useless lessons from your youth

Really interesting topic.

I attended a girls Catholic grammar school where for the first term of the senior school I didn't touch any material in sewing lessons, but had to copy immaculate drawings of various seams from the board into my exercise book.

I went to an all girls grammar school as well, we did Latin, French etc and lacrosse not a game you see much any more.
I remember making a nightie too Jalima it fell apart after the first wash.

I did Pure and Applied Maths to A level standard, but have never put much of it to use. Times tables were the most helpful for everyday life. We had to choose between sewing and cookery so never learned to sew, but could make a sponge cake with half an egg! However, I taught myself needlework in adulthood and made all our clothes including much-admired smocked angel tops with matching knickers for the DDs.

Games (lacrosse, netball) were a total waste of time, and horrible.

No cookery in my school. I think, as someone else has said, it was assumed we would always have staff - or perhaps it was because it was a very academic school and cookery was considered not worthwhile.

Latin is very useful. We use it every day, as one of the bases of modern English.

Freezing cold in short skirt getting hit on ankles with a hockey stick.
(Why in the middle of winter?
Whats wrong with spring/ summer?)
Whilst getting yelled at by a teacher in a nice warm tracksuit.

Still there was always cross-country
Run out the school gate until out of sight
Then saunter down to little shop
Buy loads of 2p sweets with dinner money
Sit on the pipe over a little brook munching our goodies.
Walk back and run through school gates completely out of puff holding our sides with terrible stitches.

'Enjoy your run girls?'
Always the same question by the tracksuit teacher.
Yes Miss

I could have forged a career as apron maker for the rich and famous. Elton John, Mary Berry...

How sad.
You could have been another Mary Quant!

I never got to make an apron.
I feel my life could have turned out so different if I hadn't been denied that chance.

We too had to sew an apron in Domestic Science lessons. I've never sewn anything since! Logarithms sines, cosines etc were lost on me too. I enjoyed games though,sand PE. I was good at hockey but have never played it since leaving school. The "flat" was a secret to me to until the final term. Between exams we were allowed in there to watch Wimbledon on the TV.

I enjoyed hand sewing lessons and learning how to embroider at primary school - the lessons there were so much better than in the first year at High School.

Yes, I remember it, Jalima1108.

I went to an all girls grammar school. I did Latin for a year and French and German. I remember making disgusting concoctions in Domestic Science. PE was my favourite subject, I was in all the school teams. We had no male teachers in our school at all. All girls and all female teachers, nearly all spinsters (horrid word), I think that so many men died during the war that there weren't enough to go round. This was in the 60's.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wasted endless hours hand-sewing a white cotton apron and cap in Domestic Science lessons.

Other lessons that have not proved their worth: learning to darn woollen socks; logarithms; how to poach rhubarb, in single pieces, having first removed all the nice pink skin.

We did that Luckygirl but sadly I was very ill at the time and missed most of it. We did however have a girl in our class with the surname Fry. She was always known as Fruit after that .

Learning the reproductive cycle of the fruit fly - that has never really come in handy at all. I think we were meant to somehow extrapolate from that to human reproduction. It is a wonder I did not produce wee flies!

nobody has mentioned having to spend a double domestic science lesson wire wooling the bakeing tins and trays. We also had to learn how to iron a pillowcase at our secondary modern.
We were supposed to make an apron all by hand in our needlework lessons which were classed as a seperate subject to DS. I lost count of the number of times I had to unpick mine ! I never did progress to being allowed to use a machine.
I can mend, hem and sew a button on but I can't thread a sewing machine.

In the grounds of our bog standard woolwich secondary modern we had a small I bed 'bungalow'
To this day on the rare occasion that I make scrambled egg I still follow the way I was taught. I still think of those lessons when I wash brushes.
We had a tennis court and a lovely allotment where we were taught basic gardening.
Looking back I can't believe how good it was.

Goodness only knows Beau, it still puzzles me to this day.

All this brings back memories of my days at school and making the blue striped apron and matching cap with our names embroidered on them. We also had a flat where we learned hospital corners on beds but I can't remember doing ironing. I liked cookery which is why I went to catering college - hated it from the moment I got there and preferred the typing lessons - left 4 months later pregnant! I did like sewing at school - making a felt pin cushion to begin with but as it took us forever to do anything with one lesson a week I used to take mine home and finish it there. Hated games and sports (apart from the tennis in the summer) and would hide with others in the school canteen. My report used to say * tries hard - the teacher didn't even know who I was

I am so pleased that education has come a long way since then for our daughters and granddaughters!
So we did home economics ( cooking, sewing and how to decorate a home) Mother Care ( how to care for a baby feed it etc) type ( not electric either.
Then having your dresses measured when kneeling ( no more than 2 inches above the knee)
I live in Australia and vividly remember the nuns ( horrible old women)
The most awful experience was being rapped over the knuckles with a small cane if I hit the key on the piano ( I hate playing the piano to this day)

The domestic science teacher was teaching our class of second-formers how to clarify stock with egg white and gauze, as you do, when she decided to digress onto that other useful skill of how to make your own sanitary towels. Even in the sixties tampons were available.

I do Jalima1108 ! And I loved maths especially geometry and trigonometry but never got to grips with a slide ruler and what on earth was calculus all about ?
As for Domestic Science lessons you should all have been pupils of mine. My first act of rebellion in my first few days as a new teacher was to refuse to make the dreaded apron and cap. Fortunately I was backed up by others in the department ! I didn't have anyone ironing hankies (or anything else for that matter) either. Oh what a rebel I was.

The old 'log books' - logarithms, sines, cosines, tangents etc!
Does anyone remember this?

Nonnie

Logarithms, never needed them since leaving school despite finding them an incredibly easy way of passing tests at the time.

Didn't learn to iron, maybe that's why I quite like it now.

Learned to smock, no idea why and none of my sons have ever required anything smocked.