I still have my domestic science exercise book from 1964 (Letters, 14 December). First item: diagram of a tea tray (we had to take the headmaster his tea and biscuits each afternoon). This was followed by damping, folding, mangling and ironing a tea towel. The cookery syllabus came next, which consisted of the different methods of baking, from coconut pyramids to chocolate sponge. Perhaps it was because I went to a grammar school, and would presumably have been expected to have the means, in due course, to have someone else to cook for me, that I didn’t learn how to make meals. Luckily, my mum taught me that.
Hilary Fraser
Swallowfield, Berkshire
• My recollections of home economics lessons are similar to Roz Treadway’s (Letters, 15 December) in that their use as a life tool is negligible. I was in a grammar school in the 1960s. Our domestic science teacher managed to fill a whole double period with teaching us girls how to wash a hairbrush and comb.
Ann Craven
Newcastle upon Tyne
• George Redman (Letters, 14 December) says cookery would have been more useful than Latin in his 1950s education. I was fortunate in my 60s education to learn basic cookery in our mandatory school combined cadet force. I was also taught how to kill Germans, which, fortunately – like my Latin education – I have not needed very much.
John Beer
Farnham, Surrey
• I have to disagree with George Redman. Burnt rock cakes and soggy sponges are no competition for a lifelong savouring of the richness of our beautiful language, its foundations partially rooted in Latin.
Jeanette Hamilton
Buxton, Derbyshire
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