I think your mothertongue, an international language, math, science, sociology, psychology, religion and history are equally important and useful subjects, but they've to be taught correctly with a teacher who's good in explaining and learn the things that's most relevant.
You needs to learn reading, writing and your own language to communicate with other people although you can't meet them face to face in addition to get access to a lot of information. Most things are taught through reading nowadays. An international language may be practical if you wants to work abroad or understand other cultures. Most of the internet is in English for example. Math is important to know how to pay your bills, take care of your own economy and start an business. If you don't know plus, minus, division or multiplication, you won't be able to handle your own money. Science can teach you how children are made, how to avoid STD and unwanted pregnancies, what's healthy to eat and why some people worries about global warming. Sociology, religion and history tells you why the society looks the way it does, how people tried to either improve or destroy it, politics, how you can affect it etc. Psychology can help you improving your mental health and explaining unusual behavior.
The most useless subjects in my opinions are music and P. E. Not every children needs to know how to play a piano or a gitar to earn a living. I think it's fine children are allowed to have fun in school and play around with music, but it shouldn't be graded. Physical education is also useless because of it's all about giving grades and many pupils drops out because of that. The schools should rather allow children to play outside instead, encourage their parents to give them healthy food and a hobby. P. E. isn't promoting a healthy lifestyle and only pressure them to get good grades. A healthy lifestyle is easier to achieve if you're encouraged to do it and if you don't get bad grades because of you're not equally fit as everyone else - that may be caused by genetics. Punishing rarely does any goods.
It's more difficult to get a good grade in P. E. if you've bad lucks with your genetics than it's to learn math, reading etc. Most people who's not intellectual d. are capable to learn a lot of facts, but people with an unfit body can't always workout to qualify to the P. E. standards.
English... by far. What should be taught in English is more grammar, letter writing, professional communication, etc. How to be an effective communicator and listener. We don't need 3 years of Ye Olde Shakespeare.
Don't get me wrong... English literary culture is important and it should be taught... but, given the limited number of hours and years that kids have in high school, they really need to do more communicating.
Writing essays about the themes in White Fang and getting subjective grades about it are bullshit.
Knowing how to write an effective email to convince a boss or coworker of something critical is a vital life skill.
Knowing who the fuck Beowulf is only scores you points on Jeopardy!
I understand that part of the objective of English class is to assess reading skills and communication skills, but that can be done more effectively with genuine research assignments. Then again, things are probably better in that way than when I was a kid with no PCs or an Internet...
I wouldn’t know of the syllabus in the United States, but nothing is useless, however how it is assigned may sometimes be irrelevant to its cause. To drive in long term memory, to forge new connections in the grey matter of the brain and train your mind like a mind gym. Often the subjects just trail away into over kill with assignments.
Different retention methods are flash quizzes and debates. However, different learning styles require different techniques, even assigning essays could be restricted to once in three months. You surely don’t need to write essays that often !
I say it because this is taxing on one’s interest and might lead to burn out. Students need to conserve their motivation to what is really important in life and even sudden shock therapy to absorb more challenging academics works best for all.
When your adrenal glands are stimulated mildly but you have time, that is when you are at peak mental performance. You grasp your material that helps you earn well.
I don't think any subject is useless, it mainly depends on what subject you study later in life. Being a student of science now, history and English Literature were the most useless subjects for me in class. In fact, I knew what I wanted to study in the future so I did not even care that I'd barely pass history exams in school. Firstly they don't teach us enough secondly it's very boring in school. While it's good to have a general idea about history, specific years and dates of events will never come handy.
Nor does it come handy to have poems memorized. This is another thing I didn't care about in school, they even made us memorize the declaration of American independence, I wonder if even Americans would care to memorize that. I never bothered with it and always got a zero on that part, but again, I never cared because I knew I don't need it. I got top grades in subjects that I actually cared for. I always had the highest grade in physics in class.
