Hey Pandas, what class did you have to take in Highschool that you never used again? Mine was Calculus.
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Computer class. Specifically typing exercises. I never type the "proper" way even at a desk job. Since the Office programs change so much, I no longer feel proficient enough to apply advanced Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. I've never used PowerPoint. I don't even have an interest learning this stuff. But it was compulsory at the time.
That, and Career Education. I was in a program in High School that was about prepping for a career. So we got to learn everything about job searching. For that time. But even at that time we were still given out of date advice. Sure they taught a bit about interviews and resumes, and where to look for jobs. But since our job placements were handed to us, and no matter how bad we messed up in the interview we were still "hired", because the business agreed to participate in the program and we weren't real employees. More like free labour for 3 weeks for school credit.
This did not help me find it easier to get a job after High School. Because it was unique to that school only a handful of businesses in and around the community knew of it. So, explaining my 3 week stints, unpaid, for the last 3 years to employers left me with a weird look and rejections. I should've just left them off my resume but they were all that I had other than babysitting and going to school. I had no clue how to approach businesses about job offers, because that's a part that was always left out. All I knew to do was give a resume to a ton of businesses every day. This tactic was starting to grow less and less popular. The following year still no job and I the job application preferences had already changed to the point I had to relearn everything.
Some times the work placements were fun. Other times it was the longest 3 weeks of my life and I just wanted to be back at school. Math was Consumer Math, so we learned about budgeting, taxes, stock markets, investing, insurance, mortgage calculations. All that stuff many people say they wished they learned in school. That's one class I'm glad I took.
Computer sciences, UGH I was bored out of my mind because it was so stupid and boring, coding is not my forte, and don’t get me started on Python, ugh it’s extremely frustrating and boring. And to make matters worse the class was one half of my school day, for an entire freaking week, I would just listen to music on my phone and play Minecraft educational edition, and the teacher would be right over my shoulder seeing if I was paying attention, but I didn’t because it was so boring and idiotic to me.
Home-Ec!!!!!! Girls HAD to take one sewing and one cooking! Why??? Girls could NOT take any shop classes- wood, small engine, auto. Why not??? So girls sewed a pair of jeans (really!) and an apron!!!! We cooked stuff we would never even want to eat, and our final was making lasagna for the teachers- what a disaster. (Pass out steak knives.) To this day I do not cook or even own a needle and thread, and get all riled up every time I have to pay someone to fix my lawnmower or do simple car repairs.
We all (girls and boys) had to do one semester of each elective in year 7 & 8 before we chose the ones we wanted to in year 9. These were food tech (renamed from home ec or cooking science), textiles, art, metalwork, woodwork, visual communication & design and ceramics. I found metalwork the most useless and it was the one I had to do twice because there were only 7 electives not 8. We made a ring about three times over the two years. I have no idea what else we did, I think I have blocked it out it was so boring. Food tech was okay on the practical days, but the theory lessons were boring (I laughed when my mum said the worksheets/diagrams were the same ones she learnt from 20 years earlier. She still had the book they came from). My brother found the textiles lessons so boring he decided to spice them up by (trying) to sew over a pencil with the machine- mum had to pay for the replacement needle :)
Literally all math classes. Half my teachers even state we will never use this math later on in life, so what’s the point?
My ninth grade health class!! Don't get me wrong, it's an important subject middle and high schoolers, but this man did not mention std prevention in LGBTQ+ relationships and his idea of mental health education was watching the movie split.
Oh no! We had to see a slide show of images of untreated STDs, which turned most stomachs, but it was necessary to drive home the point of using condoms as well/instead of just birth control pills. I don't remember if we talked about same sex relationships much, but I know we did a little, as that was one of the questions from the anonymous question box. I was also pleased we were given a quiz where we had to decide if certain things were rape (spoiler alert, they all were) such as 'I had sex with my boyfriend. I didn't want to, but he is my boyfriend'. Unfortunately from what my sister (9 years younger) said when she got to high school the information wasn't as in depth as that.
Ethics. During those classes we did silly tests, drawing, and sometimes watched films. There was no real discussion, debates, or any sort of activity that could be applied in the real-world or would develop us as personalities.
Defenitely math. In the younger classes it made a lot of sense, but it got more and more useless as I got olde. I was done when we were taught that 5^1 equels 1. When I asked "why?" my teacher couldn't even explain it properly. I dropped math LOL
My maths teacher tried unsuccessfully to teach me surds, using multiple ways of explaining. In the end I think we agreed it was never going to happen, and the exams allow calculators anyways so left it as that! There was definitely some useless maths (I mean, what was the point of matrices?) unless you went into specific fields after school, but usually we only did enough to prepare us if we chose one type of maths in the last two years of school. For example, if you were planning on doing medicine at uni there was one unit you were required to take, but if you weren't you didn't have to. There was general/further maths (most uni courses would only require general (yr11) or further (yr12)), math methods (some courses required this) and specialist (medicine, physics, engineering I think required this). Some lucky students didn't do maths at all in year 11 & 12, I think people going into art courses or something. The general maths was more useful than any of the others outside school.
This isn't really a class, but in my school we have a "targeted instruction period" before or after lunch and it's very useless that time could be used for way more important things (it's a 30 minute period)
That sounds odd. Is it like a 'spare' period, where you are expected to do homework, or speak to teachers etc?
Home room. Wasted 30 mintutes to hear 4 announcements and put finishing touches on my work from actual classes.
Imagine my horror when my work went to daily stand up meetings. Home room for adults.
30 minute homeroom, that sounds excessive! I think ours was like 10mins max. Still a waste of time usually as the announcements weren't usually relevant. When I got to year 10-12 most announcements were from the career's counsellor and were just 'x company is looking for staff, apply on their website' and they also made us make term goals and stuff.
Greek mythology
Trigonometry, statistics, physics. I wish we had been taught skills we will all need to deal with as adults: planning a career, basic cooking, domestic finance and budgeting, home repairs, nutrition etc etc…
I was glad my school only required us to do 1 term of each of the four sciences, in preparation for choosing what we wanted to do in the following years. Physics was so pointless for me. We were lucky to have a class in year 10 called Economy & Society where we learnt things like budgeting, making resumes, mock interviews, process of buying a house, car, planning an event like a wedding, taking out loans etc. It was right at the age most students were getting afterschool jobs and planning what they wanted to do when they left school. We did a simulation/game where we were assigned a character and had to make decisions as that character, game of life style I think. We also did online modules for occupational health & safety, first aid, and other ones that might have been useful for whatever job we were planning on getting. It was the most useful class I ever had.
Type Writing. I even took the GCSE for it. Got a B grade (highest on that paper mind you). I also having GCSE grades in Chemistry, Biology, and Combined Science etc. but in the year 2022 ain’t nobody hiring you for no GCSE in Type Writing. Period.
