Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
? Being a scientist is awesome.
Ok, the money is average, but it's not all about the money.
Which school subjects are useless in the regular real world?
- Thread starter GGizmo
- Start date
? Being a scientist is awesome.
Ok, the money is average, but it's not all about the money.
Soldato
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I think D & T was the proper name for the woodwork / metalwork classes.
In my school, D & T was called CDT, crafts design and technology and it was worth half of a GCSE. The other half of the GCSE was a choice of between textiles, home economics or graphics. When the 2 halves of the GCSE are put together, e.g. CDT + home-ec, the completed GCSE was just called "Technology".
When I was in school, I wish was there a class on how to do "life" admin. E.g. using a cashpoint, banking, paying bills, house ownership/renting paperwork, booking a holiday, how to get foreign currency, applying for insurance, setting up utility bills and doing tax returns. Plus, essential life skills such as bleeding a radiator, changing a car wheel, flat pack assembly (and being able to follow instructions in general), plus how to deal with housing emergencies.
That's a shame. Everyone can benefit from good foundations for exercise and the older I get the more I appreciate the effort I put into it.
Actually, as I think back, having decent sports clothing, equipment and exercise technology has made such a big difference to my pleasure and progress which will always be a barrier to schools.
We had the exact same experience at our school. I remember one session me and a mate of mine playing football against 20 others and we absolutely humped them. But, because we didn't play for any of the school or local teams the 'coach' didn't give a crap.
No primary/secondary subject is "pointless". Learning isn't a binary yes/no state, and learning for the sake of learning is worthwhile.
Just assuming they don't dwell on identity politics more than to say "some people believe that..." etc.
Just assuming they don't dwell on identity politics more than to say "some people believe that..." etc.
English is two subjects at GCSE - if you're making history optional then IMO English literature might as well be optional too.
re: Design and Technology - I think the practical elements are rather useful life skills - woodwork, metalwork, plastics, basic electronics etc... it was a choice of one of two GCSEs at my school - "design and communication" which was focused more on the design/technical drawing aspects than the practical stuff and "design and realisation" which had a larger practical element and not as much focus on technical drawing/design.
I also think some lessons covering personal finance would be useful in addition to "citizenship" - which I presume is some non-assessed subject covering how the government works etc..etc.. IIRC we called it "civics"
That's a bit of a low bar tho, even if we are just talking about education delivered by UK schools.
I mean you can quite easily deliver "education" that is close to worthless. And not all providers are equal by any means. Not all subjects either!
Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
Well, that depends on if you accept that as "education".
I do have quite high standards as what constitutes education.
Fyi I consider - on the whole - that primary, secondary, FE and HE institutions DO deliver worthwhile education, while ofc recognising that there are limited exceptions. There are "training providers" that are just money sponges sucking up DWP contracts, etc - like where you get placed into Poundland for "training" if you're seeking work - and where everything is worth a quid except you!
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There were a few in my year at school who probably wish it was like that where I was - in rugby for instance there was 1-2 people who opposition players would throw the ball to them just so as they could tackle them into a muddy puddle and if they dropped the ball and ran off the pitch to avoid it the teacher would stop the game and make play resume with them holding the ball, etc.
On a related note horrible irony I hated rugby but was very good at it, loved football but was average at it. Had no interest in stuff like athletics but had all the top level awards from the 5 star awards scheme, etc. just from participation level of effort on my part.
When I did it, RE was mostly memorising parts of the Bible.I was never any good at sports but had someone explained that it was mainly about learning to be a productive member of a team and self-discipline, I might have cared rather more.
And I learned more about English in my Latin classes than in my English classes.
And I learned more about English in my Latin classes than in my English classes.
OK well going from my own experience of Art class back in the 80s.
We didn't IIRC have any kind of teaching, it was more a case of, "Here's a blank page, here's some crayons/chalk/pencils - draw something."
My most memorable R.E. lesson was the time we got the VCR out and watched The Untouchables. The rest I don't recall at all.
Perhaps I was a terrible student (I don't think anyone did anything in R.E. apart from doss about), perhaps our R.E. and Art lessons were of extremely little educational value. I will say it's been decades now since I was in school and hopefully things have improved.
Man of Honour
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I took 3 O Levels and failed one of them, I've done OK, even though I've never been a top revenue earner with a Gucci belt.
With us, the P.E. teacher went off with the fit/strong group, and literally just left the rest of us in the other half the school pitch either completely unsupervised or with a dinner lady or something.
Looking back, I think my first secondary school did, in fact, suck
Deleted User 298457
Deleted User 298457
Your lucky. We had to watch the East Enders episode where Dot euthanised her friend.
Edit: and Shindlers List.