English, math and sciences are the most important subjects in Highschool and should be built around a good PE programme. I guess the most useless would be sociology, Psychology, home economics and definitely any subject with an SJW theme. It's really hard to say like any subject is useless if not taught the right way like even home economics would be a useful subject if they taught kids how to cook a good healthy affordable meal for themselves and others instead of little buns that 10 year olds can make in their easy bake oven. Home economics should be teaching kids how to manage money, pay bills, educate them on the benefits & negatives of having a credit card and taking out bank loans, on mortgages, he'll even how to maintain personal hygiene and how to clean maintain a home. Anyway schools are essentially babysitting facilities these days rather than the educators of children. Most of what kids learn these days can be taught at school via the internet, the correct sylabuse and of course Skype.
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Anonymous
(25-29)
+1 y
Chemistry because when the hell am I ever gonna need that? Math because same, plus I have dyscalculia so it only caused me huge problems in school and would've gotten kicked out if it weren't for my diagnosis allowing me to get more math time. Art and music because it's unnecessary even though I love everything creative. Gym because most people skipped it anyways including myself and how active someone is should be personal responsibility and the responsiblity of the parents as long as you are kids. I'd say history as well but I think it's a good thing to be well-informed and it can be sort of interesting to learn about. In general schools should only focus on things that will actually prepare us for life.
Honestly, I’ve used a lot of information I’ve learned in school outside of class before. The only thing that has proven to be useless to me was any math past basic algebra.
In today's world Mathematic and physics and chemistry, rule the world. All cell phones computers and yes even electricity comes from these subjects, why are the chinees doing so well, while those without those subjects will be janitors and check out cashiers. With my engineering background, I controlled factories worth billions. Sad for those others out there.
@Alkey you are a snot-nosed child, go ahead and deliver pizzas for the rest of your life, or as a janitor. Okay by me, when I arrived in my smart car and good clothes even the beautiful young girls hit on me. Sad for you live in your own bubble, or MAKE Alkey great. YOUR CHOICE. :) :) :)
I ain’t about to argue on a post to annoy the original responder, but you seem like you need to work out some life issues before you blend back into society.
Where i come from, Arabic. The most useless shit ever i had in school. I never saw the logic behind it. If i am getting great grades in math, physics, chemistry, biology and english! What the actual fuck am gonna with arabic? I already speak it well and write pretty damn good. Anyhow ! I never had any kinda of situation the need to know arabic since 2003, just waste of time at school. I would rather take economics studies instead of learning a language i wouldn't use as soon i leave the arab homeland and once again, I ALREADY SPEAK/WRITE this shit
It is interesting when people speak of subjects they dislike or like, find useful or useless. Is the question truly about the subjects?
Essentially the most important part of us going to school, is to teach us how to use our mind and body in such a way that it would enhance our lives. Yes, no?
Be it education, work, relationship, shopping various materials, fundamentally we do this because we believe it will enhance our lives. So it is not a question about what you like or dislike, but how capable are you in using your mind and body effectively so you can get anything done. That should be your focus.
How many are having difficulties of sticking to one thing without getting distracted? This shows your capability of using your mind.
If you can learn this, many things in your life whether you like it or not, will become effortless for you.
Nothing... Everything is beneficial to your education to the age in which certain subjects are optional. At that point you should have enough info and understand what interests you and where you excel enough so to choose the courses best suited for you. If you decide to take sociology without any interest in advancing in that field, then I would say that would be a pretty useless subject... Even if your just generally curious about something - that means it's worthwhile.
There isn't any point to a kid in the UK learning that now, and it's pretty debatable if there was any point when I did it in school.
I didn't like Physics, but that was mainly down to a crap teacher, and I can see the value in it.
Looking back, I don't think many things were really a waste of time. Even if you don't use them in everyday life, they're generally useful things to know.
World History They never teach everything but only parts. They skipped so much and disregard other events. Why so much focus on the Holocaust, the diary of Anne Frank and a movie on Schindler's list but absolutely nothing about the Japanese atrocities, unit 731, or the Bataan march?
Probably Gym/PE. It’s great to encourage kids to exercise, but the mandatory mile run was a nightmare for those of us who hated running. They literally forced us to do it under threat of receiving an F in that class. The mandatory “fitness testing” was also total bullshit.
Math is a close second. Completely useless for anyone not going into a career such as engineering, business, or teaching.
