I actually did take Building Construction for a semester in high school. I got my degrees in Engineering and now do woodworking as a hobby. To be honest, I’m not sure how incredibly useful the class was. We had to build a shed and roof a house and they stuck me with underfloor insulation which sucks. I think the biggest plus is that it gets you familiar with things that you might not otherwise do. A lot of what it teaches is stuff you can find in any code book. Shingling a house is not a hard thing to do knowledge wise (hauling a few squares of shingles up a ladder and sitting in 90 degree heat installing them because it’s a rush is a very hard thing to do physically.) I guess it should be said that I do almost all of the work on my house and it’s a nice thing when you come home to busted pipes, you can just do the work yourself, or put in your own flooring or building your own tree fort for the kids. I have probably saved in the many thousands of dollars over the years.
Strange, when I was in high school in the late '60s, there was a* state* requirement that every student take some sort of “practical art” - typing, shorthand, home ec, drafting or whatever.
Four years later when i was in Journalism school, there was actually a graduation requirement that we type 20 words per minute (along with being “proficient” in a foreign language.) Admittedly not a high bar, but it was a requirement.
If it ever was around here it was totally ignored. Like I said, a lot of us wanted it and some parents even fought for it. But the smaller-large-school especially was pure Hell once you committed; and being mill-hunky kids most of us got committed. This has me curious now though ---- I know a couple of the folks who stayed around there and sent their kids to the same school. I am going to have to come up with some pretext to find out what has happened since.
(The real fight was a friend who intended on going on to a culinary college. He was refused any place in the Home Ec/cooking classes unless he wanted to switch tracks and attend the vo-tech; end of discussion. His parents went so far as getting a lawyer involved but they basically got stalled off until our senior year. Did we have good teachers? Damn betcha – some of the best in the area. I remember how to do math I haven’t done since 1975. Did we have some archaic thought and rules? More than most I hate to admit.)
Since pretty much every elective that I wanted to take, I did take, there’s only one that I can think of, and I am not even sure it was offered at my high school at the time - electronics. The only letter grade below C+ that I ever got at any level was a straight C in Introduction to Electrical Engineering in college (back in the days when TTL was the standard).
Microeconomics and macroeconomics
Interpersonal communication
A class on evolutionary psychology
Auto maintenance and auto mechanics
Our high school had so few electives that I took shorthand - I should have taken autoshop instead.
I did take typing. Has helped me a great deal. Took as much shop as I could as well. But I was doing that stuff growing up as a necessity anyway. As a family we where always working on something. It was interesting though I doubt I’ll every be running a vertical mill again.
I wish I had taken Spanish. Or any language really. It would probably be long forgotten, but I think it would help in my understanding of languages in general. I would have hated it though, I did buy Rosette Stone German language software for a trip we took. Just couldn’t get into it.
Also, some sort of music class. I’m teaching myself guitar and have a best friend/cousin that is an accomplished musician. So I can bounce questions off of her. It’s often the most basic of basic question that gives me a :smack: OH! That makes sense.
Often the on line guitar lessons assume you know the basics. I am learning the basics, but also have to at least play SOMETHING or I know I’ll lose interest. Working on chords for ‘lesson’ after lesson gets a bit discouraging. So I do that, along with working on some simple songs that I can pick.
Gonna add some that I did take that where… meh.
Speed Reading. I do read a lot now, and maybe it helped. Maybe.
Life’s Myths and Realities. Oh God. The Name of the class itself… Taught buy a guidance counselor that was no longer a guidance counselor. A bit of a creepy guy. I remember one assignment was to write about what you envision to be your perfect ‘date’. Best friend got a C- on that (much to my amusement). Very weird.
Logic. Now, perhaps I wasn’t sure what to expect. But it was such rudimentary “If A=B and B=C then A=C” Um… yep… what else ya got? I’ve gone on to be a programmer. So, maybe something in that class lit my fire. Don’t know.
I took auto shop in high school, which led to me getting my mechanic’s license before I graduated, and I wrenched at an indie garage while going to school for my BS in Mechanical Engineering.
