Should useless subjects be removed from the school system?

[Wildtree]

what do you need chemistry for when you develop apps for android? or when you are a market analyst, or when you sell groceries at the market...

you should learn the basics for some subjects untill 8th grade and then just chose w/e you wanna attend...

currently where I live we do all sort of useless shit we don't need up till college(and even there...) like history/religion/music up to 12th grade in a highschool with math/informatics specialization...

Informatics........ What science is required to build the items you are working with in informatics? Chemistry....

History, although, while in school I didn't see much sense behind it either.... The decades after taught me different.
Religion isn't mandatory, neither is Music. Some school systems change music to arts later down the road, like you said around 8th grade actually.
School is, and even if some fail to grasp it, a preparation for ones life down the road.
Now, by nature, everyone starts in school as a kid, and becomes a teenager while there. At that stage of ones life, it is impossible to make assumptions as to what a person will need one time, and what not. So the education has to be broad.
Hence why there's heavy emphasis on the mandatory fields: <Native Language>, Math, History, Physics, Chemistry, Geography.
That's rounded up with secondary fields like: Sports, Secondary Language, Religion, Music & Arts, and usually for boys crafting, and for girls housework/cooking.
You are getting prepared on a broad spectrum, which gives you a choice down the road to go in pretty much every direction you choose to go.

[Reeve]

One of my friends on college:

"I'd like to eat this can of corn."
"Ok then do it."
"Well how do you warm it up?"
Me taking a moment to realize he was serious.
"Well you open it with the can opener, dump it into a bowl, and microwave it."
"Oh ok. So how do you work a can opener."

This basically went on for a bit and I showed him step by step how to open and heat up a can of corn in the microwave. He wasn't trolling me. He had had every meal prepared for him up to that point.

A buddy of mine in high school opened a can of chef boyardee ravioli successfully, then proceeded to put it in a ceramic bowl and put the bowl on the stove. Of the three people in the room, 2 jaws dropped from disbelief and hilarity then ensued.

[paralleluniverse]

Informatics........ What science is required to build the items you are working with in informatics? Chemistry....

History, although, while in school I didn't see much sense behind it either.... The decades after taught me different.
Religion isn't mandatory, neither is Music. Some school systems change music to arts later down the road, like you said around 8th grade actually.
School is, and even if some fail to grasp it, a preparation for ones life down the road.
Now, by nature, everyone starts in school as a kid, and becomes a teenager while there. At that stage of ones life, it is impossible to make assumptions as to what a person will need one time, and what not. So the education has to be broad.
Hence why there's heavy emphasis on the mandatory fields: <Native Language>, Math, History, Physics, Chemistry, Geography.
That's rounded up with secondary fields like: Sports, Secondary Language, Religion, Music & Arts, and usually for boys crafting, and for girls housework/cooking.
You are getting prepared on a broad spectrum, which gives you a choice down the road to go in pretty much every direction you choose to go.

If you're working in "infomatics" it's unlikely you'll need to know about chemistry. The people who write computer code aren't the people making things or running chemical reactions. Just like how game developers don't update the website.

[Coombs]

I came into this thread completely thinking that the OP was talking about humanities, art, sociology etc. You know the worthless classes. I'm sad to see that he meant the important classes that should have more emphasis. I really... really pray that the scientific community just separates from the other half of the world, and refuses to produce for them any longer. You'll see how fast the troglodytes jump to attempting to read books to get their power to work.

[Ryme]

Please, tell me at what point in your daily routine do you mix chemicals or solve calculus?

I don't mix chemcials, the guys and girls in the building down the road for us do, they work in a medical research lab. I do use calculus on a daily basis though, helps me keep my job.

Even if it didn't, removing it is asinine. Maths teaches more than what (2+3)^3 is, it teaches logic, problem solving, mechanical understanding. It is fundamental to our society and every aspect of technology, social order, economic order you hold dear - I'm sorry you don't like it, but get over yourself, you're not that important.

If we removed these course, critical thinking would die, the human race would slow progress to an alarming degree and I would imagine social order would be deeply effected.