@Purple_Summer I disagree. Forcing me to do that awful fitness testing in front of my peers made me never want to enter a gym again. I went to a school where we regularly took science expeditions to the reservoir, were encouraged to play team sports and walked to and from the subway every day; we got plenty of exercise and did not need it forced upon us. Especially not to the point where we felt humiliated when the teacher compared our scores to everyone else’s.
@Massageman I’m talking about taking Math past grade 9. Algebra, geometry and trigonometry did nothing for my life except stress me out, bring my average down, and make my hair fall out.
@Purple_Summer We naturally learn health and fitness techniques and habits as we get older. There’s no need to shove it down students’ throats in school. Those valuable school hours should have been filled with financial literary classes or Indigenous history classes or, at the very least, study periods for those of us who needed extra time to study for tests and finish assignments.
I think English is. I don't mean the basic classes, but as you get into middle school and high school, English becomes an opinion based class where the teacher decides what's good enough rather than a recordable standard.
There is also a double standard, in my class we had an author come in to speak with us about their and we were supposed to be ask questions on symbolic messages in the book, and half the time the author said, "eh, it just sounded nice at the time" or "I like that color" but we have to find this underlying message that really isn't there
I don't know schools in general. I only know my school. Least useful subject: Religion. This was a regular class in the Catholic school I went too. It bored me. I already knew my Bible and nothing of value was really discussed in there. Most useful subject: English. This included handwriting, phonics, and regular spelling exercises in addition to the usual stuff. We were actually taught how to speak our language and why things are said and pronounced in certain ways. I wish more schools were doing that.
@EleanorRigby I don't know you, but I like you! Lol... you’re a smart chick! People usually say PE is needed in school because they are too lazy to exercise on their own time. Tell it, girl!
@Rica_ChicaUSA well if they won't do math outside of school they certainly won't exercise hence the child obesity crisis that threatens to crush America under it's giant girth.
@White-American89 true but do you really think kids jumping around for 2h a week is going to deal with child obesity, kids get obese due to bad food, not lack of exercise. Most kids will at least do some form of exercise, like driving a bike, especially boys. At least we did that when I was a kid.
I was just agreeing with la Rica porque eres bella lol not because I agree that p. e is useless lol. Exercise can release endorphins in your body which can help with depression and all so... yes to exercise lol.
@AskandRecieve Gracias 😊 I do agree that it is needed; I just think math is more useful in school, like Eleanor said. And I’m aware of how it helps the brain both physically and mentally because I’m studying neurophysiology. But thanks for the debate guys lol
You do realize what philosophy is, though? That it is intimately related to math, such that in some cases the only difference between the two is that one uses numbers, characters ans symbols, while the other uses words. Without philosophy, we perhaps don't invent linguistics, and without linguistics, perhaps we never invent computer science, and without that, we don't have smartphones. And then there's Ethics which very clearly branches from philosophy.
Philosophy is useful and enriching, there just isn't much of an overt market value for it
@Lightning8 fair enough, many famous mathematicians were philosophers first, but that really doesn't make philosophy more important or even equally important to maths. And even if philosophy is what laid down the foundation for maths, in today's world it really isn't what counts. Most mathematicians will understand philosophy, many philosophers still won't understand maths. Anything can be useful and enrichening, but in terms of what is least useful? Philosophy on its own definitely is.
What makes you think that a crossover from math to philosophy would be easy or automatic? A masters or phd in math makes you more money, but that doesn't mean you understand what you're doing here as a human being. I wouldn't argue philosophy as more important than math, but I certainly wouldn't say it's the overall least important subject.
But if you are talking strictly about what makes money as a skill at face value, there is a strong argument that philosophy is least useful.
@Lightning8 not just money, overall progress, mostly in technological sense. No one will ever know what we're doing here as human beings, we are too irrelevant to know what are we in the bigger picture of things.
As for crossover, I know a lot of mathematicians/physicists. I also know people majoring in philosophy now, who could barely put 2 and 2 together in high school. Sure, that is just a personal experience, but I do think maths is mire abstract, and that difference between words and numbers is exactly where people fail, because people think in words and not numbers. Have you ever noticed how many kids have issues translating a simply worded problem into a numeric equation?
