In my (rural, Northern California) middle school, we spent a month or two learning about outdoor survival-things like what to do if you’re skiing and caught in an avalanche (remove equipment and swim to the side), things to carry in your car in the mountains/what to do if you get stuck in the snow in said car, thunderstorm safety, tornado safety, water safety (safe water rescues, hypothermia treatment, how to swim out of a rip current), how to avoid/treat heat exhaustion, hiking safety (what to carry in your pack, poisonous plant/snake identification, etc…), basic first aid, etc…
Overall, it was one of the more useful classes I remember from k-12. Did anyone else take something similar?
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Nope, that sounds more in line with what Boy/Girl Scouts would do
I didn’t learn any of that.
We did bicycle safety, not much call for snow and mountain safety here.
I vaguely remember this from middle school but specifically because my PE teacher was very into that sort of thing and the school did not really give a shit what that man “taught” us lol
No but that sounds pretty useful. Not going to face any problems with mountains around here but still
Lol no. It was mostly a whole bunch of kickball.
That really sounds like Boy Scout camp or pioneering at sleep away summer camp. We didn’t do anything like that in my school years. (80s Maine)
The longer I live, the weirder America feels, and I’ve only ever lived in this country lmao. I thought line dancing and pickleball were interesting curriculum choices, but this one is new to me.
Nope. We learned square dancing though 🤷🏻♀️
No, PE was a joke
I grew up in Chicago suburbs, we didn’t need to know outdoor survival…
We learned about The Dangers of Hypothermia once each year.
I had an orienteering unit in 9th grade PE in California.
We had a 3 day camping trip in the mountains in 6th grade where we learned a lot of wilderness survival stuff. It wasn’t a PE thing specifically, more a cross-subject activity. We spent a few weeks before the trip learning preparatory concepts in school as part of science and math and whatnot.
No, not at all. And I went to Northern California public schools. But in the Bay Area. Not rural.
Never heard of it. But I would have loved that.
What part of rural
Northern California? Raised in Humboldt county and we didn’t have that type of eduction, although I think it’s a great idea.
I wonder what Northern California county that was.
And I wonder if in Humboldt County, they include a section on how to make a bong out of an avocado, a snorkel, and an ice pick.
I grew up in central NY and I vaguely remember learning how to use a compass in elementary school. That’s about it.
Not in rural Illinois at that sort of scale.
I think I vaguely remember a lesson here or there about what to do if you’re caught outside during a thunderstorm or tornado.
No
Nope, but boy scouts was the thing every kid did when I was growing up
I went to a private school that actually had a week-long “primitive living” experience where we did back country camping with a minimum of equipment. That school was unique.
In public school in Oregon, I also went to “outdoor school” a few times, and that probably touched on at least a few general survival skills. I think in general some of those lessons were sprinkled in to other activities, but not as much as say, fire safety or traffic safety?
I grew up in a large city. We definitely didn’t have that.
I wish! That sounds great, but we never learned anything like that in P.E.
Nope, I grew up in the NYC suburbs, so we had much more focus on stranger danger – safe cycling was probably the closest we got.
It’s killing me that they taught ski survival at your school lol. I’m pretty sure not more than half a dozen people in my entire school had ever been on skis in their life.
We jumped a lot of rope. So if I’m stranded in a situation, and am called upon to jump rope, I’ll be fine.
No, I don’t remember any of that. Especially not in PE.
Aside from swimming, no and I wish we had. I’m from an urban area so on the surface it sounds like such a unit would be a waste but survival techniques are never a waste
Closest we had was regular tornado drills, where we’d kneel down in the center hallways against the cinder block walls with our hands clasped around the backs of our heads. I don’t know exactly how often we had them, but it felt like at least a couple times a semester.
Ohio – in 10th grade, we did orienteering, basic swim safety, and first aid. I think the plant ID and where not to put a tent was scouts, not school? but it’s been a while. Technically, we also did archery, which referenced hunting a little bit, but was mostly target shooting. We also did basic budgeting, home ec, shop, and went through just about every athletic option available that year, and were required to take at least 1 visual and 1 musical art class, and join a club. Social studies included voting, basic law creation, local elections, and basic taxes. It was the year of life skills in my school, and I am forever grateful.
No. But I grew up in the rural Midwest where there is no skiing, no mountains, just corn. Corn as far as the eye can see.
Where did you go to school, San Quentin?
No, that was not included. And that avalanche survival suggestion is only going to work in very small, very shallow avalanches that someone is on the very edge of, if it works at all.
