What are some things you learned in school that are now irrelevant due to technology?

[Kadarin]

Good thread for those of us who were teenagers in the 80s...

Having to carry cash
Cursive (I don't think I even remember all the letters anymore)
How to type on a manual typewriter (or even an electric one)
Making change (it's not arithmetic number crunching, it's simply counting, starting with the total cost of the items, and counting up to the amount the other person gave you; I learned how to do this in 3rd grade)
Dewey decimal system (yeah, I'll definitely agree with this!)
Bowling scores (excellent suggestion earlier in the thread)

Regarding spellcheck: These systems are not perfect, so if you are so illiterate that you fail to recognize the incorrect word when spellcheck inserts it, then you deserve all of the derision you get.

Basic math is something we should all continue to be taught. Otherwise, we'll be stuck at the "one, two, three, many" stage if the power goes out.

 

[pcgeek11]

Slide rule, Vacuum tubes. the list goes on and on ...

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Does that mean my stash of H & 2H leads are collectors items and have increased in value?

I have $500 (1980s money) Deitzign compass set. I also have a drafting table (no built-in square, old school all the way) T-squares, triangles, French curves, Rapid-O-Graphs, a trillion Venus pencils, 10 lead holders, lead sharpeners, a wad of rubber eraser the size of a basketball...

 

[IceBergSLiM]

boys have penis girls have a vagina.

 

[lxskllr]

I forgot the clapping of chalkboard erasers. If you were eraser monitor it meant a guaranteed excuse to slip out of class and goof off outside for 15 minutes whenever you wanted.

And putting a piece of chalk between the felt pads. That was a favorite of mine :^D

 

[zebano]

hmm DOS, BASIC and many other computer related items. Outside of that I've forgotten many things I memorized like all the US Presidents in chronological order, the periodic table, everything from my class on China & much of the Catechism (Catholic schools) which are all readily available via google if I ever need to know.

 

[MetalMat]

The metric system

 

[ShawnD1]

The metric system

Car shopping must be confusing if you don't know metric. 2.4L engine wtf does that mean??

Cursive was a complete waste of time. I wrote everything in cursive all the way up to high school then the high school teachers told us that shit done in cursive would be given a 0 because "I can't read your chicken scratches"
As a result, I basically had a re-learn how to write normally. I know what they all look like, but printing is extremely slow if you haven't done it in years.

Most history was a waste of time. Some things are worth learning like how WW1 and WW2 started, but what about that bullshit I remember doing about feudal Japan? Who the fuck cares. It doesn't relate to anything. We also learned about Brazil. Again, that's a totally useless country nobody should care about.

 

[Fritzo]

Slide rule, Vacuum tubes. the list goes on and on ...

For us musicians, your knowledge of vacuum tubes keeps our amps sounding awesome

Yeah, cursive was a big waste of time. If someone writes something in cursive now, I don't bother reading it.

 

[Fritzo]

Most history was a waste of time. Some things are worth learning like how WW1 and WW2 started, but what about that bullshit I remember doing about feudal Japan? Who the fuck cares. It doesn't relate to anything. We also learned about Brazil. Again, that's a totally useless country nobody should care about.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

-Some historical guy

 

[preCRT]

I have $500 (1980s money) Deitzign compass set. I also have a drafting table (no built-in square, old school all the way) T-squares, triangles, French curves, Rapid-O-Graphs, a trillion Venus pencils, 10 lead holders, lead sharpeners, a wad of rubber eraser the size of a basketball...

Minus the compass set & basketball size eraser wad [that I do remember throwing out when it stopped bouncing because it became too dry], I have all of the above.

My mom may have the compass set, she has tons more junk from when she did drafting for Raytheon [AMRAM missiles] & Digital back in ye olden days.

Those pens always got clogged so everyone owned several sets, paid a damn dear price for them too.

 

[lxskllr]

The metric system

One of my big disappointments in life is the USA not going metric. The English system is retarded, and if your gonna be retarded, you might as well go full retard and use Roman numerals, and write with hash lines on a wooden post :^S

 

[ShawnD1]

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

-Some historical guy

What part of Japan's history are we doomed to repeat? The part where it had no unified government and was in a state of chaos because warlords were always at war with each other?

To make it even a bigger waste of time, we never actually learned why Brazil is such a shit hole. I think it's because nobody knows. Those countries have been completely broken for 200+ years.
edit: by "those countries" I mean all of the countries south of the US.

