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Most useless thing they taught you at school?


This of course may vary depending on your age and where you live.

For me it was having to write neatly in cursive. I went to Primary or Grade school in the late 70's and finished in 1985. Computers were just starting to make an appearance in our school as I went into High school.

The teachers put such a huge emphasis on neat cursive handwriting. I, of course did not write all that neatly, according to them. When I think about all the energy and time that was expended on that now in a time when most everything is typed anyway or when we do hand write at work we print it because it is easier and faster to read it just makes me laugh.

Even when I started High School I went back to printing because it was just neater and easier.

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I hated cursive and never acquired a knack for it

Most of the math I had to take has been useless to me

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I hated maths. Me and my friend once asked our math teacher when Pythagoras is going to come in handy for us. He responded that we use math every day, when we pay for things etc.

That wasn't what we asked though, when is Pythagoras going to come in handy?? His dodging the question proved to us that we would never need to know this.

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Yes, we were onto the teacher's little ruse too but went along with it to avoid summer school

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Thanks for insulting an art I learned very well in school, and still take pride in still being able to do today.

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Your welcome. Which reminds me, Art, I like art but I can't draw or paint never been able to. Why did I have to go to so many art classes?

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I signed up for art as much as possible because it was so damn easy! And yes, cursive was a massive waste of time. There's a reason schools don't even teach it anymore.

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I wanta know why I had to go to Technical Theater in order to take nursing classes at college. The two disciplines have nothing in common!

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What is technical theatre?

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It's where you build the sets using hardware tools and operate the machinery. Sooooo boring, and hazardous if you're not careful.

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That class sounds like a lot of fun to me
Are you a nurse?

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You mean set design ?

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doesn't sound right

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As the OP said, it depends on your age. We learned it, although I don't recall spending a huge amount of time on it. It was definitely useful, but we didn't have computers then and few folks owned typewriters, either. I think it ought to be taught today, but again, let's not spend much time on it. Folks should learn how to read cursive at least, and practice their signature. Do people print their signatures now?

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I'll teach my kids cursive, and they can choose if they want to go back to print. Obviously our F-ed up school system is too lazy to bother with it anymore.

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Do you use it to write letters or anything of that nature? Just curious.

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I write in journals, I write notes for stories in notebooks, I've had to do answers in longhand at school, and I'm soon getting into a job where I have to take down notes about patients at medical facilities.

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trigonometry

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calculus didn't do me much good, i suppose, but i genuinely enjoyed it, and it's one of the few classes where i really did quite well.

i despised english class & history. i'd never argue that they were useless, but i found english in particular to be absolute torture to get through.

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Cursive was definitely useless especially considering how much time was spent on it. Conversely the good old fashion typing class I took in high school was one of the most useful.

One thing I didn't feel I got anything out of was Shakespeare. I realize some may find this to be blasphemy but honestly I feel like Shakespeare has done more to turn young people off of reading. In high school I had to read Romeo and Juliet, Hamlett, and Macbeth (may have been one more). I couldn't really grasp the English used in those books and completely lost interest (and ended up cheating with Cliff Notes). It wasn't until after high school that I became a huge reader of novels and I always felt like more relatable material in high school would've helped me get there sooner.

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yes to typing.
that is almost definitely the most practical, useful thing i got out of school.
not sure if it makes 12 years of misery worth it, but i'll give them credit for that one.

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We spent 3/4 of one year on Romeo and Juliet! Our English teacher just kept on and on about it. He even got us to act it out. He thought we would understand it better if we acted it. I didn't need to do that there isn't all that much to the story anyway.

I just got bored with the whole thing in the end. That used to happen a lot actually. The teachers back then seemed to be able to just teach (or not) what they felt like.

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Don't feel bad about the CliffsNotes...that's not cheating, that's just seizing the initiative👍

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Yes !!

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We had to read "Romeo and Juliet" in my English class for Freshman Year, and two things became apparent. I was chosen more often to read the lines because I actually put passion into it the way an actor should, whereas the other students just read it to get the teacher off their back.

Even worse was, many of my classmates apparently had snored their way through First Grade, and despite being 14/15 years old, they read like 6-year-olds, struggling with even the simplest pronunciations. It was very sad and painful to listen to. I'm starting to wonder if they should have a remedial reading class for 8th graders so that they'll all be ready to go when high school starts.

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How to dissect a squid.

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I've never needed to dissect a frog or a giant grasshopper either. We were supposed to dissect a baby pig too, but my biology teacher got sick that year. We had a succession of substitute teachers who were mostly placeholders while he was out. But then he died and the sub who became our permanent teacher skipped it. I didn't mind, nor did most of the rest of the class.

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Luck sometimes come in weird ways,

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We dissected rats. Pregnant rats.

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Eew :-(

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Actually, the grossest part was not the rats themselves, but that danged formaldehyde stench.

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I believe you.

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gross

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We dissected an earthworm, a frog and a fetal pig...I was good at it because I went slow and was careful
We also took apart owl pellets which were just hair and the bones of voles and chipmunks...pretty cool though
I think a squid would be interesting to dissect

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It was interesting in a way but i can't imagine a situation where you would need to have knowledge about the insides of a squid.

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We cut a cows eyeball open. Not sure what we were supposed to learn from it. We just went eww when the fluid came out.

There wasn't much instruction or teaching behind it.

Just cut the thing open. "Ok, good, throw it away and clean up now!"

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That sounds horrible. Nice way to turn kids into psychos.

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agreed

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Nothing. Even boring subjects that I never used again were useful. Those experiences taught me how to focus, be disciplined and take a methodic approach to learning. Stuff like science and literature were easier because the topics were more engaging and felt less like work. I found learning cursive relaxing, maybe because I liked to draw and enjoyed making the swirly pretty letters. It was not extremely useful in the long run, but it makes my thank you notes and holiday cards look nice and legible.

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Elementary math was okay, but algebra, calculus, and trig. are completely useless. Maybe some mathematicians use them but I never have.

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