No, but I’m from Metropolitan Seattle so maybe that was saved for more rural areas?
Orlando Fl based private school here, our PE was sports and then a basic health class, so we didn’t do that. Swimming or heatstroke were probably the main outdoor risks and I think your school assumed we’d learned how to deal with those by middle school (i didn’t go to an elementary school so idk if they handled basically there), we did have a swimming secton, but it was more fitness based than safety
That would have been more useful than rolling around on scooters and square dancing.
Yes. We had a cross country ski day where we all went out and had to ski and split up into groups.
Each group had a compass and some basic materials and food. We were to start a fire and cook a meal (soup I think??) and then get ourselves to the end destination using the compass.
This was in probably 4th grade yes we all had adults with us.
Yes in the USA. I’ll let you guess which state.
Nope
SoCal and absolutely not. I was in a beach city and there wasn’t a lot of outdoors nearby except said municipal beach anyway. Our PE was volleyball, basketball, kickball, and the like.
Nope, but we did spend a significant amount of time in earth science learning how to read maps and calibrating a compass to a map because “There are calculators for math, but no magic tools in your pocket to tell you where to go if you get lost”.
This teacher is now thought of with the math teachers who said “Yeah there are calculators, but how often will you just have one at your disposal when you need to do math”
Gym was competitive team sports ONLY (Virginia and New York)
No, but I don’t think we really had much of a curriculum
I wish. That sounds so much better than walking around the track for an hour
No,but we had to climb a rope. I have never climbed a rope after elementary school. Some schools in my area had lifetime sports like bowling, golf, and things you may actually enjoy and do in the future.
Nope. I remember covering CPR once. And thunderstorm safety must’ve been covered sometime. You can learn all of that stuff in Girl Scouts, though.
I just learned to survive taking one of those red rubber balls, traveling at just below the speed of sound, right to the face playing game after game of dodgeball.
I still hear that hollow *dooonk* sound in my nightmares.
We didn’t do any of that but we did have a couple weeks of learning how to kayak and canoe and how to flip a canoe or kayak over if it capsized. I would have loved having that in school, my dad taught me a ton of survival skills as a kid so at least I know some things.
I was just turned loose with a canteen and BB gun all summer starting when I was about six or so. To be fair I grew up in the country.
GenX here. No, not covered in P.E. However, basic first aid and CPR were covered.
Wilderness Survival was covered by the Boy Scouts though.
Sorta? And not in PE. In elementary school we had a few field trips to our local state park and the aquarium and they taught us all the Florida wild life and how it would attack, kill or eat us.
Nope not at all
Nope. I grew up in the suburbs in the Midwest . We don’t have avalanches, mountains, rip currents, venomous snakes or really anywhere to hike.
They did tell us to go in the basement if there’s a tornado. Or if there’s not a basement (pretty rare to not have a basement where I grew up) hide in the bathtub.
No but archery and firearms safety was.
No. I did a little in the cub scouts.
Nope, but that would have been cool.
We would do this in scouts. However my kid’s middle school does do mandatory swimming and water safety and rescue classes because we live next to a river that regularly kills 6-12 people a year.
In Florida we learned how to run from an alligator. Not to go to the same area over and over to retrieve water from a river because the gators will learn your schedule and attack one day. And of course to shuffle your feet in the water at the beach (sting rays). I remember other first aid and survival classes and videos… included things like how to distill water with the sun and some plastic. Mostly seemed to be things in science classes on wildlife in k-5.
Also the other day I was thinking how many of our classroom reading assignments seemed to revolve around survival. Island of Blue Dolphins, The Cay, The Hatchet… another one I don’t remember about a wolf or something. Probably more I don’t remember.
No, probably because I went to school in NYC in the 70s and outdoor survival consisted of learning how to avoid getting mugged
I grew up in suburban Northern California, and nope, we didn’t get any education like that, though I gladly would have traded a frisbee golf or street hockey module for that!
Outdoor survival? No. Urban survival? Not officially, but yes.
No
Yes, we went to an outdoor school called Mohican and learned survival skills.
No. We had one big like all class overnight trip to a sort of wilderness lodge thing where we slept in cabins and one of the activities was being sent out to try to use matches to hopelessly start a fire with a bunch of gathered wood covered in wet snow to cook hot dogs for lunch. We ended up just eating them raw.it was dumb.
