Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[sheeplady]

Please tell me that these $600 dresses are made by someone who owns the shop.

I don't hold out hope they are, but you never know.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd put Joe on the roof of my house in a minute, just to scare the gentrifiers away. But they'd probably think he was "kitsch," and paste concert posters all over him.

One of my Kids works over at the trendy restaurant and occasionally brings me an order of their spicy popcorn chicken, which is really quite good -- but not $11 worth of good, so I'm glad to have a connection that brings it to me for free.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Please tell me that these $600 dresses are made by someone who owns the shop.

I don't hold out hope they are, but you never know.

Not that I know of. And most of them are the kind of "minimalist" designs that anybody with an eighth-grade home ec education could throw together in an afternoon.

We do have a little booteeky place on Main Street that has their own sewing shop, but I don't think they pay UNITE-HERE wages. It's mostly old ladies sewing piecework -- like packing sardines, only with less fish.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Is home ec even taught any more? I imagine it's been suppressed as a sexist vestige of patriarchal culture, but it was one of the very few subjects that taught actual useful, necessary life skills. I wish home ec had been mandatory for every student, not just girls. I graduated knowing nothing at all about how to live on my own.

 

[tonyb]

I'd put Joe on the roof of my house in a minute, just to scare the gentrifiers away. But they'd probably think he was "kitsch," and paste concert posters all over him.

One of my Kids works over at the trendy restaurant and occasionally brings me an order of their spicy popcorn chicken, which is really quite good -- but not $11 worth of good, so I'm glad to have a connection that brings it to me for free.

I always appreciated that collection of hostile looking young men hanging out on the corner whenever for-sale signs went up in front of neighboring properties and well-dressed people in late-model automobiles came driving by.

Alas, I and the no-longer-young men lost that war. The district has turned, undoubtedly. People are paying more to live there each and every month than it cost me and mine to encamp there a solid year.

 

[sheeplady]

Is home ec even taught any more? I imagine it's been suppressed as a sexist vestige of patriarchal culture, but it was one of the very few subjects that taught actual useful, necessary life skills. I wish home ec had been mandatory for every student, not just girls. I graduated knowing nothing at all about how to live on my own.

It was mandatory in 7th grade (and either 6th or 8th too) for both sexes when I was in school. I graduated high school in 1999.

I learned how to budget in home ec. (I was in 4-H so I knew how to sew and bake/cook). However, it's the only class I had that taught budgeting and saving; how to use credit and understand it, etc. I would have liked to learned basic car and bike repair, nutrition on a budget, how mortgages work, how to plan for retirement, etc. at the high school level, but no such course existed.

 

[David Conwill]

You're fortunate, sheeplady, I graduated in 2001 and the former Home Ec classrooms had long since been subdivided into ordinary classrooms--though their ovens were still intact. Auto shop was similarly long gone.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Stuff like that makes me very very angry. When I'm dictator kids will learn to work with their hands as well as their heads.

 

[Fading Fast]

Is home ec even taught any more? I imagine it's been suppressed as a sexist vestige of patriarchal culture, but it was one of the very few subjects that taught actual useful, necessary life skills. I wish home ec had been mandatory for every student, not just girls. I graduated knowing nothing at all about how to live on my own.

I took a "Food Science" course in college which was fancy name for a course that taught you where food came from, basic agricultural skills and some basic food prep skills - all under the guise of science. Which, in truth, did drive it.

I grew up in a town, my mother did not cook and I wanted to learn some of the basic stuff. I am glad to this day I took that course.

The course really had two things going for it. I truly did learn a lot about food that kids raised on a farm or with parents who knew how to cook probably already knew and the class was 90% girls - sorry, but at 19, that counted.

Dated one girl from the course for about half a year, but she wanted to get serious which was not on my 19-year-old radar. We stayed friends and, no shock, she got married right out of college. I think about her now and again - very nice girl, hope the marriage lasted as she'd be married for about thirty years now.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

It was mandatory in 7th grade (and either 6th or 8th too) for both sexes when I was in school. I graduated high school in 1999.

I learned how to budget in home ec. (I was in 4-H so I knew how to sew and bake/cook). However, it's the only class I had that taught budgeting and saving; how to use credit and understand it, etc. I would have liked to learned basic car and bike repair, nutrition on a budget, how mortgages work, how to plan for retirement, etc. at the high school level, but no such course existed.

I graduated high school in 1965 and I had no idea how to write a check or balance a checkbook. I had no idea how to do comparison shopping or take advantage of sales or coupons or draw up a budget. I had to learn all that stuff the hard way - by losing far more money than I had to. I wish I'd paid attention in shop class and taken auto shop. I've enriched mechanics unnecessarily for half a century. I'm hoping I'll get the chance to do it all over again in the next life. I'll have a better idea of what to do this time. And in college I'd take some basic business courses. I've been ripped off my whole professional life by not understanding how business works.

