30 Things Taught In School That Raise The Question “What Was The Point?” As Shared By People In This Online Group

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.

That your entire self worth is based off of a letter and score.

“Cheaters never prosper.” Yeah cheating is bad, but trust me, they prosper.

That classical literature is the end all be all of reading. I get some books have cultural significance, but that doesn't warrant a 6 week in depth analysis of a book kids can't relate to, with most being about challenges they will never face, culminating in an essay that's basically "I understood it" repeated over and over backed up by quotes.

If you want your kids to never touch a book in their lives ever again, THAT is how you do it.

That learning how to pass tests is more important than actually gaining knowledge.

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.

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. S!@#s relevant, and important to realize in context.

But no. Just memorize some f!@#$%g dates and names, so you'll have some s!@t to spout at trivia night later.

"The bell doesn't dismiss you; I do."

Of course the bell dismisses you. What you're being prepared for, however, is a lifetime of bosses telling you that coming in 15 minutes before your shift, and staying 10 minutes after, doesn't count as overtime and doesn't need to be paid. That it's okay to violate that safety rule on-site because OSHA isn't paying you, I am, and the customer is waiting on you.

Basically, anytime an authority figure isn't following the rules they themselves set for everyone, you are being trained to accept that behavior in your adult life.

I graduated in 1991 for context and, while living in Phoenix, they taught us square dancing in gym class. I must say though that the most useful skill that I was taught at that school that I use every single day is typing.

Sex and drug education. The entire lesson plan is:

"Just don't do it."

F!@#$%g bulls!@t.

I feel like almost everything has some value, but I really really wished that they taught highschool classes on Operating Systems, Excel, and an introduction to programming and logic.

I learned it all in college, but Excel saved me a ton of time on homework. Programming played a much greater role than I could have imagined, and highschool left me unprepared for that.

In the U.S., probably the Pledge of Allegiance.

We did that every day from first grade through 12th grade. Let's say it took a minute per day. That's five minutes a week. Every 12 weeks, that's an hour. You're in school roughly 36 weeks a year, so that's 3 hours a year. Multiplied by 12 years and that's about 36 hours of your youth academic career spent talking to a flag.

‘You won’t have a calculator in your pocket in the real world!’

Yes, I know how do do math, I’m an engineer and I like math theory, I promise I’m not a brain dead mobile addict.

The tongue/taste map. Not only useless, but incorrect.

The way the US public school system teaches it, Spanish. You learn it maybe half a year then forget it over the summer. You’d think with years of education we’d be better Spanish speakers but it’s essentially useless the way it’s taught.

American history. For gawd's sake most americans can't find one other country on the map so why keep navel gazing, why not teach students about other countries, culture, and language? Met some guy in grad school who was doing his thesis on General Hooker's buttons. Why, just why?

They mostly taught us to ask permission in order to use the bathroom.

I was taught that Columbus knew that the world was round, but everyone else thought it was flat. So, yeah... That.

The amount they teach shakespeare. Like, sure once is probably good, not every year grade 9 to 12.

hizzoze said:
That hiding under your desk will keep you safe from bombs and tornadoes. (Yes I know what it's actually for, it's just always been a silly visual.)

vegdeg responded:
That wasn't the lesson you could have learned.

The real lesson was that people tend to panic, and panicking causes unpredictable and dangerous behavior. When you drill an action that makes a population feel like they have self control over a situation, they will tend to follow that.

Same as with patients and a disease - so often there is conflict between clinician and patient because the clinician will see it as the patient not being able to do anything (medically proven at least) - whereas the patient is looking for some agency, some self control over a situation, even if that is drinking carrot juice or whatever. This helps explain the multitude of holistic medicines and why they are popular - because there is always something you can do (or feel like there is) to have agency in a difficult situation.

As others have said - the lesson wasn't always literally the subject matter/what was being taught.