Lots of metball and pin guard though
Yes! In the early 80s. Got me interested in camping which I still enjoy decades later. Showed us how to make candles from rolled cardboard, wax, and a tin can. That’s what I remember, ha! Until then it hadn’t occurred to me that I could live outside in tent. I finally went camping the next year when I was a student at another high school. I’d joined the Explorer Scouts, a unisex branch of the Boy Scouts I could join as a girl. About six years later I spent six weeks in a tent on the banks of a wild and scenic river. Alas, cooked over a fire but no foraging involved!
ETA: small town South Louisiana
Not in PE, but in 5th grade, we had what locally we call “Outdoor School.” Basically, 3 days of the entire 5th grade staying overnight at a summer campground.
There were 4 5th grade classes that went, so I’d say it was like 100 students, maybe more. In addition to the teachers (who went home at night) each cabin had a high school student as a counselor.
Before we left, we did have lessons about edible/poisonous plants and what to do in case of emergency. It counted as our science portion.
At the camp, we did get some survival training like building a shelter out of whatever was on hand (I remember my teammate and I getting marked down because the wind could change and blow the smoke from our fire into the shelter.)
No. When you say Northern California, are you referring to the Bay Area or the real Northern California? I could see kids in Redding or Yreka getting lessons like that.
Nope. My PE focused on various sports and teaching people to swim.
Not in my schools in Maryland.
For me it was a whole separate class.
Not at my school.
At best, in the 7th grade we did this overnight field trip to a state park. We learned how to build a campfire and knots.
Everything else for 12 years of public school, Gym was all organizes sports, first aid, drug awareness, and drivers ed
In San Diego had to pass water safety test to graduate. Jump in, use clothes as flotation. How to tread forever. How to swim on back to save energy while waiting for rescue. This was not expected in Louisiana
…No. We got some talk about what to do in a tornado or in a fire (stop drop roll, don’t run from firefighters, etc.) That was in grade school, and I don’t even remember the elective hunter safety PE (it got you your hunter safety card so you could legally get a hunting or trapping license, and it was mostly stuff like air rifles and bow and arrow safety, not outdoor living) covering survival skills. I’m sure if you took sailing or boating you’d get some open-water safety beyond “always wear a life jacket.” But not in school.
I mean, it’s Michigan. Nobody’s worrying about avalanches and fire means house fire, not out of control wildfire. (The DNR control burns the state forests if it’s really dry, and like eighty acres would be a big fire.) And driving in snow and possibly getting stuck is just…shit that happens in the winter. There aren’t even particularly a lot of flood plains. We don’t get hurricanes. The only real natural disaster situation is a tornado.
Hell no. There are alligators in our local “outdoors” type areas. Lots of alligators. In fact there are alligators in our cities too.
I didn’t learn any of that, sounds cool.
I did win the GA state 4H cattle judging competition pretty much by accident. I was just there to get free beef jerky.
They wanted to send me to Nationals, I just quit because I didn’t really care; I just happened to win.
My High School had a JROTC unit and the senior year focused on survival skills. But it wasn’t a required class.
Not really. It doesn’t snow here and we don’t get tornados. We did have beach days though where we went over beach and water safety stuff.
Edit. We also did do a week up in the mountains during winter where they talked about some other safety stuff.
SoCal and nope. I know how to survive a rip current. Not thanks to PE.
Wow, that’s pretty cool. Grew up in rural Maryland but we did not learn anything like this in school.
I learned all that but not through school. It’s pretty cool you had that class.
No, I learned wilderness survival in the Boy Scouts.
I fucking wish! I was noooot a gym-savvy kid but I would have loved that shit.
I was just lucky to get any kind of sex ed that wasn’t solely abstinence-based.
Nope, not at all. PE was where I learned to hate exercise and sports and I had to unlearn that as an adult.
No but we did have fire safety in like 1st grade I’m sure that was a thing everywhere but they brought the local fire department in and did their teaching
No, PE really didn’t have much of a curriculum they just laid down some rules for games or circuits and set the kids to it.
Not a place I ever remember learning much.
Went to public school in Florida. Of course I did not get taught anything like that.
City in northern Wisconsin, circa late 1970s — our junior high health class did cover basic first aid and CPR, and a full week of hunter safety classes. The outdoorsy stuff was more 6th grade elementary school (we did not cover avalanches) which culminated with a 3-day weekend trip to a cabin-type scout camp for “Outdoor Education” where we canoed and did archery, etc. Tornado safety was an ongoing thing that got covered every year, including tornado drills at school every month. Nothing that organized, though.
