I went to an all boys high school in a tough area, so we didn't do cooking.
We did do woodwork, plastics and metal work. We got to make hammers and heat things up to white hot and shove in a bath of oil (that was fun
) and stuff like that. We didn't do girly stuff like cookery. That was in the early 80's
I did learn to cook at home though and from an early age had input into making the family dinnner till I was doing it myself when my Mum was working and I came home from school earlier than her.