Friday Five done on Monday...and yes, I'm irritable.

[shadowkat]

1. If you were a girl in the 70’s in the U.S., you were expected to take Home Ec. in high school. Did you and what did you take from the class, if anything? If you are a guy, would you have liked to have had the option of taking it?

I was a girl in the 70s and 80s in the US - and Home Economics courses didn't exist in elementary, junior high or high school. They didn't exist in Pennsylvania or Kansas City. Are you sure you're not discussing the 1950s and 60s?? You may be older than you think you are?

2. How were your school lunches?

I didn't buy lunch. I brought it from home. And I barely ate that. I hated lunch - wasn't until years later that I figured it out. Gluten Intolerant.
I had Figurines - Diet Chocolate Energy Bars in high school.

3. Did you walk, take a bus, or have someone drive you to school?

Varied.

Elementary? In PA, I walked about thirty minutes to the bus stop with a friend, and took a half hour ride to school, which in the fifth grade became an hour. Then we moved in KS, and I walked or rode my bike to school.

Junior High? Walked. Or was driven on bad days, but that was rare.

High School? Bus (it stopped in front of our house) or walked, which was about an hour or forty-five minutes. I hated taking it, but I wasn't comfortable driving and didn't own a car. (My brother was three years younger.)

Stayed late for theater a lot - so mother picked me up or someone drove me home. Did a lot plays, stage crew, etc. Heavily involved in high school. Also track. I ran cross country and sprints in junior high and some of high school. In junior high - was involved with the school paper, and other extracurricular activities. I rode my bike a lot to school - but it was problematic - the tires were always low, and I could never remember the combination lock (switched the numbers around in my head).

4. Were there any classes there were off limits to you because of your sex?

No. It was the 1980s. And in the 70s, we didn't have electives until I hit high school. Everything was non-gender specific. We were only split up in junior high and high school for gym. But we played touch football.

Whomever wrote this must have been raised in the 50s and 60s, or something?

5. Looking back on it now, what was the biggest life lesson you took from high school?

To forget about it? That it doesn't matter - it was four years of my life.
To learn. Be creative. And ignore the bullies?

I don't know. It was over forty years ago, I barely remember it. And am happy about that. It's kind of sad that a lot of folks focus so much on high school - it's what? Four years of your life?

Comments

[iddewes]

We had Home Ec in Canada in jr high school in the 80s. And Industrial Arts. No gender had to choose either but it was mostly girls in home ec (there was one boy in my class) and boys in IA, though we all switched classes for about a month so I did IA for about a month 2 years in a row. In high school they may have had these as options, I don’t remember though and we didn’t have to take them .

[shadowkat]

I don't remember seeing them at all. All we had was typing (which wasn't gender-specific) and speed-reading (also not gender-specific). It's possible that my schools were a bit more advanced? They weren't rural. West Chester public school district got kind of experimental, and was into desegregation, and Shawnee Mission in Kansas was more advanced public school district. This may have been a rural Canadian, American thing?

[iddewes]

I lived in a city that was about 800,000 people then and over a million now, but the province of Alberta is pretty conservative, it’s known as the Texas of the North. So that could be why. But there weren’t any courses that only one gender could take, at least. We did have to take either Home Ec or IA, which sucked as I certainly wouldn’t have taken either if I had the choice.

[cactuswatcher]

There were Home Ec classes where I went to high school, but I think they steered girls with high grade averages in junior high away from it. I don't know if my sister took it. She went to high school in two different districts in the 1950s. My mother had a degree in Home Ec (dietetics) from college, and she got a job teaching poor young wives/mothers basic nutrition during the depression. Very different era.

Our school had a number of business and secretarial classes, like shorthand and bookkeeping that were mostly aimed at girls, but I think had at least a few guys in them. All of the guys and girls they thought would end up in college were supposed to take typing in junior high in our district. There was an uproar when the parents of one of the fellows wanted him to take shop instead.

[shadowkat]

That was typical though for the 1940s-early 1960s? My mother and Aunts reported the same. But the late 1970s and 80s? No. Early 70s? Maybe. I wasn't in school until the Mid-late 70s. My Aunts were - and did have it.

I think things began to change around 1975-77, when they adopted a whole new curriculum. That's when Phonics was introduced, and New Math. Also the metric system was introduced in elementary school around 1975-77.

[yourlibrarian]

I think a lot depended on the school. My first one offered Home Ec in 7th grade, my second did not.

What's interesting is that my school was only just starting to offer a computer class, but it was more of an independent study with very little oversight or guidance -- but there was a typing class.

[threemeninaboat]

We had home ec in middle school in the early 90s.

depended on the year. Love stromboli.

Bike. carpool.

No.

Shop class: drafting. I've used drafting and project execution my whole life.

[shadowkat]

I honestly think it depended on the school district you were in, regarding home ec?

[svgurl]

I remember watching shows set in high school as a kid (Saved By The Bell and the like) and they would have Home Ec and wood working (I don't remember the exact name) but it seemed to be like both girls and guys were in those classes. We didn't have any of them by the time I got to high school (in the Bay Area/Northern California in 2001). Maybe it is area specific so some places moved away from it sooner than others.