What parts of school were totally worth it?

[Jake]

I've been thinking about the things I learned from elementary school to high school and how some things have been extremely useful in my daily life even when I didn't expect them to be. This is somewhat inspired by Tex's thread where he brought his students on Soxtalk and some blogs -- I couldn't help but think what a surprisingly useful thing that would be to learn.

 

Some things that come to mind for me:

-Mandatory keyboarding class in high school

-Several things that were required for PE in high school: sex ed (seriously, though this happened in junior high as well), nutrition class, weightlifting

-Civic education throughout school, most kids hate it but it is immensely useful to actually know how your government works

-Note taking: my 5th grade teacher drilled us with these lessons on note taking, but now I'm so glad to be able to have coherent notes in my college classes. I often look at my neighbors who have completely useless looking notes. Some kids literally just write their notes like they're writing prose in paragraph form.

-Public speaking. This was taught to me by a professional actor who was very demanding. It stressed me the hell out with the performances, memorization, practice, etc. but I learned a ton about the mechanics of speaking, how to stand and look at an audience, and also just conquered some bashful demons.

-Statistics. I took this at the AP Level and eventually had to take two classes in my college's Political Science department on the subject, but it is very useful in terms of evaluating the kind of stuff you see touted as fact on a regular basis. There are lot of things that you would know anyway, but you would never have otherwise thought to have inquired about.

-I had to take computer courses that required me to know the ins and outs of Microsoft Office that still makes me the unofficial computer tech in my circle of friends

-We had a mandatory consumer ed at my high school and I'm glad I knew how credit cards worked, how to write a check, needing to make a budget and plan ahead, how mortgage and car/home loans work, etc.

 

That's just off the top of my head. What things occur to you as especially useful? Anything still stick out as a tremendous waste of time?

[witesoxfan]

English - specifically, grammar. Any time I hear or see somebody use grammar improperly, I generally forget what the hell they're talking about for a brief moment and just think to myself, "God, what an idiot."

 

Verbally, the double negative kills me. I also hate that people don't understand the difference between there, their, and they're, were and we're, your and you're...just say it out people.

[Jake]

English - specifically, grammar. Any time I hear or see somebody use grammar improperly, I generally forget what the hell they're talking about for a brief moment and just think to myself, "God, what an idiot."

 

Verbally, the double negative kills me. I also hate that people don't understand the difference between there, their, and they're, were and we're, your and you're...just say it out people.

 

Some of the s*** you see on facebook is terrible. I think a lot of folks associate good writing with over demanding teachers -- they never wanted to put the effort into writing well in school, which means they never tried hard enough to make it come naturally. Now, their way of being an independent adult is saying f*** the teachers I can write the way I want when I'm not being graded.

[Steve9347]

English - specifically, grammar. Any time I hear or see somebody use grammar improperly, I generally forget what the hell they're talking about for a brief moment and just think to myself, "God, what an idiot."

 

Verbally, the double negative kills me. I also hate that people don't understand the difference between there, their, and they're, were and we're, your and you're...just say it out people.

I can agree with this - school also just generally prepares a human to deal with other people in a group situation.

[StrangeSox]

Some things that come to mind for me:

-Mandatory keyboarding class in high school

 

They've eliminated cursive writing from the curriculum in many schools, but they haven't replaced it with mandatory typing classes which should start in elementary school.

[Steve9347]

They've eliminated cursive writing from the curriculum in many schools, but they haven't replaced it with mandatory typing classes which should start in elementary school.

Typing class rawked because I always finished early. So much Oregon Trail.

 

[witesoxfan]

I think it was 7th grade when we had to hit like 90 or 95% of 25 different lessons at 45 WPM during the 9-week quarter. Some kids couldn't get it done and ended up with that being their only D or C in middle school. I aced the class in like 4 weeks.

[hogan873]

Math in general. Plus, once I got into high school I actually found calculus and geometry to be interesting and useful.

