BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: gnu
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:40 PM

I have noticed that, Rap... you seem to be what we affectionately term in Kent County, a Fucking Fountain Of Knowledge.

As in... "WHAT? How in fuck would I know? Ask Rap... he's a fucking fountain!"

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:26 PM

Seriously, I can't think of anything I've EVER learned anywhere that hasn't been useful at one time or another. Not in school, not in the military, not in "real life"...nothing. In fact, I wish I knew more math, and I'm reading and studying constantly.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: frogprince
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:23 PM

Most useful thing: to communicate with other human beings; I was so isolated working on the farm, I would have grown up a complete social cripple otherwise.
Least useful came post-highschool: the dispensationalist interpretation of the Bible; lets see you top that for useless.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: bobad
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:22 PM

Useful: Reading

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:18 PM

Oddly, tho I did not end up a scientist or engineer, my trigonometry proved useful -- in a commune in the 1970s, when I did some surveying, and later when I worked for a typesetting company that was devising routines for drawing diagrams.

But all my life, almost everything I learned in school has been useful for making the world more entertaining. That includes the sines & cosines.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Jack Campin
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 08:16 PM

I learnt that smoking gives you lung cancer.

That was in New Zealand in 1958 or 1959, when I was 9 or 10. A very effective film about it (from the US, I think), with a shot of somebody getting a lobe of his lung cut out. The surgeon dropped it into an enamel kidney bowl and it wobbled as it landed. For the rest of my life I haven't been able to contemplate the idea of smoking without remembering that wobbling lump of cancerous lung.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: gnu
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:58 PM

My cousin dropped out at 16 about 25 years ago. I was enlisted to try to "turn him around". He was on the home study... opened the same history book I had in Grade 10 and pointed to IT...

And I quote, "The ice age began December 18th, ..."

I said, "Buddy, good luck with it. Yer smarter than I was."

End of my involvement.

Now, as far as algebra and math... I am an engineer. So, all I can say is, enjoy the water supply, the sewers, the roads, the lights, the heat, the EVERYTHING that engineers have built using numbers and logic... that is why you are reading these words right now.... The Invisible E.

Yer welcome.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:52 PM

Ahhhhhh, define "school"...

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:39 PM

Algebra useless, calculus useless, home economics dangerous (eat red meat,red meat, eggs and more red meat was the pyramid in my youth)

And come to think of it, almost nothing I learned in school seemed to have any direct, practical application when it came to living a life well. I've often thought schools should be better 'life coaches' - teach you how to understand your tax forms, how to buy and/or fix your house, how to repair your fridge, what the best careers are, etc. etc. instead of teaching Chemistry and Shakespeare as 'must haves.'

But I will admit that taking graduate level ecology courses had a profound effect on my love of nature- mostly b/c one of my professors decided the best way to understand the environment was to directly experience it. Our classroom 'field trip' over the Adirondacks had an indelible and positive effect on me and my love of the natural world.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 07:35 PM

I use all sorts of math all the time, but probably the most useful thing I learned was practical chemistry, i.e., how to blow things up, make things burn, stink things up....

Actually, I can't think of anything I learned that was useless.

Subject: RE: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Peace
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 06:37 PM

Useful: listen to the shop teacher.

Subject: BS: Useful / Useless things learnt at school
From: Alan Day
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 06:23 PM

I love working with wood but it is a hobby not a job.A lot of the skills of woodworking I learnt at school from a really good and enthusiastic teacher.
Amongst the useless things were logarithms, calculus and algebra I have never used any of them at all.
One thing I learnt at school as did the rest of the class was a very unusual method of finger drumming.If you clench your hand, but not the thumb the fingers are trapped by the fleshy part of the thumb and it is possible to flick the fingers from this position (usually just the index and middle fingers). The base part of the drumming is done by dropping the wrist so the base of the hand bangs on the table. A person in the class would start a drum solo and we would copy it. With practice we all mastered the art and some with both hands at the same time. The sound was exactly equivalent to a mass drum band and it would drive the teachers crazy as it does my Wife who hears a drum solo being beaten out on the side of the car in a traffic jam.
Al