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

[SandEagle]

English

 

[lxskllr]

No -- it gave her the total to give me ($4.83). She did not know how to make the change.

At my first full time job at a bakery, they had a counter girl that was dumb as a rock. One time she got in an argument with a customer over change. She was basing the amount off of 60 like time, and not 100 :^D

Sometimes you can completely fuckup a cashiers day by giving them odd change. If the total comes to $5.32, give them $10.07 and watch the confusion wash over their faces :^D

 

[Svnla]

Typing on typewriters.

Floppy disks.

Encyclopedia.

Pay bills by mail.

 

[Svnla]

Agreed. I was always fairly good at math, very good grades and loved the subject, but sucked at basic arithmetic.

Aren't you Chinese?

Mods, ban this guy. He is an imposter and not really Chinese/Asian.

 

[TXHokie]

At my first full time job at a bakery, they had a counter girl that was dumb as a rock. One time she got in an argument with a customer over change. She was basing the amount off of 60 like time, and not 100 :^D

Sometimes you can completely fuckup a cashiers day by giving them odd change. If the total comes to $5.32, give them $10.07 and watch the confusion wash over their faces :^D

Was at Target...gave the cashier $10 for $5.23 total. Decided to get $5 bill in change so gave cashier extra quarter. She was confused after already punched in the 10. So I got $4.77 and my quarter back and a dirty look for holding up the line.

 

[Kommander_Kink]

Write in long handwriting, you know, write words with all the letters linked together, not printed. I remember I was made to write entire sheets of words so my handwriting would look good, now who the hell doesn't print his handwriting?

 

[lxskllr]

Write in long handwriting, you know, write words with all the letters linked together, not printed. I remember I was made to write entire sheets of words so my handwriting would look good, now who the hell doesn't print his handwriting?

I print everything, all caps. A year or so ago I tried doing the cursive alphabet, and I struggled trying to remember some of the letters :^D

 

[mmntech]

Everything I learned in university!

Hypercard. We spent a lot of time with that in junior high for some reason. That style of website building died with Geocities.

Analogue video editing. Did that in high school. All tapeless now. I actually think we used iMovie for editing though, once it was ingested. That was around 2000/2001.

Cursive for sure. Mine was always illegible anyway, even to me.

I'm one of these people who sucks at math and can't do basic stuff without a calculator. Always have been though. That's why I took humanities in university and not business or science.

 

[Brovane]

The art of using a disk notcher to convert a single sided 5 1/4 single floppy disk to make it double sided for computer lab.

Cursive

 

[Matthiasa]

Everything I learned in university!

Hypercard. We spent a lot of time with that in junior high for some reason. That style of website building died with Geocities.

Analogue video editing. Did that in high school. All tapeless now. I actually think we used iMovie for editing though, once it was ingested. That was around 2000/2001.

Cursive for sure. Mine was always illegible anyway, even to me.

I'm one of these people who sucks at math and can't do basic stuff without a calculator. Always have been though. That's why I took humanities in university and not business or science.

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

 

[SKORPI0]

Film photography.

 

[Cogman]

Cursive.

I distinctly remember the teacher saying "Once you get into college, all your teachers will require you to write your papers in cursive!" and "Once you are employed, everyone will write everything in cursive!" And other such nonsense about how the world rotates on cursive.

Needless to say, outside of maybe 1 or 2 papers in highschool where one teacher felt the need to justify our learning cursive, I never touched it again.


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. The ability to properly form theorems and proofs are pretty useless outside of academia. The consequences of those proofs are much more valuable than the actual proof.

 

[gophins72]

sex ed class was made irrelevant now that there is internet porn

 

[TraumaRN]

Film Photography
Cursive

Working on a car, such as check your fluid levels and all that. Now on my current car I can check the brake fluid level, the oil, and the windshield wiper fluid. Andddddd thats it. Cant check the air filter, the fuel filter, trans fluid, none of that.

Anything on floppy disk
ZIP Drives

 

[lxskllr]

Film Photography
Cursive

Working on a car, such as check your fluid levels and all that. Now on my current car I can check the brake fluid level, the oil, and the windshield wiper fluid. Andddddd thats it. Cant check the air filter, the fuel filter, trans fluid, none of that.

On the car stuff... Adjusting valves, timing, points, clutch cable, carburetor jets and float, as well as mixture...

 

[TraumaRN]

On the car stuff... Adjusting valves, timing, points, clutch cable, carburetor jets and float, as well as mixture...

My dad taught me some of that on a 1964 International tractor...I forget most of it now just because I never had to use it.

Come to think it driving a manual transmission. I know how but it's something very few people know how to do(in my generation, I'm 25)...oh and that 64 International tractor is what I learned to drive a stick on....torquey SOB it was...it was fun you could slam through the gears on that thing

 

[preCRT]

Developing and printing black & white 35mm film.

Using carbon paper in a typewriter to make copies.

Using a 'secret code signal' while calling collect from the school's pay phone to get the message across for free and save that damn dime.

 

[ProfJohn]

The whole electrons and protons things etc.

Our understanding of the universe has changed so much in the past 20 years that most of what I learned in physics is child's play now days.

 

[mcmilljb]

Basic Arithmetic is a lost art.

I was in the store the other day... bought something that came to $2.83.. gave the clerk a $20... and they had to whip out the calculator to figure out change.

I had a similar issue. I was waiting in line to check out. The guy ahead of me had a giftcard and wanted to add enough to make it $40. At first she was like so you want to add $40? Then some other number, and this went on for a few minutes. Finally I looked at the balance and quckly in my head I was able to give the correct amount. It's sad when you can't even do something that should be basic. Luckily for the cashier, the machine tells her what the correct change is otherwise she might mess that up too.

 

[Kommander_Kink]

Encyclopedia Brittanica, the entire 26-book volume, my Mom said it costed more than $2,600 and she bought it so my older brothers could do their homework on them without going to the university. 10 years later it was being sold on a CD-ROM for $29.99, then when Google and the internet army became widespread it became *free*

 

[TuxDave]

I learned how to make a NAND2 gate using a double emitter BJT!

.... yeah, that proved to be useful

 

[Locut0s]

Basic Arithmetic is a lost art.

I was in the store the other day... bought something that came to $2.83.. gave the clerk a $20... and they had to whip out the calculator to figure out change.

Well that kind of thing I can do fairly easily. I was more talking about multiplication and division. Not too long ago most people had to memorize multiplication tables into the mid to high 20s and could do multi digit multiplication and division relatively quickly.

 

[steppinthrax]

On the car stuff... Adjusting valves, timing, points, clutch cable, carburetor jets and float, as well as mixture...

That stuff is all still exist for small engines (lawnmower, boat etc).

 

[exdeath]

I forgot what I learned in school. I was too busy teaching myself C++, linear algebra and calculus, and physics (eg: applied C++ :awe at 3 am while showing up late to class and sleeping at my desk.

 

[exdeath]

On the car stuff... Adjusting valves, timing, points, clutch cable, carburetor jets and float, as well as mixture...

All of those concepts still apply, you just use a laptop and a spreadsheet instead of a screwdriver. Think of it like having a tray of 1000 different jets that get switched out with the exact one needed right then and there every 1/60th of a second.