To be quite honest, I don't think any subject is useless at all, everyhing has its beauty and value even if I don't see it or understand it myself, if anything more knowledge can only make us more interesting people. But if we were for example looking to unburden kids' schedule a bit, lose a subject or two. Philosophy and PE would in my opinion be the first to go, followed by religion (I would put religion first, but not sure if all schools even have it).
@Lightning8 maybe she's talking about philosophy as its own discipline. I actually believe they should teach more philosophy within math, physics and perhaps other science. In the old world, philosophy covered all the important thoughts of mankind because of a simple reason, other disciplines didn't exist as standalone fields. In recent centuries, all the relevant philosophy has been crystallized into their own branches called mathematics, physics etc... What left of philosophy is much less than what it used to be (from the eras of Pythagoras, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz etc.). From what I've seen, the students who don't understand the philosophy of what they are doing are those who struggle the most when they deal with more conceptual stuffs. Take classical physics for example, to a philosophically trained mind, the difference between actual and virtual displacement appears entirely obvious and needs no further comment. But a student of today is anything but philosophically minded. To them the difference is not only not obvious, but they cannot grasp the meaning of a “virtual displacement” without experimenting with the concept for a long time by applying it to a variety of familiar situations. So there are some gifted students who are outstanding at pattern recognition and solving exam/contest problems, but suck at research (I'm talking about academic research like REU programs vs Olympiad contests)
lol I think I can hit the word limit on why I believe the difficulty of most students when they learn stuffs like tensors, manifolds, tangent space, basic topology, pretty much any analysis that requires construction of the real numbers etc. ALL start with not understanding the philosophy of... naive set theory. But I will spare you guys my rambling 😂
A certain level of math gets you through life. The basic and intermediate should be good enough. Unless you're majoring in engineering or gonna be a math professor, you don't need to know how to graph the slope of parabolas and hyperbolas nor tangent lines to do your everyday functions of knowing what time is it, knowing the correct change when buying something or doing simply addition and subtraction when calculating your expenses.
@Vesuvius87 that is true but maths is one kf those stuff you just have to build up your knowledge bit by bit and it's useful for engineers who are, I think we can all agree, quite useful to all of us. And if you aren't gonna be an engineer, no one is asking you to get straight As. Schools are standardized. Standardized stuff is cheaper. It's impossible to make schools perfectly suitable for everyone, so the standards are better kept high than low. I wouldn't be against children not teaching more advanced stuff if they are 100% sre they won't need it in life, but many aren't sure that early.
To me it was geography, it was just a subject that always felt unnnecessary. Our teacher tried to give it some meaning by incorporating a lot of modern stuff like sustaiability and renaturtion etc. but I still always asked myself: "Why am I here?" during her classes and I was a very knowledge hungry student who liked nearly ever subject. So it was quite a indictment when I didn't like a class.
ALL of the high school math. Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, etc. Those classes should only be taught in college to math majors. No use in most fields outside of STEM. Better classes would be finances, home economics, what rights you do and don't have and learn a trade to get them through until they find their dream jobs.
Although I do agree, some parents will not teach their children about sex so kids must rely on the public education system. It sucks but it’s true for many people
If every parents were good and the world was ideal, sure. But the world isn't ideal and some parents are too embarassed to explain their children. Unless you wants the abortion and unwanted pregnancy rate to rise, I think you should support sex ed.
Well for me it was philosophy. I never used any of that after I finished school. PE sucks too, but I agree that it was necessary to work out... but we're not all athletic, so I think the grading system in that class should have been a bit different.
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Anonymous
(30-35)
+1 y
I am surprised Americans even go to school. I thought only school shooters went to school in that country. Most useless subjects taught in American schools is probably going to be "all subjects" because they are too dumb to understand anything. The most useful subject that the schools should start teaching? Shooting classes. It would help the younger generations become a legend in mass shootings (the only thing they are good at). Which American doesn't have the urge to kill a dozen people anyway? Blaming a specific religion when a white man blows shit up is probably the oldest card in the book over there. Freedom of religion am I right people? And here I am thinking why so many people go to that shit hole for higher education. I would probably learn more by observing how a dog takes a piss.
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