useless lessons from your youth

I enjoyed Latin, algebra and lacrosse but not economics as I never really understood what it was about.

Whew - I've now read all 7 pages of this thread! What have I learnt? - That co-ed grammar schools were not the norm. In our small town there was only room for one Grammar School and one Secondary Modern, so they had to be co-ed.

The Secondary Modern was bigger and much better equipped than our Grammar School, so what many have said about the Secondary schools not teaching domestic science so well, wasn't true for us. I envied the Secondary Modern girls; they learnt to type, and not only did they do Home Economics, they actually did proper Economics.

Whilst I was no good at games, gymnastics or athletics, I did see the point of them, and having played hockey has always given me a good enough idea of what's going on when watching a football match, which might be considered useful.

So, to answer the OP - very little that I learnt at school has been useless in later life.

My granddaughters are being taught “domestic science”. Here it’s now called “home Ec”. I never asked but I think “Ec” is short for “economics”. We just did it in school but they continue to practise at home, which is good.

Oxbow lakes - yes! I live on the Rhine, on a section of it which was very much affected by the straightening out in the second half of the 19th century. We have loads of oxbow lakes - and are infested with gnats in the summer due to the stagnant water.

Crikey - 7 pages of backlog to get through! I'll read it in a minute...

I loved school and can't think of anything that I haven't needed to know later in life, be it how to connect a plug to the Repeal of the Corn Laws. I have used French ever since and people are amazed that I only learnt my French in school.

We had domestic science which taught me more about working with other girls than about cooking or sewing, but all useful stuff.

The only thing I regret not having enough time spent on was geology - so often have I been to places on holiday where I wish I understood more about the rocks and soil.

There was just one very awful subject: art. I was absolutely no good at it and having to do it just instilled a furious hatred of the subject into me. The only saving grace was Italic writing (I was allowed to do that because my marks were so bad and they thought I could perhaps redeem myself with it. On the other hand they may have thought it would improve my terrible handwriting. Needless to say, it did neither, but I did enjoy it)

The lovely art teacher and 4 of us 6th formers batiked the Christmas star hanging for the school foyer. I hated it when she'd taught me italic handwriting or art, but I treasure those craft lessons. Am so un-arty, but to this day I adore all sorts of crafts, the best bit of my retirement.

Varian, I remember that lesson and although it has never been'useful' to me, I do remember finding it interesting

Has anyone, whatever type of school they went to, not been taught about the formation of oxbow lakes, and has anyone ever found that knowledge useful?

We had to make a pinafore and matching Alice band in needlework before we could cook. The first thing we made was bread and we had to sing "Do you ken John Peel" while we kneded the dough so that we kept a rhythm. We learned how to launder, how to wash wool, how to use a flat iron which we heated on a stove! Once a week we cooked a full meal which we ate for our lunch and there was a revolting full size rubber baby to be bathed and changed. I am eternally grateful to that teacher.

My mum taught me everything I needed to know and my grammar school taught me nothing valuable.
Father gave me a love of books and good handwriting and a secure, loving homelife gave me confidence and belief in myself.

In junior school we girls had to make skirts in either red, yellow, green or blue, and trim them with rickrack, together with gingham short sleeved blouses in same colour. These were to wear in (I can't remember...dance class or school play?) All hand stitched but never worn again.

Learning to sew a school badge onto my Grammar school blazer was NOT a waste of time. When I went to college I found it was a good way to meet male students. In my first week there, pretending to be a useless female who did not know how to wire a plug I rang up the mens halls to ask for help. In return I sewed on blazer badges. Met my husband to be in that hall of residence . Not a bad result for a bit of sewing (I hated sewing by the way)

Actually, learning how a baby is born was quite a revelation to me when I was 12!

We were told how a baby is born.
But we were never told how it got there in the first place

I remember a sex education class being given when I was somewhere between 12 and 14, in other words between '73 and '75 . We had already learnt the scientific/physical side of things in science classes some time earlier. This particular one-off lesson for the whole year group (though I can't remember if boys and girls were segregated on this occasion) covered sanitary protection, basic contraception and the moral aspect. As I have said, this was in the seventies but we were shown films that were probably made in the fifties, and to a seventies girl, they might as well have been from the 19th century. Most of us girls had already started our periods and used either tampons or stick-on sanitary towels, so the film of a girl going along to a pharmacy with her mother to buy sanitary pads that required a belt (which then had to be hidden in a discrete brown paper bag) was already laughable. Let's just say the contraception part was just as outdated, so by the time they got to the moral part that made it clear that any girl who consented to sex outside marriage would never find a man who respected her enough to marry her, they had totally lost any credibility! I don't think any of us were sexually active at the time, but the lesson was just ridiculously outdated!

mixed year

I too was taught the ridiculous pallet knife and enamel plate method of whisking egg whites (secondary school 1950's) Boolya. Still carry a huge chip on my shoulder after being 2nd, then top, in the two years of science in our mixed class of 40, before we girls were transferred to 'domestic' science lessons. The teacher of which was a farmer's wife who read us directions from a book.

