Kitchen crew untrained in fire safety - GIF

[mwmkravchenko]

It mystifies me that these things are not taught in school. My father was a fire officer for fifty years, and he saw so many times that the principal contributing factor to a disaster was either stupidity or ignorance that he figured without them he might have been out of a job.

I grew up in Rural Manitoba Canada. These things were taught. I'm in my 50's so elementary school in the mid nineteen seventies. We were taught this again in the compulsory Home cooking and sewing class in grade seven. Everyone had the basics. But then we could do math in our heads, knew times tables and could weld too. So I think times have changed a little.

[Hoosiersmoker]

I grew up in Rural Manitoba Canada. These things were taught. I'm in my 50's so elementary school in the mid nineteen seventies. We were taught this again in the compulsory Home cooking and sewing class in grade seven. Everyone had the basics. But then we could do math in our heads, knew times tables and could weld too. So I think times have changed a little.

Yes, 7th grade "Home Economics" was required here in Indiana too around that time. I learned not only how to sew clothing and use salt or baking soda to put out a stove fire (or "greeze" fire as our teacher called it), that is if you couldn't just drop a lid on top of the pan, and how to make some darn tasty, fluffy biscuits too!

[WmRMeyers]

Yes, 7th grade "Home Economics" was required here in Indiana too around that time. I learned not only how to sew clothing and use salt or baking soda to put out a stove fire (or "greeze" fire as our teacher called it), that is if you couldn't just drop a lid on top of the pan, and how to make some darn tasty, fluffy biscuits too!

I'm a decade or so older than you folks, graduated from high school in 1973. Home Economics was only for girls then, and shop classes for guys. Not sure if that was a written rule, or unwritten. OTH, Grandma wasn't having any of that, All the grandchildren learned to do some basic cooking, and sewing of buttons, and darning of socks. I've forgotten how to do that last one, though I remember that you needed a light bulb or something similar. She was a newly-wed during the Great Depression. Though it might also have something to do with my mom not learning any of those things. Our family joke was that she could burn water trying to boil it, and once my brother and I enlisted in the military, that after living with her the chow hall food was great, and the TI's/DI's were easy to get along with.

Bill