The point of going to school is to learn the lessons and gain the knowledge that will help kids be able to one day be successful adults in the world.
Most of us who have been to school, though, know that no matter how well-meaning our educators, there are some lessons that just have no impact on the world beyond the school.
I’m sure you can think of a few, and these 14 people also have some ideas they’re throwing on the pile.
14. I’m so confused.
I learnt how to do percentages wrong in economics.
You have to do them wrong otherwise you don’t get marks
13. Because Texas, that’s why.
Also, why do we have to take the same Texas History class every other year all the way through elementary and middle school?
And then only have like one or two years of world history, where stuff like World War Two is completely glossed over?
12. You can’t force friendship.
Primary School (age 4 – 12) – If two kids never liked each other for good reasons, the teachers used to force you to be friends which usually made it a lot worse.
So, ‘You’re not allowed to dislike people, even if they’re mean to you’
Secondary School (Age 12 – 16) – Getting good grades is more important than your mental health.
11. I would also like to know the point.
Not exactly something they teach in general, but in my high school music class, we had to memorize our national anthem in a different language (we used to be a colony and it was originally written in the colonizer’s language.)
And then sing it out loud with the same melody and all, except you’re parroting a bunch of words that you don’t understand. Over a decade later and I still think it was a pointless exercise
10. You might actually need to know how to play pickle, though.
In Phys Ed they had us take actual written tests a few times sitting on the gym floor.
Questions like where was basketball invented, what are the rules of pickle, yadda yadda, other useless sh%t.
9. At least it brings you all together.
In Scotland we had to do Country (cèilidh) dancing in primary school (not sure the American equivalent, 5-12 years old).
At the time everyone hated it cause you’d have boys lined up against one wall, girls lined up against the other and you had to go over and ask a girl to dance with you, which felt like a marriage proposal at that age, and god forbid if the girl said no.
The teachers must’ve loved it, watching all the kids squirm.
Fast forward 10 years and the rest of your life and every time you go to a wedding that has a cèilidh (or just a cèilidh) then it’s the best thing ever and you all tell the same story about lining up in the gym hall…
8. Foods is about eating cookies at school come on.
We had to take “tests” in my cooking class in high school.
The test would say “True or false, bread raises because of yeast”.
About 3 questions in, we all started cheating off of each other.
Five questions in, we just asked the teacher for the answers.
7. You can just…look it up.
Memorizing the periodic table. It’s a table, there is no need to memorize it, all the info is there already.
Every single day in Chemistry class, there was a huge poster on the wall with the periodic table on it, big enough to read from any seat in the room.
Except one day. The one day we had to take a test on how well we’d memorized it. Then they covered it with a sheet.
You see, it was absolutely essential we remember the molecular number of molybdenum, for all those hypothetical other times when we wouldn’t just be able to look up on the wall and see it.
6. This still needs to change.
It’s less ‘useless’ and more ‘actively harmful’, but the way drugs education was taught when I was growing up was straight-up nonsense.
All drugs are bad, OK. Alcohol is also a drug, and it can definitely kill you, but it’s also fine for some reason; don’t question it. And weed is just as bad as heroin. All you need to know is that anyone who even looks at a joint is a morally repugnant junkie and they’re destined to have more children than teeth on some council estate, or will rob old ladies to fund their deplorable habit — and that’s if you don’t straight-up die from even being in the same room as weed smoke.
The police definitely have your best interests at heart when they arrest you, so you should narc on anyone you know who might be doing drugs, because jail is the better alternative and it’s always for your own good. Oh, and don’t worry about what happens when you actually try drugs, because even though you might find a glass of wine or an edible is actually pretty great, you’re almost certainly going to start to wonder if maybe heroin and meth aren’t that bad either. Are they? Can you trust your teachers? WHO F*CKIN’ KNOWS?
Also I was led to believe that way more people would offer me drugs that I could Just Say No to than ever have in my life. Drugs are expensive, y’all.
5. Dang you, Henry Ford.
Square dancing.
It was put into the curriculum at US schools after heavy lobbying from industrialist Henry Ford.
He didn’t like the awful, new modern dances people were doing, like the Charleston.
4. Cease and desist.
That if we cover our shoulders and legs boys will stop looking at us.
As a guy this rule just taught me that bare shoulders are provocative and now I get all flustered seeing a cute girl in something showing her shoulders.
This clearly didn’t work as intended.
3. It doesn’t go to college with you, though.
That you have a PERMANENT RECORD and every f**k up you have will haunt you for the rest of your school life.
2. Neither of these are helpful.
Not to chew gum.
On a more serious note. That hugging and public displays of affection are bad.
Ask me how many times I got detention because of this.
1. No P.E.? Blasphemy!
My old high school decided that P.E wasn’t important and instead of having 2 periods were we would be exercising and learning about the human body they made us take spiritual development. I hated my old high school.
No, we didn’t learn to meditate. That class was about reading bible stories to help us become more religious, it was f*cking bulls**t.
Yes it was a private Christian school.
P.E was compulsory until grade 11, that’s when that spiritual development bullsh%t came in and P.E became an elective subject. My friends who took it said they learned about human movement, muscles of the body and how to prevent injuries.
I f*cking loved playing sports but another class that was more important clashed with P.E so I couldn’t take it.
I definitely agree with most of these, how about you?
What would you add to this list?
Share those thoughts with us in the comments!