I feel like the list of useless things I learned in school is pretty much endless for me…
Not that it was all bad, I always loved History and English, but the rest of it just did NOTHING for me.
Especially Math. I could just never grasp it, even though everyone else in my family is really good at it and my sister is a Math teacher…
What’s the most useless piece of information you learned in school?
Let’s see what folks on AskReddit had to say about this.
1. Okay, that’s random.
“Badgers will bite your legs until they hear a crack, so put pine cones in your boots.
I was told this almost every time we had a field trip to the woods. I was convinced badgers would be a constant danger my whole life.
To this day, I’ve only ever seen a single badger and he kept his distance.”
2. Being upfront about it.
“Recently I was in college calculus class. My instructor (math PhD student) looked at a lesson.
He said “you will never use this, but I’m required to teach it so we will do the homework in class and I will make sure it’s not on the test.””
3. That’s insane.
“I once spent a whole 5 hour lesson learning to delete a file folder and create a file folder on Windows 7 during a trade school course I paid 25,000 to go to.”
4. Didn’t learn much…
“Middle school. With the French teacher.
The only thing I actually learned from her was that when she was a kid she took chocolate in foil from the butcher and that she liked the houses of Venice at night.”
5. That was a LIE.
“You’ll write all of your college papers in MLA format so learn it and learn it well…”
“I get to college and it’s APA format or GTFO.”
6. Waste of time.
“How to write a formal job-application by hand as “she had to do it that way so we have to learn it that way as well!”.
We kinda got revenge tho…. She (teacher) also organized job interview training with a big bank here and we could ask them questions afterwards.
Someone openly asked the guy (at the bank) if that method is still done or needed and he openly said no, the percantage of companies wanting such an applications is near 0 so it’s pretty much neither taught nor needed anymore.
Oh boy, her look…… let’s say she wasn’t happy about us asking.”
7. A lesson about bullies.
“”If you ignore the bullies, they’ll leave you alone.”
They only left my brother and I alone when i stuck my thumb in one of their eye sockets. Good thing i learnt though: always help the dinner lady who’s cleaning up the dinner trays. They’ll save you the good stuff.”
8. That’s bogus.
“You have to wear a uniform to prepare you for real life and work.”
9. Nobody cares.
“How to write in cursive, my class had hours of lessons through a few weeks of school.
It slowed down my writing so much and I just ditched it realizing how little people actually care about it.”
10. Sign of the times.
“On the DAY we left school for covid, I had a class in HANDSHAKES. FUCKING HANDSHAKES.
Apparently because giving a good handshake was “respectable” we were shown a PowerPoint on how to do it and were given “homework” to PRACTICE it on others because we couldn’t practice it among ourselves.”
11. Very weird.
“In 1st grade we had to learn how to type on a flip phone (on a dialpad instead of a QWERTY layout). My teacher said “You’ll need to know this to use a cell phone” and made us spend a whole day learning it.
The first cellphone I got (was ~7th grade) was a smartphone with a touchscreen.”
12. Make up your mind.
“Nutrition.
When I started elementary school it was the four food groups. By high school it was the food pyramid, and by college it was myplate.
They have absolutely no idea about nutritional guidelines, they constantly change them and can’t make up their minds.”
13. That would’ve been nice.
“In high school I had to take classes on how to apply for effing student loans and scholarships.
But never crossed anyone’s mind to teach us personal finance or ‘wealth’ management.”
14. No clue what is happening here.
“I learned in high school that the Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. It’s not even correct.
Everyone knows it was android 17 and 18 that were the Powerhouse of Cell.”
Annnnnnnnnnd now we wanna hear from you.
Yeah, you!
In the comments, tell us about the most useless piece of information you ever learned in school.
Thanks!
