Early Use
The phrase in its pejorative sense has been used since at least the mid-1950s. In a letter to the editor of the LA Times in 1956, a correspondent bemoaned a decline in College Pro Football and mentioned "majoring in underwater basket weaving, or the preparation and serving of smorgasbord, or, particularly at Berkeley, the combined course of anatomy and panty-raiding". The following year, an article in the National Review mentioned that "the bored students in the educationists' courses call those dreary subjects 'underwater basket-weaving courses'", and another year on a newspaper column noted that "One seaside university is bowing to the stern educational demands of the times by eliminating its popular course in underwater basket weaving". An article in the Daily Collegian at Penn State University in 1961 refers to a parody in which "a 'typical' Miami coed majoring in underwater basketweaving was interviewed". An article from 1976 refers to football players so dumb that they had to take underwater basket weaving, and another 1976 article refers to underwater basket-weaving as "an old old family joke".
Read more about this topic: Underwater Basket Weaving
Famous quotes containing the word early:
“Two sleepy people by dawn’s early light, and two much in love to say goodnight.”
—Frank Loesser (1910–1969)
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
—Gerald Early (b. 1952)