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

[Modelworks]

The main one would have to be typing. We had electric typewriters but that was the extent of it. We had to learn how to center words on a page for titles by adding up the letters in the title , dividing that by 2 and subtracting it from one half the width of the text on the rest of the page. Had to do things like that for other things like columns and margins. Hit the wrong key and there was no backspace or erase , you got to start over. Really useless skill now.

Dot matrix printers were just starting to make into homes at the time. I remember my english teacher telling us "Don't turn in any papers printed with one of those printers, all those dots hurt my eyes, type it or fail"

 

[Modelworks]

Using carbon paper in a typewriter to make copies.

The smell of the fluid used for mimeograph machines always brings back memories. Purple print , and it was scented !

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Duck and cover
Slide rules
How to etch PC boards
How to fix old fashioned pinball machines
How to keep score in Bowling
How to replace tubes in TV's and Radios
How to develop film
How to do four color printing on an offset printer
How to use a mimeograph machine

 

[sactoking]

Mechanical and architectural drafting. Now AutoCAD does it all. It's almost impossible to find a H pencil nowadays.

 

[nageov3t]

the Bohr model of the atom

how to make dittos (I don't think I've seen one since 2nd grade)

cursive... my grammar school teachers were nazis about it, but starting with high school, teachers stopped giving a shit and expected you to do whichever was more legible for you. same with forcing students to use a pencil in math versus a pen.

 

[thraashman]

I hate when people try to write in cursive still. Most people's cusrive is so hard to read. I stopped writing in cursive long before I was much of a typist.

 

[Squisher]

Duck and cover
Slide rules
How to etch PC boards
How to fix old fashioned pinball machines
How to keep score in Bowling
How to replace tubes in TV's and Radios
How to develop film
How to do four color printing on an offset printer
How to use a mimeograph machine

I used to rock a slide rule and the smell of that mimeograph machine was intoxicating, I'd be sniffing at the paper all the way back to the classroom.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Drafting on paper with lead (still useful to know). Typesetting (not so much). Layout/storyboarding by hand on boards (way worthless).

 

[JimmiG]

Arithmetics - doing it in your head, and especially stuff like long division.

Handwriting - only time I ever write something by hand is when I have to sign something, and then it doesn't matter what it looks like.

 

[Delita]

ever see American Desi?

"Let's add you and me, subtract your clothes, divide your legs and multiply"

I prefer RPN notation:

"You, friends, 2, TIMES PLUS… panties MINUS"

 

[SphinxnihpS]

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

I love getting a bill like $10.17 from some place and giving the cashier $20.25 so I get a $10 bill. It confuses the shit out of about half of them.

 

[purbeast0]

- how to make collect calls/long distance calling. pretty useless now with cellphones and voip (and landlines?) having free long distance calling. (not really school related either)

- how to use a graphing calculator.
- a lot of 'memorization' classes, such as history or a lot of core classes in school. any of the information i would needed to memorize for class, i could easily just look up on google if I had to know. memorizing the periodic table is 100% pointless now heh.

 

[Sid59]

I remember spending time learning how to format the front of a mailing envelope.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

Many things -- how to balance a checkbook, the card catalog, etc. I'd say basic math is still important.

A few years ago, I went to Arby's at lunch. The bill was something like $5.17 and I gave the lady a $10. She could not figure out how much change to give me. She turned and asked her manager, and he said "Give him 4 ones, 3 quarters, a nickel, and 3 pennies." She turned back to me and forgot what he said and got so frustrated she literally grabbed a fistful of change and gave it to me. It was really sad.

this happens way too frequently. the cashier will be "stuck" so ill tell them what they owe me and they just take my word for it

 

[alkemyst]

mirrors on shoes vs iPhone on shoes.

 

[911paramedic]

How to drive courteously.

 

[destrekor]

I still default to writing in cursive the rare time that I do write by hand.

If I try writing cursive, quite often I end up using a few Cyrillic letters in cursive. That's the only real way to write with Russian, and my English cursive has always been an appalling affront to the art of calligraphy or cursive script in general, so I rarely use it outside of signatures. So I've grown so rusty with cursive, sometimes I have to laugh at what gets drawn by my pen. A mix of the English and Russian alphabets.

 

[CVSiN]

pretty much everything...
I went to school in the 70s and 80s so yeh... typewriters and Mimeograph machines were still everywhere and only the super wealthy had IBM computers. everything was done with pen and paper still.

Wow how the world has changed...
and my grandma just turned 93.. and we were talking about this the other day.
think about what your grandmas and grandpas have seen change in their lifetimes..

it boggles my mind that in her lifetime she saw cars hit the roads (becoming common that is in the 1920s) from horse drawn carriages specially in BFE East Texas where she has been all her life.

 

[Drako]

Duck and cover

Still could be useful

Drop, Cover and Hold On very useful in an earthquake.

 

[preCRT]

Mechanical and architectural drafting. Now AutoCAD does it all. It's almost impossible to find a H pencil nowadays.

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



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.

 

[Ns1]

cursive.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

how to save things to a floppy disk?

 

[AstroManLuca]

Agree with everyone who said cursive. Legible handwriting is still important though. Cursive makes handwriting faster at the cost of legibility, and if you're going for speed, you should just type it up anyway.

I was thinking back to my high school photography classes and realized that even though I'll probably never develop another roll of 35mm film myself, it was still important to get a general sense of basic photography skills like bracketing and the tradeoffs between aperture, exposure time, and ISO. Sure, point-and-shoot digital cameras take care of most of that stuff, but if you're trying to take a picture in low light conditions you will want to know how to adjust your settings so it won't look like ass. That may just come down to learning how to use electronic devices though.

Things like dodging and burning are totally useless nowadays.

 

[exdeath]

how to save things to a floppy disk?

And never ever get them back.

 

[gophins72]

having to put ,8,1 when i try to load a program