 

[Aharami]

remembering phone numbers.
remembering directions.

back in high school, i used to have all my friends' numbers memorized. now, the only numbers I remember off the top of my head are my wife's and my mom's

 

[Kommander_Kink]

Does anybody know about this shocking fact:

The kids born after 1998 are the least-taught generation in human history, that's the time when the things we have been learning in school for the last 500 years are seldom taught, but yet they are the most self-aware and most knowledgeable generation of youths history has ever seen, why? Because of Google and the internet.

 

[Kadarin]

Most history was a waste of time. Some things are worth learning like how WW1 and WW2 started, but what about that bullshit I remember doing about feudal Japan? Who the fuck cares. It doesn't relate to anything. We also learned about Brazil. Again, that's a totally useless country nobody should care about.

History can be very important, not only from understanding what happened but from having a thorough understanding of why it happened. A classic example would be a case where someone states that WWI started due to the assassination of an archduke without understanding the geopolitical context. It's important if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to make decisions that impact the future.

 

[zinfamous]

sex

 

[mmntech]

Wait so bad a math couldn't even do business, I did not know that was possible.

Well maybe I'm exaggerating a teensy bit. I originally was going to university for commerce but couldn't get through the mandatory "calculus for business" course. So I switched to political science, then later journalism, which was a much better fit for me.

 

[alkemyst]

Car shopping must be confusing if you don't know metric. 2.4L engine wtf does that mean??

Cursive was a complete waste of time. I wrote everything in cursive all the way up to high school then the high school teachers told us that shit done in cursive would be given a 0 because "I can't read your chicken scratches"
As a result, I basically had a re-learn how to write normally. I know what they all look like, but printing is extremely slow if you haven't done it in years.

Most history was a waste of time. Some things are worth learning like how WW1 and WW2 started, but what about that bullshit I remember doing about feudal Japan? Who the fuck cares. It doesn't relate to anything. We also learned about Brazil. Again, that's a totally useless country nobody should care about.

Wow you talking fucking high school still?

IMHO if cursive was illegable the student should have been failed right on the spot. It's one thing to pull it off casually, but on an assignment extremely ignorant. I am sure the game was to write terribly and then argue you were misunderstood. I personally can't understand how professors allow themselves to be beat down for grades today.

When I went back to college in 1999, there were certain professors know to give you at least a B if you bitched / confronted them. Piss poor teaching.

 

[Modelworks]

Memorizing some of the theorems in geometry was pretty dang worthless as well. We had to memorize all sorts of (semi) useless proofs about how the angles of a line that intersects two parallel lines.

Geometry is the one math course I took in high school that was actually some use in real life. I use it all the time when doing carpentry projects. Friends are amazed at how I can find the center of an odd shaped wall with just a string and pencil.

 

[Cogman]

Geometry is the one math course I took in high school that was actually some use in real life. I use it all the time when doing carpentry projects. Friends are amazed at how I can find the center of an odd shaped wall with just a string and pencil.

Do you think up the verbatim proof that enables you to find that center? Or do you just remember the consequences of a few proofs. Again, the consequences are useful. It is the actual act of memorizing the proofs that I found particularly useless. IE the, A implies B, B implies C, therefore A implies C sorts of stuff.

 

[0roo0roo]

Cursive

this.

so useless....

 

[Locut0s]

Do you think up the verbatim proof that enables you to find that center? Or do you just remember the consequences of a few proofs. Again, the consequences are useful. It is the actual act of memorizing the proofs that I found particularly useless. IE the, A implies B, B implies C, therefore A implies C sorts of stuff.

The proofs aren't meant to be "useful". They are to be learned and remembered if you are actually interested in the field of math itself. I actually loved doing geometry proofs in HS, good quite good at those too. Course I've forgotten all of that now

 

[alkemyst]

The proofs aren't meant to be "useful". They are to be learned and remembered if you are actually interested in the field of math itself. I actually loved doing geometry proofs in HS, good quite good at those too. Course I've forgotten all of that now

QFT and many larger colleges have '[insert math course] for non-math/engineering majors'

That said, I didn't bother with those...a lot goes in to learning the proofs (rather than just memorizing that most do)...sure you will forget later on if you aren't using them everyday, but the thought processes become inherent to your own problem solving in the future.

 

[Locut0s]

boys have penis girls have a vagina.

I don't think school was ever necessary to learn this. In fact 'sex education' is a relatively new concept in the history of education.