We’re suffering as a society because of idiot guidance counselors like you had. Yes, I know the conventional wisdom is that working on cars is a dirty job only suited for dumb shitkickers who couldn’t make it into college. But getting that up close to engineered machines gives you incredibly valuable insight into how things work, and can help prime you for learning why they work.
Agriculture. I grew up in small farming town and lots of kids too Ag classes. But I found a library book, much later on, that was really fascinating and filled me in on a lot of it.
I did take Latin and Touch-typing, the only two subjects I took at school that ever did me any good later on.
I took Logic in college, and Enipla is right – memorizing formulas for what was obvious.
Yeah, when I was in school, typing class was for girls only. Men were going to be business executives or engineers, and they don’t type, they dictate to girls who transcribe.
Luckily, I ignored this convention and taught myself to touch type by the time I was in fifth grade. A very wise choice, if I may say so.
In my school, males could only take “personal typing”. Nearly 50 years later I’m still faster and more accurate than most on a keyboard. Economics was required for one semester; we spent six weeks studying “communism”.
I kind of wish I’d taken physics. Unfortunately the teacher couldn’t have passed the “Test of English as a Foreign Language”, and I didn’t know Mandarin.
Ten years after high school I interviewed for a band directing job. The only real requirement the principal had was that the band teacher also had to teach “personal finance”. I didn’t get the job–who’s to wonder!
The mechanical drafting teacher at my school counseled all who wanted to take his class that mechanical drafting was not the way we wanted to go; he had no alternative to propose. A year later I was operating and programming a Gerber Autodraft plotter, and figured out what he meant.
Skool-Daze.
Like a lot of others, college prep students in high school didn’t have a lot of room for electives especially being in band. Typing was a half year course and combined with a BASIC computer class. We only required half a year of phys ed and then that was combined with a health course and sex ed. My only true elective was jazz band, since I’d taken Spanish 1 in middle school, I took Spanish 2,3 and 4 for my first 3 years and then jazz band my senior year.
You shouldn’t have any regrets, and you didn’t miss a thing. No one knows about cars any more, or has the time to become a grease monkey. I couldn’t tell you how to put oil in the last several cars I’ve owned and I’m proud of that. Waste of brain power fixing your own car. Drop it off, let the pros do it and use your time more productively.
They taught COBOL to high schoolers? That’s borderline child abusive.
I think the programming classes are much more useful than the traditional higher math courses.
I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of. I can see not caring if you can change a catalytic converter or a timing belt, but not knowing how to put oil in your car? That’s just being proud of willful ignorance. It’s not some Herculean task. My 9 year old knows how to do it and has for a couple of years. Even changing the oil is not a particularly difficult task although some vehicles require specialized tools. It’s usually just taking out a plug, taking off the filter cap, replacing the filter, ring and cap, replacing the plug and putting in the new oil. I can see not wanting to do it because it costs a trivial amount to have someone else do it, but not knowing how to do it? That’s not something to be proud of. It’s like saying that you don’t know how to cook ramen noodles or mow your lawn and you’re proud of that fact. I’m not sure what there is to be proud of.
The exact opposite for me. I took four years of French and wish I’d taken the two years of Latin they offered instead of honors chemistry and physics.
I wanted to be an astronomer at the time. Now I’m a translator.
I wish I had continued to take Spanish. I took two years, but all four would have been beneficial.
Why bother learning how to do any of that when you can just call mommy to bail you out? Man, that commercial makes me grit my teeth. Starts with “my precious little man can’t get his hands dirty!” and ends with “heh, aren’t guys the dumbest idiots ever?”
edited to add: like I said, even though I no longer need to do much on my vehicles, auto mechanics was very helpful towards me becoming an engineer. also, having the ability to do maintenance/repair for 1/10th-1/4 the cost of paying someone to do it has its benefits.
I wish I had taken Spanish instead of German. There are a lot more Spanish-speakers around than German-speakers.
Regards,
Shodan