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Nostalgia frequently leads people into the belief that “everything was better in the good old days”.
With only a few exceptions, the TV programming of the 1950s was puerile nonsense.
I hope I never get so bored that I find myself watching Green Acres .
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It’s funny how many car-related plots back then had elements of car-guy realism, and then absurd “that can’t happen” moments.
Remember Barney’s first car on Andy Griffith? At one point they talk about sawdust in the transmission to make it shift smooth. Good so far. But then this happened:
Still a classic episode.
I compare transitioning from my small town elementary school to junior high school in the capitol city as going from ‘Green Acres’ to ‘The Blackboard Jungle’!
FYI, Green Acres was inspired by the movie “The Egg and I” starring Fred McMurray. It was a very funny movie and introduced Ma and Pa Kettle.
Willy, the sickest worm in all the Detroit! I grew up in the suburbs north of Detroit. I watched Soupy on TV every day at lunch time. Remember the Do Not Touch button that Soupy couldn’t resist and White Fang and Black Tooth and all the pies?
Anyhow, my mother was on our elementary school PTA and arranged for Soupy, complete with black moth-holed sweater, to be part of our school’s fund-raiser fair. Life was good.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
CSA
I went to a college prep high-school, all my kids went to a college prep high-school. Shop, Home-ec Important for college bound kids? That’s very questionable. As an example - My daughter’s junior year she took, AP Calc, AP Physics, AP Chemistry, AP Biology and AP English. So what class should she have given up for Home Economics?
College prep schools are designed to prepare you for college.
I agree that Home EC and Shop and even Mechanics are great for kids who don’t want to go to college or just don’t know what they really want to do.
My daughter knew from a very young age that there was no choice as to whether to go to college, only a choice as to what college to go to.
Yeah well, there are life skills that are important for everyone to know in addition to career skills. Cooking is something even PhDs need to do life long. Nice to know how to change a light bulb in addition to knowing chemistry. A friend was a social studies teacher for 40 years but broke a bulb off in his lamp. He had to take it to the hardware store to get it repaired. I asked why he didn’t give it to me to fix? And Phy Ed with the number of obese folks walking around? Not important? Career development is more important than creating well rounded kids? Whatever floats your boat I guess.
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Speaking of Andy Griffith, there’s also Goober Takes a Car Apart.
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Why do you think you need a formalized class for that? I’ve NEVER EVER taken a class on cooking. I’ve prepared THOUSANDS of meals over the years.
I do agree that knowing how to do home repairs is a nice skill to have. Or knowing how to fix a car. Again, I’ve never had any formal training on either…I do 90% of all home repairs (including appliances) and 99% of all auto repairs. There are other ways to learn these skills.
And many people just don’t want to learn them. I work with a lot of them. They’d rather pay someone to do it.
Most college prep schools are private. They don’t have the luxury of being able to afford a plethora of classes public schools can.
You don’t need high school classes for anything, technically. Want to learn calculus? Teach yourself. Learn to play trumpet? There are lessons on Youtube.
The point of having home-ec or auto shop in high school isn’t to turn out the next Gordon Ramsay or George Barris. It’s to expose the kids to those activities so that they have at least a passing familiarity with them and can later build on that knowledge if they wish.
There are a lot of people who might never cook for themselves, and might never even so much as change their air filter, if they aren’t “forced” to be exposed to those activities while still in school.
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Very very few people will ever be able to teach themselves Calculus or Java programming or Physics. Sorry just NOT going to happen.
I can learn the basics of cooking by reading a 2 page synopsis is 15 minutes. I can spend another 15 minutes learning how to cook something. Try teaching yourself a complicated subject like Calc. Comparing the two subjects is absurd.
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Comment deleted. Oh never mind. No point.
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I can learn the basics of calculus by doing the same thing. Now, if I want to get good at calculus, I’m gonna need to go a lot deeper. If you want to get good at cooking, you’re going to need to do the same.
Cooking at a high level (kinda like calculus is a high level of math) can, in fact, be complicated, which is why the average Joe, even if they cook all the time at home, would faceplant if they tried to open a fine dining restaurant - or even a neighborhood corner bistro.
All that said, I should have been more clear - when I said “teach yourself,” I did not mean “discover this discipline all by yourself with no help.” I meant “get a calculus book and read it.”
So have I.
Never ever liked one of them. 
I can hardly bring a kettle of water to boil without burning it.
At least nobody will steal my dinner. 
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I have no problem doing calculus, it’s cooking that throws me for a loop. When I was single and had invited some friends over for a meal, my next door neighbor came over and asked to use my telephone to call the fire department. Of course I said o.k. Being the idiot that I am, I charged into her house and found that her furnace motor had overheated. I turned off the breaker for the furnace. In the meantime, two fire trucks arrived and one parked in front of my house. I decided to play a joke on my friends. I asked one of the fireman to tell my guests that the fire was at my house and that they had to make a run every time I tried to cook. The fireman agreed and I hid behind the truck. My friends arrived and the fireman did what I asked him to do. However, he went one step further. He told my friends that the fire wasn’t the worst part but that after the meal, the paramedics had to come to my place.
I didn’t think my cooking was that bad, but after Mrs. Triedaq and I got married, she three away all my recipes.
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Before this goes too much further, can you please bring this back to cars? Thanks.
I recall the term “Ivory tower intellectual” for people whose thinking level wouldn’t function below full professor @bing. And it kinda suits those who need a GPS to get to work and again that afternoon to get home. I was nearly court martialed for insubordination when I told a college educated 2dLt he was clueless reading a map.
Well, that song will be in my head for the next week! I think the modern equivalent would be “How many Americans today know where a SIM card is and what it looks like.”