Nice people thread 2 - now even nicer

tomterm8

The roof at a school my dad worked in blew off once. Why couldn't it have happened to my school. /grumbles.

When I was at school it was called CDT (craft, design and technology) and was the only exam I have ever failed at.

carolt

Our home economics lab exploded, as they'd forgotten the fumes off the brand new wooden flooring they'd put down were flammable...and the gas cookers had pilot light thingies on... oops.

Luckily it was in the holidays, so no-one was hurt.

Davesnave

Nothing remotely exciting happened in my school, but I remember that some of my chemistry pals made something that exploded under pressure and spread it on the hall floor just before Speech Day. It just about did for one of the older lady members of staff. There was a bit of a delay while it was swept up, but no doubt the Speech Day was as boring as ever.

I still have the school mag somewhere in the loft. I kept it mainly because the Speech Day photo shows one of the local big-wigs fast asleep on the stage. :rotfl:

PasturesNew

Woodwork/metalwork was for boys, not for girls.
Girls weren't even allowed to play football.

I didn't do cookery because you had to bring in the ingredients and we couldn't afford them. I had about 4 lessons and they gave you the ingredients, then took the finished item off you to sell in the staff room to pay for the ingredients. So I stopped playing ball and just sat and stared out of the window. There was only 6 lessons of cookery anyway in the whole time I was there, so I didn't miss much.

Next, for O level, I opted for needlework - thing was, everybody else had done 3 years of that and I'd never done one lesson. So I was thrown out before Xmas because I knew nothing so couldn't do the O level stuff. So then I got to just hang about where the "naughty boys" were doing car mechanics. They couldn't read/write much, so they were taught car mechanics - and I had to be somewhere, so they let me hang out there. Just messing about with cars, well, I used to sit and stare out of the window really.

lostinrates

Like Tomterm, I did a term or so of CDT. I thought it was great fun. Somehow one can relax a bit more when its not something you'd choose or feel like you are meant to be good at. I remember being devastated when my dad threw my cdt project away...year later when I was at uni. I still felt proud of it. In fact thinking about now I'm still a little put out.

carolt

Wish I'd had the opportunity to do CDT - I would have been rubbish at it, as putting things together definitely isn't one of my strong points - but possibly if I'd been taught I'd be marginally less rubbish than I am.

Sewing was good - actually making stuff. That I do still use a bit - would use a lot more if the tension wheel hadn't fallen off my sewing machine. Must get round to getting it sorted - OH has said he might be able to fix it - and he might - or there is, believe it or not, an entire sewing machine repair shop near michaels (and my MIL, more usefully for me, before michaels thinks I'm stalking him! ) - how cool is that? A whole shop that has no purpose other than to make sewing machines whole again.

Almost as good as the door knob shop we once had on our street in Ealing.

lostinrates

carolt wrote: »

Almost as good as the door knob shop we once had on our street in Ealing.

Ooooh, I need door knobs. And window latches that lock. we have a mismatch of styles of architecture here, so I can't just get matching ones for the whole house. Atm I'm looking for something really good fun for the back door because I'm fed up of using a screw driver.

LydiaJ

:T

Big congratulations to Sue's eldest for his awards.
He's such a credit to you, Sue.

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

Woodwork/metalwork was for boys, not for girls.
Girls weren't even allowed to play football.

I didn't do cookery because you had to bring in the ingredients and we couldn't afford them. I had about 4 lessons and they gave you the ingredients, then took the finished item off you to sell in the staff room to pay for the ingredients. So I stopped playing ball and just sat and stared out of the window. There was only 6 lessons of cookery anyway in the whole time I was there, so I didn't miss much.

Next, for O level, I opted for needlework - thing was, everybody else had done 3 years of that and I'd never done one lesson. So I was thrown out before Xmas because I knew nothing so couldn't do the O level stuff. So then I got to just hang about where the "naughty boys" were doing car mechanics. They couldn't read/write much, so they were taught car mechanics - and I had to be somewhere, so they let me hang out there. Just messing about with cars, well, I used to sit and stare out of the window really.

It was the same at my school, the boys did metalwork and woodwork, the girls did needlework.

Girls played hockey, boys played football....there was no exceptions.

I took food and nutrition at O level, failed the theory part miserably (as did all bar one student whi happened to be the only male in the class and was a chemistry whizz - it was more like A level chemistry than cooking!) but we all passed the practical bit. The practical exam was funny as one of my friends was pregnant and she was going between being bright red in the face because of the heat or green because of the cooking smells....amazingly, she also bucked the trend, 26 years later she is still with her partner who became her husband shortly after she left school (she had 4 children in the end) and works at eldest's high school in quite a high up position. In the end, only one student out of 17 got a grade and that was only just a squeeze pass...the teacher was sacked as she had omitted to teach us any of the theory stuff.

I didn't get chucked out of any of my classes but I did plead to be released from doing my Chemistry exam (they were trying a new thing, a dual O level/CSE exam to see how it went to base the soon to come GCSE's on). The teacher said we will see how you do in the mock exam....I only went and got a pass grade didn't I, so he refused to let me drop out. In the proper exam, I had been taking the pee out of a revision book just before we went in and a huge part of the exam was about the chemical I had been taking the pee out of.

I got an O level equivalent grade....and I know begger all about chemistry.

SingleSue

carolt wrote: »

Wish I'd had the opportunity to do CDT - I would have been rubbish at it, as putting things together definitely isn't one of my strong points - but possibly if I'd been taught I'd be marginally less rubbish than I am.

Sewing was good - actually making stuff. That I do still use a bit - would use a lot more if the tension wheel hadn't fallen off my sewing machine. Must get round to getting it sorted - OH has said he might be able to fix it - and he might - or there is, believe it or not, an entire sewing machine repair shop near michaels (and my MIL, more usefully for me, before michaels thinks I'm stalking him! ) - how cool is that? A whole shop that has no purpose other than to make sewing machines whole again.

Almost as good as the door knob shop we once had on our street in Ealing.

I did something similar to Design technology for a term at school, it was more about drawing out the plans for something rather than actually building it but can't for the life of me remember what the initials were for the subject.

I turned out to be quite good at it because it was straight lines and very numerical...and I can draw straight lines and am obsessive about numbers.

I got an A for that term but sadly, didn't get the option to continue as it clashed with my option subjects (much like physics which was another subject I was good at - you could only do Biology/Chemistry or Physics/Chemistry at O level and I needed Biology for the career I had planned)