I found decimals very exciting, the learning of which my mother viewed as pointless - nice to be proved right some years later

meandashy
Well done you!
The teachers may have helped to point you in the right direction but only you could take the exams.

I also did batique in my textile class.
If it is as I remember you had the lovely task of peeling off the hardend wax to reveal your masterpiece

We also had a flat with a single bed where we were taught hospital corners using flat sheets.

I still iron a shirt as I was taught by our DS teacher.
We were asked to bring in an old shirt to practice on .
My mum insisted that I had to take one of my father's best shirts.
No way did my mum want the teacher to see a shirt with frayed or rubbed collar or cuffs!

Where she came unstuck was that having used the shirt for ironing practice we were then expected to use the shirt as an overall in our art class!

Grammar! FFS.

Another all-girls grammer attendee here -- very academic and a bit of a sausage factory TBH.
However it had a boarding house and I was a boarder as parents lived abroad for my DF's job. The boarding house was extremely old fashioed with a huge emphasis on manners esp table manners. I was taught how to say Grace, set a formal table correctly to the Nth degree, how to break, (never cut) bread rolls; you even had break slices of bread into small pieces before buttering each piece separately and eating it.
In school DomSci lessons we were taught how to fully disassemble and clean a large, industrial-kitchen type gas range cooker. Something I have never done since nor have any intention of doing again. DH cleans the oven and hob or I get a service in to do it.
We also had to chain-stitch embroider our names onto a cloth gym kit/shoe bag, make a short Greek style tunic-dress for our very strange interpretive-dance-type lessons. Also a gathered dirndl skirt. God-awful garment.
OTOH we made scrummy gingerbread, scones, sausage rolls and toad-in-the-hole. I wonder how I ever managed to get 9 'o' levels. (Not DomSci, didn't take it.).

I changed schools in the first year of secondary school, when my parents moved. First sewing lesson we had to thread a needle. I held it up and stabbed at it with thread which was the way my mother did it. Teacher saw and held me up to ridicule "that's not the way we do it is it girls". She made me hold the eye of the needle between finger and thumb and then try to get the thread through it; I had never seen it done that way, still have no idea how it is supposed to work and spent the whole lesson in tears, trying to get the thread through the needle while she jeered at me...

Next lesson she asked for volunteers to do music instead as there weren't enough sewing machines, guess whose hand was up before she'd finished speaking? But she never forgave me, and made me do the exam at the end of the year even though I hadn't done any of the lessons.

Fortunately the next year we had a different teacher!

Another one here who got nothing out of sewing lessons at my grammar school. My Mum refused to buy new fabric for me o use to make a dress in class as she, correctly, decided it would be a waste. She gave me some horrid pink shiny fabric she got from God knows where which had an uncanny ability to fray as soon as it was touched. Needless to say I made a right pigs ear trying to do anything with it and most lessons were spent in a queue waiting for help fro the teacher. She was one of the nicer teachers in the school but even she lost patience with my fabric and me and let me spend the rest of the term reading my library book. Other ' wasted on me' lessons were most of the maths ones and all the PE ones.
I M however a whizz at times tables and recognising cloud formations.

My DD made sausage rolls in Dom Science. When she arrived home with box we opened it to find pastry crumbs and lumps of revolting looking sausage meat which we thought looked like something unmentionable. Still remind her of this, she's 45 now,. Given us a good laugh over the years.

I loved Latin and found it very useful in later life. I hated Domestic Science , it took me a whole year to complete my apron . I remember making a Xmas cake and so proud to present it to the whole family.

One of the other women at my book group nearly had a fit when I said we were taught to scrub tea towels and cloths at my school and haughtily rejoined, ‘At MY school we did Latin.’

Well I made sure that my daughter went to schools which did Latin!

The tea towel scrubbing never came in handy but the plain sewing and cooking lessons came in very useful. I was a dab hand with a needle until my sight weakened and have been able to rustle up all manner of nice foods that my family love.

The fearsome cookery teacher who terrified us all taught us cake and bread making, not just one but many types and methods including a Christmas cake with homemade marzipan and Royal icing She taught us how to make various sauces, stews and pies. We learnt how to make short, puff, flaky and rough puff pastry and many other meals besides.

Looking back the woman was miraculous. She did not like me much and in the exam I was bumped from top to second because I did not make my Bakewell before my casserole though she said my actual dishes were the best. If I met her now - she is long gone -I would thank her profusely.