Should useless subjects be removed from the school system?

[Rend Blackhand]

Get rid of 'Mickey Mouse subjects' (as my dad called them) such as Home Economics, Sociology. Citizenship, Textiles (fucking textiles, they actually offered that at my high school), drama, religious studies and art.

[Deleted]

Or, you know, you could question the methods we use today, and improve them?

Life is about progress, not about sucking everything up and doing nothing about it.

You have to have the knowledge necessary before you question a system. You would have disastrous consequences otherwise.

[manipulation]

Most of what you learn in school is a waste. You don't need calculus, literature, most of anything else in day to day life. The guy who builds your roads, homes, hospitals, etc doesn't need this knowledge. If he knows it, it's trivia.

But then you end up doing what China is effectively doing, which is using a shoddy test to determine what a kid is best at...when he's pre-pubescent and doesn't even know what he's best at himself. You close doors.

School sucks, is mostly a waste but I don't know, for a lot of parents, it's just daycare anyway. It's social education as well. Not sure what else you can do.

[Senathor]

Teachers are a very important part, if not THE MOST important part about how well someone accepts a subject. If the teacher is able to make it fun and interesting, you immediately gain more interest in the subject itself.

Exactly! I can see history being fun if the teacher was focusing on things that we needed to know. For an example in english we had a terrible teacher the entire year, so my grade was low. She got fired a few weeks back, we got a new one, and woop, A+ easy. Everything is easy in high school tbh. It's just that a lot of it is boring to me.

[Neliah]

If you want to be the best of the best in the gardening field, you're going to need creativity, maths, and chemistry. Especially Chemistry.

Unless you want to be a standard issue gardener who trims hedges and mows lawns once a week.

It's about learning how to apply the knowledge. If you can't do that, it represents a failing in the education system, not the subject.

I know basic math - I don't need anything else. As I said (if you read my post) I'm not interested in making huge parks and calculate the area and how many plants I need, even if I do that I would still just be using the basic math to do so. And there's nothing wrong with being a "standard issue" gardner either fyi.

No, it's not about learning how to apply knowledge, especially if you have no interest in the subject of matter. It's about learning more about the things you're interested in. If you read my earlier posts (which I'm now starting to doubt that you did..), you would have seen that I talked about introduction courses to all the subjects á 4 weeks pr. subject on different levels. That way you can see if you're interested in having the subjects on a more advanced level or not - if you don't then you can pick something else.

[StayTuned]

You have to have the knowledge necessary before you question a system. You would have disastrous consequences otherwise.

I can't follow you right now. Are you saying that you need knowledge about vector calculation before you can question the system of your education?

[Bepples]

History as a whole should be removed.

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

[Senathor]

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."

Overused quote tbh. The history you need to learn is from other subjects. Lets say that ur in some buisness managment class or whatever. The teacher will probably show examples of structures in older and current companies. That's kinda history I suppose. It might be good to know how companies involved into whatever they are now. But the actual subject history is all about conflicts and war. My intention is not to repeat that, even if I don't really know about it.

[Ycarene]

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.

You learn history to see how this came to be how they are now and to get a feel for how they will develop. For example, current events make learning about the Korean War rather important.

A better way of saying it is that history gives us perspective.

[Spectral]

I'd find someone that never uses advanced math or basic chemistry to be a pretty uninteresting person. Even if you never use it for your career, at some point, something's going to come up in conversation where it's handy to know some chemistry, or you'll read something where you'll be glad to know some basic statistics, and so on and so forth. I guess some people are so deliberately ignorant that they don't feel like they ever need to know anything, but I have no desire to be around those people.

[Laize]

I'd find someone that never uses advanced math or basic chemistry to be a pretty uninteresting person. Even if you never use it for your career, at some point, something's going to come up in conversation where it's handy to know some chemistry, or you'll read something where you'll be glad to know some basic statistics, and so on and so forth. I guess some people are so deliberately ignorant that they don't feel like they ever need to know anything, but I have no desire to be around those people.

I know basic chemistry! Mostly the dangerous stuff I learned when I was 14 and discovered the anarchist cookbook... also from working at an explosives plant. Also from thinking ammonia and bleach would clean my bathroom twice as awesome as either would by themselves. I couldn't brain good for like an hour after that incident.

And also I'm kinda sad that no one noticed my absolutely horrible science puns in my last post.

