Favorite Things 2012 Edition

Even though the main focus of my blog has been music from decades back, I do have a few other things going on in my hobby circles. With the end of the year upon us, I thought I would take a few minutes to talk about some of the new things that I got into during 2012. Wherever applicable, I'll include some links if it sounds like stuff you want to check out too.

Let's take a look, in no particular order, at a few categories:

American Education Explained

Today one of my Twitter followers from across the pond asked me a question about the American education system, particularly about certain phrases I use to identify grades. I realized from this (as well as talking to my UK friends) that not all school systems break down the same way. Since I often reference points in my life in my blog posts by mentioning where I was in my education cycle, I thought I'd give a little primer so we're all on the same page.

Home Economics?

My son starts 8th grade next week, and recently got his schedule for the year. Looking over it and recalling my own days of middle school education, I couldn't help but wonder: whatever happened to home economics classes?

Back in the late 70's when I was in middle school, during at least one of the grades (6th, 7th or 8th), we took a rotational sequence of classes that included wood shop, metal shop, sewing and home economics. The idea was in each of these classes for ten weeks or so that we'd pick up some skills we might not currently possess, learn about the tools used in each area, and work on projects.