 

Grammar is huge. As someone else pointed out already, the stuff you see on Facebook is horrendous. Oftentimes I will be reading someone's post (and many times it's those folks who love to rant), and I will discount everything they wrote because their grammar is so bad. And I cringe everytime I hear someone say "I seen..."

 

It blows my mind that they do not teach cursive writing anymore. How are kids expected to learn how to sign their names or read the writing of their parents?

 

Overall, as a parent, I've found just about everything I've learned in school to be useful as I spend time every night helping my kids with their homework.

[Iwritecode]

Overall, as a parent, I've found just about everything I've learned in school to be useful as I spend time every night helping my kids with their homework.

 

I'm just the opposite. I try to help my kids with their homework and sometimes I can't because it's stuff I haven't even thought about much less used in 20 years.

 

The math stuff they come home with I can usually figure out if I look at it but I usually don't know any real-world applications for it.

 

The English homework I'm just lost on. Subject verbs vs. objective verbs... Compound subjects... prepositional phrases...

 

I did learn keyboarding in HS so that's good but probably 80% of the rest of it has been pretty useless so far. Especially my electives. Marketing, Spanish, electronics, programming (on Apple computers). I've forgotten most of it.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Iwritecode

[justBLAZE]

I wish we had a mandatory nutrition class in high school.

[Texsox]

Learning the scientific method, thinking logically from math classes, reasoning and interpreting from English classes, conflict resolution from history class. Other than that, not a damn thing.

 

 

[IlliniKrush]

I wish we had a mandatory nutrition class in high school.

That's a great idea. The other mandatory class should be some sort of personal finance class. Teaching the basics of bank accounts, running a budget, paying bills, retirement accounts, etc.

[Jake]

That's a great idea. The other mandatory class should be some sort of personal finance class. Teaching the basics of bank accounts, running a budget, paying bills, retirement accounts, etc.

 

My small public high school had both of those things

[caulfield12]

Bloom's taxonomy, lol.

 

Actually, it's always a challenge to get Chinese students to develop their critical thinking and creative skills.

 

So much of the educational system here is based on rote learning.

 

So I constantly go back and refer to the concepts of analysis/synthesis/evaluation...ways to develop those higher level skills and yet make the activity fun and engaging too.

 

Debate is one that I haven't seen specifically, although it kind of dovetails with what a few said here so far.

 

Nobody mentioned drama or what they learned from their volunteering/service-learning class (although this could just as easily go with civic education/government).

[Jake]

Bloom's taxonomy, lol.

 

Actually, it's always a challenge to get Chinese students to develop their critical thinking and creative skills.

 

So much of the educational system here is based on rote learning.

 

So I constantly go back and refer to the concepts of analysis/synthesis/evaluation...ways to develop those higher level skills and yet make the activity fun and engaging too.

 

Debate is one that I haven't seen specifically, although it kind of dovetails with what a few said here so far.

 

Nobody mentioned drama

 

Drama was by no means required at any level of schooling, but when I was a senior in HS I decided to join up with the drama peoples and I worked as stage manager for a 4-day run of Annie Get Your Gun. This meant about 2-3 months of work as I recall it, and while there are obvious benefits of working as part of a team and leading people to get a task done...there was nothing better than seeing the end result and feeling on one hand responsible for how good it was but on the other seeing every other actor and helping hand and seeing how indispensable and unique their contributions were. It was really rewarding, even if just for that feeling.

 

or what they learned from their volunteering/service-learning class (although this could just as easily go with civic education/government).

 

I wish my high school facilitated that sort of thing better. Granted my small town didn't have as obvious of needs as my current home (Memphis) in terms of service, there just wasn't much going on for that sort of thing. I now go to the college that Newsweek has declared as "Most Service-Oriented" in the USA and I feel like a fish out of water in that aspect because the most service-oriented things we did was visit old people in nursing homes.