education, schmeducation
got to thinking about education and how what we learn in school translates to the real world. does it really translate? here’s a list of thoroughly useless things i learned throughout school… let me know if you’ve found a real life application for the information.
- Geography – Still haven’t found any use for my knowledge of geography. Also, remember the tundra, savanna, and steppe terrains? or how maryland is like “a minature united states in that it has the coastal plains, the piedmont foothills, and the appalachian mountains” or something like that? no one really mentioned the types of terrain… they say “I want to visit the Serengeti” … not “I want to visit the savanna plains.”
- Simple Machines – This was one of my favorite units during science class. Learning about levers, inclined planes, screws, pulleys, wedges, and the wheel was fun and having to “invent” something with it as a final project was fun (:-P haha, i still remember our “home hair cutting machine”), but does anyone really say “why, this simplifies the amount of work we need to do because it’s a lever!” or “what we need here is an inclined plane and screw!” …if they do, what profession are they in?? because i’d be interested in that.
- How to make paper – i *think* the way we made paper was to rip up paper and mix it with water until it became a pulp…. so really, it was more like recycling paper. but when would one need to make their own paper (out of paper…) or recycle their own paper?
- Recorder – My elementary school required all 4th graders to play the recorder… everyone had to play it, regardless of whether you wanted to continue with instrumental music in 5th and 6th grade. What’s the point? It’s not as if we learned how to read music… we were just given numberings which told us which holes to cover. It didn’t prepare me to better learn the violin!
- Juggling scarves – I thought this unit in gym class was completely useless. Juggling itself is probably not that useful (though i do want to learn how to juggle things now), but scarves?! that’s the least likeliest thing you’d ever need to juggle!
hrm… i’m sure there’s more useless things that are taught in schools these days… can’t seem to think of any others off the top of my head