Nope, but I had a teacher from rural Colorado who told us it was a part of their curriculum.
I think it’s only common in rural mountain areas.
Late 1970s. We had a after school ropes course that had some survival training like edible plants and finding water but nothing like a full survival course.
Not quite the same, but freshman year we did an Orienteering unit in gym class where we basically roamed the halls looking for stuff using navigation. I think there was even a voluntary outdoor field trip we could go on for it.
Yuppie urban areas did not teach me that. 😅 I didn’t necessarily expect it, though.
Closest I believe was school science trip I believe we took over the course of 2 or 3 days in a remote cabin. Lots of wilderness and survival type stuff and learning about nature, but that’s about it.
Yup, had that class my sophomore year. Most fun class I had.
No. I went to an all girl high school in the 80’s. Our PE consisted of dance/gymnastics/track and field.
Southeast Idaho – we read Tom Sawyer in English class and then went on a day trip to explore caves at Craters of the Moon when I was in 7th grade. I’m not sure if it was PE or another class, but we learned outdoor survival and wildlife identification as part of that unit.
What I remember – don’t run from grizzlies and make sure to protect ya neck!
I remember watching a video in social studies put out by the state department of interior that was basically “Colorado will kill you if you’re not careful” and it was recreations of dumb ways people died, like falling into a spring melt river and dying of hypothermia or trying to hike a 14er in shorts and sandals in the fall and getting killed by a freak snowstorm. That was about it.
No avalanche training here in Florida. We just played a lot of dodgeball
No, I wish!
I wish!
That seems like a great idea
Definitely not but square dancing was for some reason. ( from Nassau county , Long Island )
I went to high school in South East Washington. I think we were only required to do two years of PE to graduate. If you wanted to do more than that, there was Advanced PE. Part of that class was outdoor survival.
The closest we did to that was “drownproofing” in MD as an official thing. In middle school, we did read a whole lot of novels about kids surviving in the wilderness like Hatchet and My Side of the Mountain and lessons on survival were included in those, but that was in Language Arts/English.
> like what to do if you’re skiing and caught in an avalanche (remove equipment and swim to the side), things to carry in your car in the mountains/what to do if you get stuck in the snow in said car, thunderstorm safety, tornado safety, water safety (safe water rescues, hypothermia treatment, how to swim out of a rip current), how to avoid/treat heat exhaustion, hiking safety
No. This is actually BONKERS to me. I didn’t even learn this stuff in Boy Scouts. There are no mountains or tornadoes here. And if you get stuck in the snow in your car, you’re not isolated in the middle of nowhere. You just get help.
Basic first aid was a part of health class, which was given for one marking period INSTEAD of PE class, so there’s that.
That’s awesome. No, we did “outdoor ed” in middle school, where we spent a few days in rustic cabins at I think a scouting retreat center or some such, and learned how to make a fire, use a map and compass, identify venomous snakes, etc.
No. New York City.
My kids neither here in NJ
Learned that stuff in scouts though.
Yes my school called that class “life skills” and every marking period it was something different.
It was a PE elective.
Junior and senior had half year PE classes. Could be about 10 different things and at different levels. So if you wanna play volleyball- but NOT with the volleyball team, you select recreational vs competitive.
We had outdoor skills, not survival. Just covered some of the survival stuff but also a but more of the fun stuff.
From MA, we had cpr and 1st aid but not wilderness training.
No but one day during our swimming unit we had to learn how to make a flotation device with our pants and jump in the pool fully clothed. There was a pile of wet jeans sitting by the pool for weeks after since a lot of people didn’t want to take their wet jeans home
Nope, just running and dodgeball.
Yes! In 5th grade our school did a weeklong camping trip and outdoor survival skills and orienteering were part of PE in the months leading up to that trip. It was a big deal and kind of a right-of-passage for kids in our school.
I am also from a small town in rural Northern California.
We did not learn wilderness survival in PE. I learned it in the Boy Scouts.
Closest thing we had was sprinting inside halfway through our outdoor mile warmup due to “high pollen” after the Beltway Sniper started attacking. That’s outdoor survival, right? ;P
PE? No.
But I definitely had thunderstorms/tornado safety, and what local snakes to avoid taught to me in elementary school.
Kind of? It wasn’t specifically survival based but learned a lot of skills in PE and health class that probably qualify
No. That sounds cool though.
We had a “camping” unit that was offered to seniors for about a week. On the last day we cooked hot dogs in a campfire behind the school.
No.
