I’m not saying that everything we learn in school is total hogwash, but I am saying that there are some topics that are pretty universally covered that don’t seem to be especially useful down the road.
Wondering what I mean?
These 13 people have a pretty solid lead on what subjects could be dropped from schools without causing any harm at all.
13. It was kind of counterproductive.
D.A.R.E. taught me about drugs I didn’t know existed.
12. That you shouldn’t defend yourself.
“Write a sorry letter for defending yourself”, busted a kids lip for hitting and trying to choke me and got sent straight to the office.
Elementary school needs to be renamed to glue eating school. /s
11. I mean honestly.
sex and drug education. The entire lesson plan is:
“Just don’t do it.”
If sex education had explained to me the aftercare women go through after birth I’d consider that a better abstinence program than actual abstinence programs.
Instead I got the standard std pictures and super basic anatomy lessons, and later a lot of surprises as an adult.
10. A little variety, please.
I grew up in Massachusetts, so maybe this is skewed because of the proximity to early settler and revolutionary war sites, but EVERY year in history, from like 1st grade to 12th, we learned the same stuff on the early settlers to revolutionary war. That would be the majority of all history classes.
Yes, it’s very important history (and I do thoroughly enjoy history and that time period in particular) but when it’s all that’s covered and everything else is glossed over, it doesn’t feel like we learned as much as we should have. It was also always taught through rose colored glasses.
Curious though for other people who grew up in the US but not New England, was that the case for you? Or are us Bostonians really just so enamored with our small and reckless-driving state that we forget others exist?
9. Interesting, sure, but useful?
Memorizing the specific names for groups of animals (gander of geese, murder of crows, etc.)
I knew some ESL friends that had to memorize them for English classes.
8. Poorly taught, for sure.
Not useless, just poorly taught: History
It was just a collection of dates, names, and numbers. Memorize this stuff, we’ll have a test.
The significance of so many historical events was never taught or discussed. WW2 was the only one that was somewhat approached at scale, but even then it boiled down to Germany was pissed off about WW1 and Hitler hated the Jews.
This was at a good high school too, the whole class was in advanced classes (IB / AP).
7. Not so prepped.
Literally anything about college, no dress codes, no bathroom passes, whatever schedule you want, free time between classes, and overall maturity. School “prepping” you for college, preps you more for going to prison.
6. That bullies go away if you ignore them.
That you have to “ignore” bullies and/or forgive them. In real outside world if you bully someone you will:
Get slapped across the face
Get kicked in your butt
Fired from work Or
Shunned and made fun of.P.s. my frends nephew got bullied at school. The bully was pocking him with his finger so hard that the next day the nephew had like 20 small bruses all over his back. The teacher just told him to ignore him and made the bully apologize. Now i dare you to go to work tomorrow and start pocking people and i see how far you go.
5. It’s the curriculum.
This is more what they don’t teach but….
They often teach the rise of the British empire but seldom about the fall. Which leads students with a very British centric approach to a lot of their studies. I’m aware of this in languages but I’ve seen this in history, RE and even English language.
I’m not blaming the teachers or the students, the curriculum is f**ked. But as a result from this I hear way too often “learning X language is pointless, everyone speaks English!”
4. What even was the point?
In my experience, the way gym and PE were taught were pretty useless because they never taught us how to train or improve our athletic abilities. It was just weeks of half heartedly playing basketball with minimal adult supervision, and then one day we had to run a mile and the coaches would go out of their way to humiliate anyone who couldn’t just get up and run a mile under 10 minutes with no training or preparation. It put me off running and exercise in general for a long time.
Edit: I’m seeing so many stories here of people who experienced bullying, shame and humiliation in their PE classes in school. I’m so sorry that that happened to all of you. None of us deserved that. I really hope that you all have found exercises that you enjoy – it doesn’t have to just be running or weight training! Go on some beautiful hikes, buy a RingFit, take a pole dancing class – whatever makes you feel strong and happy. You deserve it!
3. History again…we’re bitter.
This is going to sound stupid, but history the way it’s taught is basically meaningless.
A long category of dates and events without context or real discussion. The vast majority of history is trivia, because the real story is the cyclical nature of events, the rise and fall of empires, the periods of enlightenment and advance and the reactionary times that bookend them.
You learn that there used to be this thing called “yellow journalism” but you don’t learn that what kicked it off was the sudden availability and popularity of newspapers, and nobody draws the EXTREMELY OBVIOUS parallel to our modern blog driven media. If I told you that in the mid to late 1800s (when newsprint was blowing up) that it was extremely common for papers to blatantly copy each others stories with added editorial bias tailored to their viewers…Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?
Drawing parallels between the robber barons of the late 1800s and the current ones. Drawing parallels between the labor movements of that era, and the ones that are growing again today. Shits relevant, and important to realize in context.
But no. Just memorize some f**king dates and names, so you’ll have some shit to spout at trivia night later.
2. Some lessons expired.
Double spacing after punctuation.
I can’t unlearn the habit.
1. Learning to live in a family.
There is a useless subject in Polish schools which they call ,, learning to live in a family” luckily it’s only in Basic school.
Most students think that this subject is useless, and i completely agree with them
The square dancing, y’all. Just why??
What do you think was a total waste of time in school? Let us know in the comments!
