Many years ago I was reading some Sunday newspaper that included a feature story about a university student that had recently graduated. The young man had never received any grade other than an A over his years leading up to college graduation. His university required that all students must have completed a physical education course to graduate. He was not athletic and had no interest in anything of that sort. He enrolled in Bowling his final semester and somehow only managed to receive a B for that class.
That story came jumping out of my memory banks a few days ago while talking with my daughter. Her youngest child has set off on her Junior/Senior year of high school this past week. Part of the Regents Requirement is to have completed at least one unit of fine arts. "One unit of fine arts, which may include art,
music, dance, theatre, forensics, and other
similar studies selected by a local board of
education "
She has chosen to take ceramics. Art class variety ceramics, not electrical engineering variety ceramics. Art is very subjective. That's what made me remember the story of the poor bowling student.
She is on track to complete her four-year high school experience in three years. Most of her classes have been A. P. classes or dual high school/college classes. She feels she needs to outdo her older sister who took 3-1/2 years to complete high school. This would tie her with my ex-wife (her grandmother) for completing high school in three years.
That is, unless she flunks Ceramics.
Many years ago I had "backed myself into a corner" with my failing HS scholastics. It seems I had been either kicked out of or flunked out of almost every class that was offered. Simply put the school had two hours of which they had no place to put me.
At my suggestion I took typing and home economics. Both teachers required a little "sit down" sessions with me to assure themselves I wasn't going to be a distraction in class. While this might not seem extreme in this day and age, this happened in 1967 and I was indeed the first harry-legged boy to enroll in either class.
I actually did well in both classes. I struggled a bit with the typewriters, but I did great when it came to cooking. Being Momma Cash's youngest had provided me extra time in the kitchen.
I still enjoy cooking to this day. But there were no ceramics... 😉
While I was studying electrical engineering, I had to take the usual number of humanities classes. One class I took was offered by the music department, and counted for music credit. I don't remember the actual title, but the actual subject matter was how to operate a recording studio. The class was held off-campus in a Los Angeles recording studio.
I felt like I gamed the system.
Put it off until the end of college. Taking a freshman level art appreciation class filled with Freshmen was painful beyond what I could have imagined.
home economics
As a freshman, lots of my male classmates in high school chose to take Home Economics...I didn't know why until I saw the 20 something lady teaching the class.
Freshman year of high school. Almost everyone ate school lunch as there was no open lunch. We ate in three shifts with six classes on each shift. The six teachers sat together near the center of the lunchroom so they could keep an eye on behavior, or lack thereof. Three men and three women on the shift when I was there. All three women were pregnant during Spring Semester. We tried to tease the men teachers about that fact. They didn't see any humor in our little jokes.