 

[Zombie_61]

Even when I was in high school (class of '79) I thought they needed a mandatory class that taught how to manage personal finances, taught about loans and mortgages, explained contracts for, say, buying a car, and so on. We had nothing like that available to us--not even a basic business class--that would help as we grew into adulthood and would be forced to deal with such things. But then, in California junior high/middle school and high school weren't much more than a refresher course for everything we learned in elementary school because the school system was more concerned about whether or not we could pass tests and graduate than it was in making sure we actually learned anything, so it was clear they really didn't care about us once we left their school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In the modern American "standards based" education model, the graduate is the product, and mass production of that product -- not education -- is the goal. Keeping the production line moving, and keeping the graduates plunking down at the end of it, is more important than the quality of the assembly job. As long as the product is assembled reasonably within spec and within cost projections, it's stamped OK and sent on its way. Your kid isn't all that different from a Chevrolet, a light bulb, or a can of cling peaches.

 

[sheeplady]

What I don't understand is that everyone I've ever spoken to has said "this type of life skills should be taught" but yet you don't see a school teach it.

Are we (lay people) really that voiceless in education?

I regularly teach grad students how mortgage's and loans work. Most have zero clue, not because they're stupid, but simply they haven't had exposure and the first time they get it shouldn't be sitting across from the loan officer.

 

[Stormy]

Sadly, all of the festive and ornate holiday (Christmas) revelry at schools and in the workplace have been snuffed out. Seasons greetings are just too offensive nowadays.

 

[Stormy]

What I don't understand is that everyone I've ever spoken to has said "this type of life skills should be taught" but yet you don't see a school teach it.

Are we (lay people) really that voiceless in education?

Yes, as per the dumbing-down agenda.

 

[HudsonHawk]

4th grade for me, Mrs. Cass was my teacher, and she was cut of the same cloth.

Miss Martin in the 3rd grade. My first crush. She'd be in her 60s now, but I bet she's still a doll.

And then there was my 7th grade English teacher who moonlighted as an NFL cheerleader. Because...well, I was 13.

 

[ChiTownScion]

In the modern American "standards based" education model, the graduate is the product, and mass production of that product -- not education -- is the goal. Keeping the production line moving, and keeping the graduates plunking down at the end of it, is more important than the quality of the assembly job. As long as the product is assembled reasonably within spec and within cost projections, it's stamped OK and sent on its way. Your kid isn't all that different from a Chevrolet, a light bulb, or a can of cling peaches.

That becomes less of a reality the higher one moves up the ladder, at least as to academic graduate degrees. Out of necessity really: a thesis or dissertation requires original research. As to professional degrees (law, medicine, divinity school) where no original research is required, it can often be little more than rote memorization. I'd go even further and that while the latter may mean an assembly line mentality for the educator, it boils down to a brand of intellectual prostitution for the pupil, at least in some classes. Some law classes, because of the historical context, were downright spellbinding for me (Constitutional Law, Corporations, Equity); when it came to Federal Income Tax Law, I sold my mind and soul for a semester to get through with a decent grade.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Sadly, all of the festive and ornate holiday (Christmas) revelry at schools and in the workplace have been snuffed out. Seasons greetings are just too offensive nowadays.

We still have holiday stuff in the workplaces here -- at the theatre we have a big gaudy artificial Christmas tree -- fire codes prohibit real ones -- with a popcorn box on top instead of a star, and garlands made of strips of scrap film. And we sell the hell out of the holiday season in the lobby -- the first thing you see when you come in the door are two tables piled with gift packs, gift cards, gift memberships, and other "buy your last minute presents here instead of at the gas station" type merchandise. I even did a local TV plug last winter yukking it up with a Santa hat on. Ho ho ho.

It may be a regional thing, but we never did Christmas much at school when I was a kid -- there were no trees in the classrooms, no decorations I can remember, and no exchanging of presents. We'd do a "Christmas Concert" in grade school, but nobody took it especially seriously -- a bunch of us got in big trouble in the sixth grade for singing "Randolph The Six-Gun Cowboy" instead of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," and that was the end of Christmas concerts as far as I can remember.

What I find deeply offensive is the presence of Chri$tma$ paraphernalia in the stores right after Labor Day. I could barely control my irritation this year when the marketing office started putting our own Xmas stuff up two days before Thanxgiving. As far as I'm concerned, that Festive Season Of The Year can stay in the attic until December 15th.

 

[David Conwill]

I took Civ Pro II and Tax in the same semester my oldest daughter was born. Big mistake!

 

[David Conwill]

What I find deeply offensive is the presence of Chri$tma$ paraphernalia in the stores right after Labor Day. I could barely control my irritation this year when the marketing office started putting our own Xmas stuff up two days before Thanxgiving. As far as I'm concerned, that Festive Season Of The Year can stay in the attic until December 15th.

Wasn't there an attempt during the Depression to boost consumer spending by mucking around with the date of Thanksgiving to give an earlier and longer Christmas shopping season?