Pointless lessons from school

[Prudie]

A post about starch last night reminded me of stuff I was taught at school that for me at least I found pointless - all from domestic science and included:
Making starch from powder and then washing and ironing a shirt
How to clean our teeth
Washing a hairbrush and comb
tailor tacking (major yawn)
Potato soup

What do you think you were taught at school that was pointless in later life? You are not allowed to say Maths - never pointless IMO.

[237SJ]

I know I can`t say maths but matrices seemed pretty pointless to me. Maths in my business studies course were much more useful as they were applied to the real world.

[shaneystar2]

Sewing ..yes .never could tailor tack and had the red knuckles from the teachers ruler to prove it .Sewing has never interested me .
I will mention algebra :) It has never influenced my life whatsoever.
Why did they teach you to make soused herrings ?

[gness]

Prudie. I went to a poor R.C. school attached to a convent and a parochial house in the days when Catholic schools could employ people with no qualifications. My education was awful unless you count "learning to be a good Catholic". F for me.
But the daftest thing I was taught was how to clean an emulsioned wall from the bottom up with a Brillo Pad?????

[Euphemia]

I agree with Shaneystar: sewing. It was only later in life that I learned that the teacher, who made my life a misery, was confounded by my lefthandedness.

[Mosaic]

I have never done any of these things since required to peddle them about in an exam in 1973:
calculating the sine and cosine of anything
using a slide rule and log tables (kids, these were not made of real logs)
calculating the semiinterquartle range, quartile range, median and mode of anything
calculating how hard something will hit the ground using and equation
worked out how many electrons skid about in a chemical reaction
written about Keats' use of metaphors
analysed the clauses in a sentence
conjugated a verb in french, german or latin
recited from memory the terms of the Seditious Purposes Act

To name a few

But I regularly use tailor tacks
make potato soup wash hairbrushes and combs
and clen my teeth (but wasn't taught at school)

[Prudie]

Gawd gness - was that some kind of penance! How ridiculous
I knew someone would say algebra and as for matrices - I could give you that I suppose :-)

[Eve]

Cross country, just evil and I think they saw me as lazy as I was always lagging at the back trying to get away with walking...until I appeared with an asthma inhaler!

[quinie]

Reducing stones,pounds and ounces to ounces,yards ,feet and inches to inches etc
Long division.

[Mosaic]

Oh heck aye! Converting centigrade to fahrenheit using a memorised formula!

[gness]

I would have given anything for a good sewing teacher. I loved and still love sewing. I went back to school in my thirties for Eng Lit and Lang. and evening classes just for the joy of it.

[ethandron]

What is a sine and a cosine anyway, and what earthly use is knowing how to calculate them? I can't imagine a scenario where it might be useful, could anyone explain?

[gness]

Too true Prudie, Sister Annunciata. Never forget her. Though my CND badge was found at the bottom of one of the set jellies for the First Holy Communion meal and that didn`t help.

[Mosaic]

Sine and cosine are something used to prevent you from going out with your mates. And if you ever want to fire a mortar accurately into a target, without using electronic equipment to work out the trajectory. But a good girl would never do that kinda thing.

[maggiebee]

How to starch and iron linen napkins and traycloths
How to remove coffee stains from tablecloths using salts of sorrel
How to blacklead a grate
Logarithms

[Prudie]

Everyone I know that was taught by nuns always say they were vicious but that's another thread and probably very sweeping and judgemental.

[woofgang]

logarithms
Geography

[mrs_overall]

Among the useless things I remember are
1. Use of a slide rule. I could never get the hang of it and have survivied this long without needing to use one
2. Making a plimsoll bag - every year for 5 years
3. R.E. lessons. I used to ask pertinent questions such as "what does the word begat mean?" but the teacher would never answer.

[Anngel123]

Interesting, Mosaic that, despite saying you had no use for English poetry, you correctly used an apostrophe...something sadly lacking in today's children's writing.LOL

[joggerjayne]

How to bake stuff.

[funnygirl]

I hated science lessons. I could never see the point.