50 Things I Wish I'd Been Taught in High School

[Sonikku]

51. How to construct a lightsaber.
52. How to effectively wield a lightsaber.

 

[shortylickens]

I was actually taught much of that stuff starting in elementary school. (Minnesota public K - 12)

It doesnt make your life any better, trust me.

 

[Ruptga]

You know they do offer testing and classes to bring you up to speed in college, right? Of course, that does screw with the graduate in four plan but, most graduate in six these days.

Yeah I'm taking care of it now, and already having (almost) all the general education requirements taken care of is balancing out the math problems. I still wish I had done this 8-9 years ago, and not just because I don't want to deal with it now.

 

[MongGrel]

This type of threads just come up too often these days.

50 ?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Yeah I'm taking care of it now, and already having (almost) all the general education requirements taken care of is balancing out the math problems. I still wish I had done this 8-9 years ago, and not just because I don't want to deal with it now.

It probably wouldn't have helped. With math, if you don't use it you lose it.

 

[shortylickens]

It probably wouldn't have helped. With math, if you don't use it you lose it.

Which means, you didnt fuck need it, did you?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Which means, you didnt fuck need it, did you?

Yes and no. Most of college is jumping through hoops to prove you can. I believe the most important advantage in learning higher maths is to give you a wider perspective. You may not remember how to use the tools but, you know they exist.

 

[mmntech]

Personal finance is too dangerous to be taught in schools. It might make the general public understand how money works, and not tolerate government misspending.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I wish I were taught what the different types of government structures were. Then be told that the USA is a democracy so I could laugh.

 

[MongGrel]

I wish I were taught what the different types of government structures were. Then be told that the USA is a democracy so I could laugh.

It was always set up a Republic, silly

 

[Eug]

Personally, I wish there would be more classes about finance, credit card, debt, basic money stuffs for a typical HS student.

When I was in high school there was a basic finance course, but it was really, really basic. Like how to write cheques and balance a chequebook, and basic budgeting and that sort of thing.

Most of us viewed it as a class for morons.

 

[Ruptga]

It probably wouldn't have helped. With math, if you don't use it you lose it.

I don't care if I actually learn it and I have every intention of forgetting everything as soon as I'm done with my math requirements, I just wish I'd gone STEM in the first place so I would already have those credits. Like you said later, nobody really needs to know how to be the calculator, we just need to have a feel for how this stuff works so we know what to feed into the computer and can make sense of what it spits out. I wouldn't complain about any of my math or theory courses if that's all it was about, but instead they have us writing out proofs and other shit nobody except real mathematicians has needed to do by memory in decades. Ironically, my point is academic since I know I have professors that feel exactly the same way, but the curriculum isn't changing any time soon. About 3 years ago they dropped the calc 3 requirement for Comp Sci majors, and the powers that be felt that was very generous.

Bottom line, I kinda wish I had remained naive about all this until I was done with math in college, because now it's just about all I can do to give a single fuck about this big block of classes I have no way of skipping.

 

[rh71]

You and NikolaeVarius deserve each other. Unfortunately, no one deserves the kind of world you espouse.

wtf are you going on about?

 

[Imp]

When I was in high school there was a basic finance course, but it was really, really basic. Like how to write cheques and balance a chequebook, and basic budgeting and that sort of thing.

Most of us viewed it as a class for morons.

Was that "Applied" math?

I took all the "Academic" math courses in high school. My "friend" reminded me that I wasn't that smart for not taking the applied ones..

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

wtf are you going on about?

Teachers and schools are too busy getting kids prepped for college so they rank better as good schools. They don't care about life lessons. There's not enough time in the day for that.

College was great for a reason - you discover yourself and many many things on your own.

I'd draw you a picture but, then I'd have to explain it.

 

[rh71]

I'd draw you a picture but, then I'd have to explain it.

Yeah well consider me put down and you can have a good night. Whatever floats your boat.

 

[Blanky]

I wish I had been taught to check myself before I wrecked myself.

 

[BudAshes]

I wish I had been taught to check myself before I wrecked myself.

Trust me, wrecking yourself is way more fun than checking yourself.

 

[notposting]

Yup.