Deleted member 66701
Deleted member 66701
yeah - school is not like that at all now - way more structured (and arguably too much) with a defined curriculum and objectives.
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Caporegime
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I'm not sure any subjects are 'useless'. They might be less useful - RE, as mentioned, and something I did called Modern Studies (analogous to Civics and dowie's comment perhaps?) - but I don't think learning anything is useless.
Soldato
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I think given how the world is these days you should remove car maintenance from there. Particularly with the prevalence of electric cars, people won't even have to check their oil any more!
Electronics I agree with, and cooking too (although is this not already on the syllabus?)
Metal work and wood work are covered by design tech I believe?
When I was at school I considered the below a waste of time and would rather have spent the time studying for subjects I wanted to pursue:
-Music
-Art
-Some of the PE / Games lessons (I recognise the importance of physical activity, but ideally children would be able to focus more on the activities that interested them. I don't really see how gymnastics for example where half the time was stood around waiting for your turn on the equipment was essential learning once you'd tried it a few times)
-2nd foreign language (no issue with people doing this out of choice, but it's not really helped me much at all since finishing GCSEs 25 years ago)
Music and Art were especially annoying because I didn't get any qualifications from them and yet still had to keep studying them for years into secondary school, absolute nonsense being the age of 14 and being forced to waste time on stuff you've known for years you have no interest in and are not taking for GCSE.
Of the subjects I did take at GCSE I'd say the languages were the biggest waste, 5 and 4 years of study respectively and have been barely used, if you think about it they are quite niche as when in England you speak English 99.999% of the time, and most people don't spend much time in countries speaking the languages you've learned, and with English being widely understood overseas anyway it's hardly essential.
More broadly I left school a little fed up at having to do 9 subjects at GCSE but only 3 at A-level, if felt like the balance was wrong to me, that meant I had to pick Spanish just to make up the numbers (wasn't interested in it really) at GCSE and yet at A-level you can't continue studies in things you enjoy, I had to ditch History despite being interested in it and pretty good at it. Would much rather have seen an 8/4 split, I also found GCSEs a really heavy workload due to having so many subjects and no free periods, whereas A-levels was a bit of a breeze with only 3 subjects and free periods where you could study etc.
Things like Maths, English, History, Geography I use on a regular basis, Home Studies or whatever it was that taught some finance stuff was vaguely useful, IT was a joke at my school but again I use IT stuff a lot, CDT whilst I don't use that often again at least taught a few practical skills, on the science side I'd say Physics is the most useful but there's bits and pieces from Biology that help, RE did teach me about different religions etc I had no idea what all these things like Hindu/Sikh/Buddhism etc were until I went to secondary school.
-Music
-Art
-Some of the PE / Games lessons (I recognise the importance of physical activity, but ideally children would be able to focus more on the activities that interested them. I don't really see how gymnastics for example where half the time was stood around waiting for your turn on the equipment was essential learning once you'd tried it a few times)
-2nd foreign language (no issue with people doing this out of choice, but it's not really helped me much at all since finishing GCSEs 25 years ago)
Music and Art were especially annoying because I didn't get any qualifications from them and yet still had to keep studying them for years into secondary school, absolute nonsense being the age of 14 and being forced to waste time on stuff you've known for years you have no interest in and are not taking for GCSE.
Of the subjects I did take at GCSE I'd say the languages were the biggest waste, 5 and 4 years of study respectively and have been barely used, if you think about it they are quite niche as when in England you speak English 99.999% of the time, and most people don't spend much time in countries speaking the languages you've learned, and with English being widely understood overseas anyway it's hardly essential.
More broadly I left school a little fed up at having to do 9 subjects at GCSE but only 3 at A-level, if felt like the balance was wrong to me, that meant I had to pick Spanish just to make up the numbers (wasn't interested in it really) at GCSE and yet at A-level you can't continue studies in things you enjoy, I had to ditch History despite being interested in it and pretty good at it. Would much rather have seen an 8/4 split, I also found GCSEs a really heavy workload due to having so many subjects and no free periods, whereas A-levels was a bit of a breeze with only 3 subjects and free periods where you could study etc.
Things like Maths, English, History, Geography I use on a regular basis, Home Studies or whatever it was that taught some finance stuff was vaguely useful, IT was a joke at my school but again I use IT stuff a lot, CDT whilst I don't use that often again at least taught a few practical skills, on the science side I'd say Physics is the most useful but there's bits and pieces from Biology that help, RE did teach me about different religions etc I had no idea what all these things like Hindu/Sikh/Buddhism etc were until I went to secondary school.
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Not only that, some people can't drive due to disabilities etc (or live in big urban areas with no desire to drive), why force them to learn something useless? I can see why things like cooking can be of value to everyone, but not car maintenance.