfit like your illustration with the full skirt and blouse with a Peter Pan collar. I wondered at first what Home Ec - till it dawned. It was called Domestic Science here and I hated it - cooking on gas which was new to me and I was hopeless at making pastry. I never tried any kind of woodwork. My mother was such a wonderful crafts woman - I inherited her interests, but not her skills!
ReplyDeleteOh you were so fortunate to have a skilled mother making beautiful clothes for you. Sorry, I didn't realize Home Economics had another name in the UK! Learned something today!
DeleteI wish I had those classes in school. I think there was home ec, but I didn't take it. I did take a sewing class at the YMCA and in Girl Scouts we did a little cooking. I wish I could take woodworking or sewing.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew about the American College of Building Arts earlier in life. (ww.acba.edu) Might have been a good blacksmith or heritage mason.
What great ideas...to work in building arts. I met a friend of my husband once who learned how to be a blacksmith. There aren't that many of them around these days! We live near a couple of crafts schools in the mountains of NC...Penland and John C. Campbell Folk School. I know metal working is at both of them...perhaps not making horseshoes though. Thanks for telling me about acba.edu!
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