---------- Post added 2013-05-02 at 04:19 PM ----------

I'm still waiting for to put my vast knowledge of history to work. Any day now universe when you want to teleport me back in time.

Learning from the past is the best way to protect yourself from the future. History is important.

[Wildtree]

If you're working in "infomatics" it's unlikely you'll need to know about chemistry. The people who write computer code aren't the people making things or running chemical reactions. Just like how game developers don't update the website.

As a programmer you should of course have basic knowledge in chemistry and physics. You are writing a program which is used in hardware. And you should damn well understand the basic functions that are going on there. I am an electronics engineer, I have a more broader knowledge about the physical processes that are happening in the hardware. And I also had to learn some chemistry elements, to at least understand why shit even works the way it works. As well as I had to learn Assembler code, and some specific programming for hydraulic systems and stuff.
If you are a programmer with zero clue what the stuff even does you are programming for, you are a bad programmer, because you don't fully understand the field.

Programmer hands over program to the hardware engineer.
Program gets implemented, and tested

Hardware guy goes to programmer: it doesn't work, your code is overheating a circuit.

Now what programmer is the better one? The one that says... WTF, how would I know what overheats, and what not
Or the one that can ask, what exactly happens, and knows that the parts used are made of certain materials, and can only stand so much tasks?
GOOD professionals are educated and trained in overlapping fields.

[therealbowser]

This thread depresses me.

"It's too hard! I don't want to do it!" That's the reason you learn advanced math. Some of it really is useful to pretty much everyone, but the real reason you learn it is to exercise your brain and push your intelligence and your ability to learn new things.

History is very important, you should know about how the world has developed so you can be an intelligent person. Whether you want to accept it or not, you are a part of this world and you have a say in what occurs in the USA. If you don't, you should. Knowing history can help you realize what is and isn't a good idea and helps you make intelligent decisions. Overall it's something everyone should know anyways.

At this rate, you could just drop everything and not take any school at all because 'you don't need it' and end up a hopeless idiot working at McDonalds for the rest of your foreseeable future... though given that people don't want to do any work at all, it could be even worse than that. Welfare or homeless.

Again, this thread depresses me.

[the_dynamite]

By "useless" I mean subjects you have not once used since you have gotten out of school (advanced forms of math, chemistry, etc...)

Just wondering what you guys/gals think of this idea.

EDIT: Also, if yes, do you think those subjects should be replaced with things that could help you more in the real world like mandatory cooking class, or learning how to write a resume... even how to find a job!

American by any chance?

[Wildtree]

Again, this thread depresses me.

don't make me offer you a tissue

But I share your thoughts.
For all life taught me is this.... While still in the loop of school, many things seem so treacherous and as if they were only out to torture me/us...
But the fact of the matter is, I so wish life would ever be that easy and carefree again as it was while I was still in school.
If I had a chance and could start over.. I'd definitely try to stay in school for as long as it would possibly get. They couldn't throw enough material on me.
And I don't know a lot of adults who disagree with me on that.. Everyone would trade job and daily chores to be back in school in a heartbeat

[Badpaladin]

As a programmer you should of course have basic knowledge in chemistry and physics. You are writing a program which is used in hardware. And you should damn well understand the basic functions that are going on there.

Chemistry isn't required for most CS sequences, and it's not necessary at all to have a chemical understanding of certain electronics. Relevant course work is: Physics sequence, digital design, assembly and computer organization, and computer architecture. Many CS programs don't even teach the last two.

What it amounts to is the programmer requiring tables from hardware folks describing tolerances of various parts of circuitry. If that information isn't present, don't expect code that doesn't screw up hardware.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't trust anyone else to decide what constitutes useless subjects, so no.

[Wildtree]

Chemistry isn't required for most CS sequences, and it's not necessary at all to have a chemical understanding of certain electronics. Relevant course work is: Physics sequence, digital design, assembly and computer organization, and computer architecture. Many CS programs don't even teach the last two.

What it amounts to is the programmer requiring tables from hardware folks describing tolerances of various parts of circuitry. If that information isn't present, don't expect code that doesn't screw up hardware.

I certainly trust a programmer more when he knows what materials are used, and how those are made.
I don't expect him to know it thoroughly. But at least know what a transistor is, and how it works in basics, or how a simple stupid battery works.