[Deleted]

first of all teaching people only what they need in order to do their job is a recipe for making idiots in mass scale

secondly how exactly do you brand a subject useless? if chemistry is useless than anything that has to do with wow is beyond useless for instance
you read MMO forums you play wow and you find chemistry useless? do you even realise how much of the comforts you have are only there because of chemistry? your keyboard is plastic isn't it?

[Senathor]

first of all teaching people only what they need in order to do their job is a recipe for making idiots in mass scale

secondly how exactly do you brand a subject useless? if chemistry is useless than anything that has to do with wow is beyond useless for instance
you read MMO forums you play wow and you find chemistry useless? do you even realise how much of the comforts you have are only there because of chemistry? your keyboard is plastic isn't it?

I don't intend to work with anything that requires me to know how chemistry works. All I need to know is that my supposed future company is gonna sell 10 keyboards for a certain price. As long as I know how much I got the keyboards for and how much I sold them for, I'm fine. You know what I mean?

[Deleted]

No...

but in the UK we have R.E (Religious Education). This should be entirely optional. Years back in secondary school, R.E gave me the most homework. The amount of essays I had to write was astonishing.

"God is great. Explain why?"


Fuck off.

[Deleted]

I can't follow you right now. Are you saying that you need knowledge about vector calculation before you can question the system of your education?

Yes. Only then you can say "hey, this is useless!"

[Senathor]

I'd find someone that never uses advanced math or basic chemistry to be a pretty uninteresting person. Even if you never use it for your career, at some point, something's going to come up in conversation where it's handy to know some chemistry, or you'll read something where you'll be glad to know some basic statistics, and so on and so forth. I guess some people are so deliberately ignorant that they don't feel like they ever need to know anything, but I have no desire to be around those people.

Exactly, this is my point right here. Some want to learn all these things, not becuase they need to but becuas they want to. I personally am not one of them but yeah I see what ur getting at. I guess ur just one of those students, or former students that really enjoyed every subject, I wish I was like that...

[Damsbo]

Useless subjects = common knowledge.
So no.

Nothing should be removed in my perspective.
Biased perhaps, as I am a science teacher.

[StayTuned]

Yes. Only then you can say "hey, this is useless!"

I knew in grade 10 what we are going to do in grade 11-13, so until final graduation. The curriculum was no secret to anyone ever... back then I already knew nothing useful will come out of the next three years of math. This was a huge letdown for me.

It was just hard subject, boring, and a huge dead leg for my other subjects.

[Eats Compost]

Time in school should be spent teaching students in the most effective manner possible and teaching them the most important things. However, the subjects that you describe as useless are in fact very important subjects.

General knowledge of the sciences in general is quite good for the population, as well. It really helps put things like obesity, smoking hazards and disease into a scientific perspective. Maybe people would stop using antibiotics to treat viral infections if they knew what the difference between virii and bacteria was, for example. It's knowledge that you really can't go wrong with.

Cooking is actually a prime example of something that shouldn't be taught in schools. Cooking doesn't exactly have a sharp learning curve, and it's something that you can learn to do by following any recipe that you download off the internet. You're not learning anything. Less stressful and more fun than more academic subjects it may be, but it has no real long-term gain.

[Laize]

I don't intend to work with anything that requires me to know how chemistry works. All I need to know is that my supposed future company is gonna sell 10 keyboards for a certain price. As long as I know how much I got the keyboards for and how much I sold them for, I'm fine. You know what I mean?

Alright let me put it like this.

I never intend to work with pharmaceuticals. I don't NEED to know their pharmacodynamics or other technical information... but I find it helpful from time to time. For example whenever I get kidney stones (chronic problem for me... there are 4 in there right now waiting to obstruct... like tiny little time bombs.) it's extremely helpful to be able to tell my doctor "No, don't give me Vicodin, the acetaminophen it contains combines with other medications I'm on to raise my liver enzymes to immediately dangerous levels." then not only have I saved myself a lot of time and money, but potentially my life to boot.

I'm not one of those obnoxious patients who purports to know more than the doctor. I know FAR more than I should given the amount of time I've spent in the hospital, but I don't pretend to know more than them. It's simply helpful to be able to know exactly what I put in my body, how it affects my body and potential interactions. Technically that's the pharmacist's job, but when I went to one with prescriptions from two different doctors, one for methylphenidate and the other for 7.5/750 Vicodin and she doesn't say "Hey, you might want to call your doctors because these drugs have potentially serious interactions" and you find yourself in the ER feeling like dogshit and wondering why your eyes are turning yellow... it's kind of a "once bitten, twice shy" deal.