useless lessons from your youth

the Repeal of the Corn Laws

Learning about the Window Tax too has proved to be extremely useful as I can now comment on the bricked-up windows we see in very old houses and appear very knowledgeable indeed.

The main thing I remember from our one year of cookery classes was the red metal Oxo tins used to carry ingredients to school and masterpieces home. Did other people use these?

Yes I remember those allule my father used one for his snap.
They often appear in museums etc making me feel really old.

Useless lessons from the past included all of the maths from the first to third year at grammar school. The teacher was ex-military and he operated by ritual public humiliation. Every lesson kicked off with ten minutes of rapid fire mental arithmetic and I can vividly remember sitting on my hands to stop them shaking with fear in case I was picked. You had to stand up so everyone could see you, then he would bark the question out and you had to answer instantly or the guy would shout in your face. He also threw chalk and board rubbers, slammed the desk lids down inches from your fingers when you got things wrong and read out any incorrect homework so the class could laugh at you. It instilled in me (and no doubt many others) a life long fear of anything to do with numbers or maths. Needless to say this has not stood me in good stead for my journey through life. Imagine any teacher behaving like that now!

MissAdventure were you at the H&E in Stortford? The mysterious “flat” between Cookery and Sewing...
No lesson is useless. Almost. It depends what you're going to do with what you learn, and it also depends on whether you’d have learned it by other means.
I have used what I learned in sewing throughout my life as I love sewing. I also learned Latin and it was useful insofar as it helped me get to Oxford to read Classics. O-level Human Biology was possibly the most useful O-level of all. I remember learning about the nervous system, synapses and all that, and realising with a shiver that I’d never have found these things out by “common sense”.
I too learned about Cobden and Bright and the Corn Laws - the problem was that there was no attempt to relate it to contemporary economics - if it had been taught more effectively I think most of us might have a better understanding of the relationship between markets and tariffs. And Manchester would celebrate its intellectual past instead of covering it up.
Most useless lesson of all? Learning to use a slide rule. And having to carry the damn thing around everywhere.
However I felt a bit braver if I had it in my hand as a potential defensive weapon walking home on dark winter nights.

I hated umpiring at tennis and I dislike taking my turn of being Head Girl. I am not a people person.

Sarah I wasn't in Stortford.
Our flat was between cookery and sewing though.

What a great thread.
Brought back a smile remembering washing hair brushes and cooking stews. Not a single moan about family members.
Applause and thanks Minesaprosecco

Doing sodding algebra in Maths lessons - yeah, algebra has been REALLY useful to know in all sorts of life's crisis situations since. NOT!!!

I loved algebra and yes it has been really useful, both at work and in all sorts of other ways.

I hated Latin and have never found a use for it. We don't need it as long as we have Mary Beard.

Sunnysusie, he was not called Mr Brown by any chance, I had a similar teacher in 1st year at grammer and he put me off Maths for life.
I would start to shake even before I entered a Maths class, even with a different teacher, awful man.
We never got home Economics at all and I wish we had as I married too early and had not got a clue as my Mother had never taught me anything either.
Funny how in later life I became a Chef ??!!

I don’t think any of us liked our domestic science teacher. She wore glasses with swooped up corners which made her look like an angry owl! I got into her bad books early after being asked to dispose of the contents of a saucepan into the dustbin, but there were two saucepans and instead of throwing away disused white sauce threw away a supply of parsley that as supposed to be for lessons that week. It was all downhill from there !

What wonderful memories you all have and very similar to mine. I've alway said that everything we learnt in primary school has been useful but next to nothing learnt in secondary school.

As a PS I can remember doing dress making, and on being asked what I'd like to make, I said a tight skirt. I was instantly told, a straight skirt Angela, not a tight skirt.

R E not because I am against it but how it was taught the teacher ask for opinions of and then whatever your answer was wrong unless it agreed with his, sure that is not the meaning of opinion.