Another day to day example comes to mind too....
Extinguishing fire... At least I've learned that in chemistry in school that you can't use water to extinguish burning oil.
A rather practical knowledge to be possible to be put to use at home.. You'd be surprised how much fatal fires happen every year, because of the lack of that knowledge. Not one of the 6 key classes I mentioned earlier is useless. They can all be put to good use in ones daily life, one way or another.

[Badpaladin]

I certainly trust a programmer more when he knows what materials are used, and how those are made.
I don't expect him to know it thoroughly. But at least know what a transistor is, and how it works in basics, or how a simple stupid battery works.

Transistors and an introduction to tolerances in circuitry is covered in any decent digital design course, which should be a requirement for CS majors. Simple batteries are also covered in any physics sequence.

The point is the basic knowledge is there, but understanding limits of certain circuitry is not the responsibility of a programmer unless they have information gathered from scientists or hardware engineers. If that information is not presented to them, they cannot be expected to write code that's safe for the hardware.

[Deleted]

Actually, his mention of "universal translators" is another useful application of math, which the OP thinks is useless

For example, Google Translate is not done by having linguists translating words and syntax from one language to another. It's done using statistical techniques that attempt to categorize words and phrases depending on where they appear. The techniques used is probably support vector machine or some variant, and no doubt with some improvements to the general method outlined in the wiki article. If you want to be working on these types of things, advance math is absolutely crucial.

As a matter of fact, it is. Most advanced MT programs are based on the study of linguistic corpora in one way or another (i.e. human-made translations) -- parallel corpora, to be precise:

Google relies on a large corpus of texts which are available in multiple languages. (…) Google used the United Nations Documents to train their machine, and all in all fed 200 billion words.

And even then, from a professional perspective, they're only useful for standardized, formulaic or highly specialized texts (e.g. institutional translation).

[Urti]

American by any chance?

Yes, because no other country on earth has ever produced a lazy dumbass, ever.

[BugNuggets]

what do you need chemistry for when you develop apps for android? or when you are a market analyst, or when you sell groceries at the market...

Chemistry gives you a basic understanding of the building blocks of the universe around. I may not use it daily, but thanks to chemistry I know that when liberal bloggers scream about the super dangerous chemical that exploded in Texas and should be banned I am aware that they never took chemistry.

[Mexa]

No there's not really any "useless" classes, aside from maybe history because really who cares what happened in the past we can't really fix it. There's almost no way to judge what's useless and what isn't useless.

but if we know how it happened in the past, there is a chance we wont make the same mistakes again.

[Chrispotter]

There are no "useless" subjects. There are some "less valuable" subjects, but everything has its use to someone, for osmething.

[Urti]

I have yet to really see the simplest counter to the OP's argument.

"Why should I have to learn hard stuff I don't like?"

How about the reason to learn hard stuff you don't like is TO LEARN. When the fuck did learning become a chore to people? The single greatest trait humans have as a species is our universal capacity, damn near obsessive need, to learn. All it takes is a little time investment and, God forbid, EFFORT and you can assimilate nearly anything into your knowledge base. "Why should I learn French? I'll never use it." Whose fault is that Nimrod? How about you learn french for the sake of knowing more today than you did yesterday, and then maybe actively apply that hard-earned knowledge? "But I don't like this subject" So what? Life is all about how you need to grow up and apply a little damn determination to yourself and accomplish the unpleasantries so you can enjoy the rewards. You want dessert? Shut up and eat your god-damned vegetables.

[Linkedblade]

I wouldn't trust anyone else to decide what constitutes useless subjects, so no.

And yet we have a federal department that does exactly this.

---------- Post added 2013-05-02 at 12:11 PM ----------

Please, tell me at what point in your daily routine do you mix chemicals or solve calculus?

Um, you brush your teeth? you cook? you do laundry? you do maintenance on your car? Chemistry. These reactions may not be as exciting but that's what they are.

When you drive do you hit the car in front of you? Of course not. Those micro-adjustments to your speed are calculus. Your ability to judge how much to increase or decrease your acceleration to change your speed is CALCULUS.