Teachers and schools are too busy getting kids prepped for college so they rank better as good schools. They don't care about life lessons. There's not enough time in the day for that.

College was great for a reason - you discover yourself and many many things on your own.



ahem... altavista and yahoo weren't as good in our day 20 years ago (man I just said that). You could imagine how sparse and unorganized information was back then. Youtube has taught many people many things now that it's around too.

Also, some sense about how things work, looking at them and figuring it out without following the exact step by step instructions is pretty useful. And even more of a timesaver, sometimes.

I'm faaaaaaaaar from a mechanical genius of any sort, but having some basic understanding AND experience working on things, AND applying that knowledge to new situations is handy. That could be said for most skills/topics, really.

As for me, learning more of the basic "live on your own in civilization and/or survivalist nutto" skills back then would be appreciated now. Now my kids get to learn along with me.

 

[drebo]

45. How to deal with the guilt of privilege, which we all have in one way or another.

46. How to be aware of our respective privilege and advantages.

WTF is this bullshit?

 

[Blanky]

WTF is this bullshit?

I skipped 46, thus I didn't need 45.

Also what sort of freedom hating shit is spelling resume with accent aigus? Take that back over the Atlantic where it doesn't belong.

 

[Eug]

Was that "Applied" math?

I took all the "Academic" math courses in high school. My "friend" reminded me that I wasn't that smart for not taking the applied ones..

No, it wasn't even "applied" math. It was a course in I believe grade 9 that led nowhere, a one-time thing only for grade 9 students, and was called "consumer education" or something odd like that.

Essentially the only people who took it were those who could barely understand elementary school math. And I'm serious about the learning how to write a cheque part. That was one of things they "accomplished" in that class. And no, it was NOT a special education class. Anyone could take it.

I see that balancing a checkbook is in that list, at #38. Really? This stuff is really simple. As mentioned, it is elementary school math. Budgeting is also on that list. Perhaps that author should have gone to my school then and taken the IMO completely useless consumer education course.

BTW, I did take secretarial typing at my school. I was the only guy in the class, and was the only person in the class IIRC that was on an academic stream. I took it just to learn how to touch type properly, because back then (1980s), computers were not ubiquitous, and a lot of people in my era were hunt-and-peck typists. Despite this, most on the academic stream felt like they were above taking secretarial typing, but I think that class was the most beneficial to me out of all my classes in terms of real-world practical benefit. I betcha some of my proud fellow academic stream colleagues regretted not taking that course though, since computer use exploded right after that, and by the 90s was ubiquitous. Many remained two-finger typists.

---

I also see on the list that time management training is on the list. Interesting because I remember reading an article about 15 years ago that looked at this. It turns out those who did well in school generally already had good time management skills. Forcing them to use time management methods taught to them afterwards actually worsened their time management, or at best had no effect. In contrast, teaching time management skills generally helped those who were doing poorly in school.

 

[SMOGZINN]

In a perfect world we would teach our kids everything. Unfortunately we only have so much time, and kids only have so much attention to spend (yes, attention is a limited resource, and kids have precious little of it). Everything we teach our kids must come at the expense of not teaching them something else.

So, if you want to make a list like this, you should at least include a list of things you would like to stop teaching them to make way for these items.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

In a perfect world we would teach our kids everything. Unfortunately we only have so much time, and kids only have so much attention to spend (yes, attention is a limited resource, and kids have precious little of it). Everything we teach our kids must come at the expense of not teaching them something else.

So, if you want to make a list like this, you should at least include a list of things you would like to stop teaching them to make way for these items.

Excellent idea! We should stop teaching social skills. Social skills can not be taught, they can only be absorbed. We should stop teaching children how to use computers before they know how to think and problem solve. We should stop doing the current review year between learning years of math. We should eliminate money spent on enforcing "zero tolerance" and "risk management." We should stop teaching children that the only form of self expression that will ever be critically analyzed and standardized is their ability to do well on government tests.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Let's be real here. Even if your parents taught you 1/2 of this stuff you would ignore 80% of it anyways or simply wouldn't remember it.

At that age we still use wrong part of the brain to process information. That's why during that age everything is opposite of reality.

To process/understand the important lessons in life is HARD.