What Was Your Most Useless Required Class in School?

win231

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Location
CA
I had several; some useless & some dangerous.
In 7th grade, a class called "Wood Shop" was required. I had no plans to become a carpenter & I thought it was really dangerous and stupid to allow 12 & 13 year olds to operate power saws & drill presses without much supervision. There were 15 kids in the class & one teacher wandering around. I had to witness one student cutting off four fingers on a band saw & another student losing part of a finger with a manual saw when it slipped. I didn't want to use power tools, so I just accepted a bad grade on projects that didn't turn out right.

In 8th grade "Metal Shop" was required. I'd seen enough mayhem & stupidity in Wood Shop by then, so my parents wrote to the school administrators & I was able to avoid that class, as well as "Electric Shop" that was required in 9th grade.

In 8th grade, an English Literature class was required. I couldn't think of anything more boring than listening to the teacher talk about "Chaucer & Shakespeare." I'm sure they were great, but I had no interest. I spend most of the class staring at the clock & when the bell rang, I'd spring out of the seat like someone shot out of a canon at a circus after 45 minutes of pure misery.
 

We had a course in high school that was called law. The book had cases in it and we were suppose to act like lawyers and debate both sides of the case. Most of the time the teacher got so frustrated he let us do homework from other classes.
Another was called Modern Communications. All about TV and the movie industry. We loved it but a totally useless course.
 
I remember in 1st or 2nd grade making things with that brown sticky clay. Yeah....all 25 kids were going to be sculptors when they grow up....
And, note to my High School history teacher: If I was interested in the Spanish-American war (or any other war), I'd study it on my own.
How 'bout teaching us something useful - like how to balance a checkbook?
 
Latin and Algebra. I did like geometry though. Geometry has more to do with logic. And I liked Mr. Hudson, as an instructor and person. How teachers teach and interact with their students can make a big difference in how one feels about a subject matter. :)
 
Biology. I had already cleaned enough fish, rabbits, chickens, frogs and squirrels that messing around with another frog wasn't going to teach me anything.
Other than that, most of the classes I took were at least somewhat useful. Several were central to my career in electronics.
 
The U.S. history that was inflicted on us around grades 5-6. Why should we have cared that much about Magellan, Cortez, Cabot, De Soto, etc. etc.?
We learned very little about the people whose work made a real difference in our lives, but whoever made up that curriculum sure had a "thing" for those early explorers!
 
like sassy cakes i didnt need latin----as far as dissecting a grasshopper there is no way i would put my hands on one----like one boy told the teacher-i have the grass but the hopper is over on the other side of the room
 
I went to a Christian brothers military school...all the classes were unnecessary...never had to diagram a sentence -yet, you probably can understand, the most important thing they taught me and the rest of us was how to take punch ..they would be put in jail today for assault with intent or worse.--misfits. hehe
 
I HATED gym and used to hide from the teacher, have never been athletic. I didn't like chemistry, in one ear and out the other. I never had to dissect a frog, so am not sure if I ever took biology, I would have refused to cut up a living thing anyway. I was a total failure at shorthand. I loved english and history and geography and took sewing classes, made a lot of clothes for myself and my mother, she only liked the dresses I made her. I made her my first slipcovers when I was 14 just by looking at diagrams.
 
business math in my senior yr in high school,God knows why I had to take it
As I look back,I'm amazed I survived my job as pharm tech at local hosptial.When I delivered narcotics to nursing units I had to count every one when I put in the machine. I did make some counting mistakes over the yrs,would always resolve the discrepancy
To this day,I still use a calculator to figure out ck totals/monthly bank statement
 
Home Economics

IMO once you get past the basics of reading writing and arithmetic most of it is a waste of time until you settle on a specialized course of study that will allow you to make a living.

To me, it is more important to know where to find information, analyze problems, prioritize things, and think than it is to have a well-rounded education.

I LOVED Home Economics...go figure.

Probably because it was a breeze.
 

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