We did like one or two lessons on using a compass.
Nope, we just did a bunch of long-distance running. Activities twice a week except when it’s replaced by sports.
Not exactly. But I grew up in Indiana and one time my fifth grade science teacher took all of us to his house to watch him clean a deer carcass. Does that count?
Hell no, those parachutes weren’t going to flip themselves up in the air.
Not PE, but when I lived in Phoenix, we went to this camp near Lake Pleasant for a couple of weeks where we learned basic desert survival.
No.
Nope, nothing even remotely close. They just made us run a mile every week.
no, bowling was apart of ours
No? We did have assembly on things like driving safely in the snow. But that was pretty much it. A lot of these things are things you learn in independent programs (scouts, separate swimming lessons, maybe a health course, news).
My PE courses consisted of walking, basketball, yoga, and Pilates. (Gotta love how they made the girls do yoga and Pilates while the men got to play basketball).
We had something similar, we called it “outdoor adventure” class. It wasn’t mandatory, but was an option in high school and I took it.
We learned to catch and filet fish, shoot a bow, start a fire, learned how GPS worked (before it became easily accessible) and about geocaching, for some reason.
I’m sure there was more to it that I don’t remember, but it was kind of a blowoff class.
In high school in Colorado we had a class called Rocky Mountain High that was rock climbing, rappelling, hiking, backpacking, and camping. It contained a significant portion of safety training, though not exactly survival. My Girl Scout troop was much more survival focused with stuff like first aid, fire building and shelter building.
Grew up in rural Minnesota. We were kind of taught a version of this in health class.
It was less about tornado safety, and more about winter safety. What to do if you’re caught outside in a blizzard, what to do if your car gets stuck in the snow, how to appropriately wear winter gear so that its effective, things like that.
Not in san diego, no. We did have bomb drills during the cold war that turned into earthquake drills.
No
Which part of rural Northern California? Because I wasn’t taught that in my part of rural Northern California town. It would’ve been helpful considering how many people I graduated with ended up homeless and/or on drugs.
Not a part of PE, but a part of science class. In Arizona, our teacher would take us out into the desert to show us all the things that could kill us, like spiders, scorpions, (no snakes but we watched a presentation on them, and saw them in a zoo); warning signs of dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke — what to do if such cases, as well; how to best navigate back to civilization; temperature differences at night and how to handle the cold (i really only remember the teacher being like, ‘whelp, hope for the best 🤷♀️’); and where to potentially find drinkable water (for the desperate). And, most importantly: IF YOURE HALFWAY OUT OF WATER, TURN AROUND — your hike is half over!
Just very basic first aid at the most. In high school we had classes you could take to prepare for a career, we had medical education, a construction class, a coding class, im sure they have more now since this program was just getting started when I was in high school but it was pretty cool
No but we had an elective class in middle school called outdoor Ed. So amazing. Learned about how to drive a boat, fishing (reel and fly), hunting, archery, outdoor cooking, survival, swimming, first aid, tying knots, etc. honestly looking back, they should make it mandatory for kids instead of art (or at least you get to choose which one you wanna do)
no.
Not required, but available as a full year elective you could take your Senior year. They always winter camped. So much interest, there was a lottery to get into the class.
In 6th grade, we went to an overnight camp for 3-4 days and learned how to use a compass, and navigation without a compass, tree and plant identification, paddle a canoe, make fire starters. More outdoorsy, not really survival skills.
Yeah no we didn’t have that at all around Chicago. I feel like we had like, way too much dodgeball
I also live in northern California and no. I see you are in Placer County. I grew up in El Dorado County, so very similar. We had science camp in 6th grade but that was just learning about the forest and checking out tide pools. We learned basic first aid and got CPR certified in freshman health and basic swim rescue in the swimming unit of PE either freshman or sophmore year. My daughter is still in high school and as far as I know didn’t learn even that.
I learned about heat stroke when I was like 8 in summer day camp when the whole class was recruited to help cool down a little girl that nearly passed out on our walk to town.
Nope, not at all
No, but we could go to the Yosemite Institute for a week in February.
It was snowing and fucking freezing, and this SoCal girl hated every minute of that trip.
Nope.
Yes, fire starting, basic land nav (with GPS and without), flipping over and getting on a boat while in the water, survival shelters, rock climbing, and assorted other tips and tricks. This was just 7-10 years back.
We didn’t have anything remotely like this in PE.
Dodge ball. If I am ever surrounded by zombies with red rubber balls, I got a shot