Yes. I was taught how to iron a handkerchief. You never know, it m.i.g.h.t ..... come in handy, one day.

You're welcome Gotthatshirt!

At my Secondary Modern I hated hockey - always seemed to play in winter - freezing cold and muddy and always seemed to get wacked around the ankles with the stick - so painful. Put me off sport for life.
Learned how to iron a shirt in Domestic Science and wire a plug which was useful but had to make mince meat for mince pies. Everyone else took packet suet but my Step Mum got the real thing, skin and all from the butchers. Took me all the lesson to remove the skin and mince it. Had to stay behind to finish it. While the jars sat in the pantry they fermented and exploded. Step Mum had to clear up the mess - serves her right for making a laughing stock of me in class!! Needless to say I have never made mince meat again.

I never had any cooking or domestic science lessons at school but because I liked eating I soon taught myself to cook.

Although I like reading cookery books, I rarely actually follow a recipe these days but then I have been cooking from scratch almost every day for a very long time. Even so, I think that "if you can read you can cook" does make sense.

Paradoxically, I think there is nowadays probably more of a need for schools to teach cookery and nutrition than there was in our day because of the proliferation of fast food. There may be two generations in a family who have never known anything else.

I went to a new sec mod school with all enthusiastic teachers. It was all very practical. I too learnt to cook and, coming from a long line of useless cooks, this was most useful. My mum learnt from me! Girls didn’t do maths, we did business arithmetic - double entry book keeping etc. to make us good little secretaries. Girls didn’t do science, we did human physiology and hygiene, to make us good nurses - or mothers. We also did car maintenance and learnt to drive round the playing field.

The useless thing we learnt was Esperanto. We should have done French, but the biology teacher who tried to instill it into us said our Norfolk accents meant we spoke with very bad German accents which were so awful no French person would ever understand us. So, since no German teacher could be got, we learnt Esperanto. Forgotten it all through lack of use.

Ox bow lakes. Actually never forget them if I see them in geography programmes but I thought they were called ox bow legs and that troubled me because I was away on the day they were explained so when I came back none of it made sense.
Slide rules, terrifying things.
Lacrosse.

Found Latin useful when studying medicine later. And actually really liked it. Weird today.
Liked hockey too but not many of the other sports. Could run back then but that was not really recognized. And could swim competitively for a short while but couldn't handle the freezing cold water so quit.
Did cooking, sewing, wood work and metal shop at one point. Of equal in uselessness. I think in school you are really not engaged enough to want to learn anything of those.
Now...where is my ahenum, its time to cook!

My most useless certificate is one that I obtained (as an extra - staying once a week for the class) in 'audio visual aids', when I was doing my teacher training as a 'mature' student.
With this I learned how to use the large reels of tape recorders, rewind and splice broken tapes. Also to us projectors, and rewind and splice broken tapes on those. This Certificate is dated March 1969 (at which time all this equipment was as used in most schools). However, I left this mature teacher training as I had become pregnant (we had been told by specialists that my husband was unlikely ever to be able to father a child due to his MS). In November 1969 our first child was born, and in April 1975 we had a total of five children. A further one came to us a couple of years later for long-term fostering. By the time I was able to return to even considering working, all of that audio visual aids were confined to museums.

Being at school was something to be endured though I enjoyed music and languages. I just couldn't see the relevance of the maths we did and as for science.......! I was always unpicking my work in needlework and my cakes were also a bit too brown on top shall we say. PE was a lesson in pure endurance and I hated every minute.
In my spare time I taught myself to touch type and became very fast - a skill that's proved incredibly useful. I also taught myself Greggs shorthand which was equally useful. On Saturdays as a teenager I worked in a shop and learned about giving change - now THAT was useful but my initial ignorance must have horrified my boss; though he kept me on every school holiday!!! My father encouraged an interest in history and art - not school.
But I suppose school taught me something but I can't think what