Do you know what I hate about school? They teach us stuff we already know like the fact that Hillary is running against Trump. They would rather teach us useless pieces of information, than things we actually need to know and, lets be honest, when I get out there in the real world is anybody going to care who Lincoln’s secretary was? (And don’t act like you know who it is because you don’t !) I mean, math is okay because it is essential for life but seriously they teach more stuff we don’t need to know than stuff we want/need to know. I’d like to know how to open a bank account, manage finances, use a credit card and balance a checkbook. It is sad..I wish the teachers realized do these kids really need to know who the 8th president was ?(It’s Martin Van Buren). Kids should be able to know what will get them them through life not who Abe’s secretary was, so what did you like/hate about school when you were little?
You make a lot of great points. I don’t think anyone can deny that you’ll learn a lot of stuff in school that you’ll never need to know as an adult. However, I think school is important for a lot of reasons beyond learning facts. I made a lot of friends at school and learned how to get along with others. I also learned how to have balance in my life between (home)work & play. You also ‘learn how to learn’ as far as how to retain information and study (even if what you are learning won’t serve you down the road).
In college I was able to take classes that get down to the fine details of the subject…things that I actually use to in everyday life! You also get to choose which classes you take, which is awesome. It sounds like you don’t like history, but like numbers- so you could major in math. I also got to take a class all about bugs…it was my favorite class ever, even though it doesn’t really help me in my day to day life 🙂
Another thing I liked about school is that you get a lot of days off…a whole 2 weeks for Christmas break!? At my job, I only get 2 DAYS. Also- school days are shorter than work days, so be sure to enjoy that while you can!
My only advice is that I think you can find the really valuable aspects about school if you look hard enough!
how do get an emoji? but i totally agree school awesome the problem is the teachers don’t really know that you are not gonna use it in your everyday life but there are flaws to how the school works. what wonder is if they get to grade us why don’t we get to grade them.
Oh and believe me i am enjoying my tiny life
I came here to comment on the original blog post, but I must take a detour to comment on Ramey’s comment. Whilst, he may not have gone on from his college bug class to become a famous entomologist, he retained enough obscure bug related data to provide highly entertaining commentary every time a bug flew, crawled, inched or crept past us on his recent trip to Fiji. And while his knowledge of bugs may not be sufficient enough for him to quit his day job, it did earn him a few free tropical pina coladas. And everyone knows that winning something by way of useless trivia is the bee’s knees! Ok, so what did I like about school? Oddly, most of my good memories of school revolve around food. For instance, I liked Tuesdays because it was hot dog day. I also liked when I would get forty cents in my lunch to buy the chocolate covered peanut butter filled wafers from the snack shack. Thanks mom. I liked nachos and later the cheese zombies. And I liked when it rained and all the worms would come crawling through the halls. Apart from my culinary appreciations I also relished the opportunity to discover what made me tick. I enjoyed noticing that there were things I really disliked concentrating on and things that I really enjoyed concentrating on. The ones I strongly disliked helped the ones I did like stand out in clearer focus. For example, if I had not HATED geology with such volcanic passion would I even have noticed how soothing and liberating I found creative writing or important I found the self expression of public speaking? Had I not felt so suppressed in the rote memorisation of historic dates, times and places would I have truly appreciated the freedom I felt in story telling, or how important sports and physical movement were to my need to release built up energy and for my overall well being and carried that with me for the rest of my life? I also struggled with accepting some of my teachers and their position of authority. Some of my teachers were really great and I liked learning from them and felt happy to do the assignments as inflicted, I mean, instructed. And then some of my teachers, I felt like, “Really, I have to listen to THIS GUY for a year?” THAT was the beginning of a lesson even greater than the subjects I studied in school. How to navigate through a stretch of life when someone has authority over you that you don’t jive with. It can be challenging, yes? But rewarding in the end to resolve the inner conflict, and in the process, perhaps gain empathy and even respect for someone who is different than you. I’ll let you know if I ever break through to that level of maturity. The opportunity in school to try language, art, music, sports, study different subjects and notice what interests you in life is pretty cool. Sadly, and to your point, the educational focus on less relevant curriculum leaves the balancing of my chequebook still eluding me, doing my taxes still haunting me, and if I had fully understood how interest works at 18, I would have thought twice before taking out my student loans! I CAN, however, still tell you all the states in alphabetical order, all the being verbs, helping verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions and I can diagram the snot out of a sentence…WHY can I do these things and not balance my check book, WWWHHHHHYYYY?
First things first, I’m loving this blog Danger. Keep up the good work! I first read this post on the day you posted it and I wanted to comment immediately but I was too overwhelmed with anxiety just thinking about my days in elementary school and had to come back to it later. I was a lot like you. I found my classes to the material being taught to be boring useless to me! I would stare at the clock watching the minute hand tick by slowly and the hour hand gruelingly slower, waiting for break, then lunch and then for the glorious sound of the final bell signaling the end of my school day so I could go ride my bike or play sports. Nothing was worse to me than sitting in class on a sunny day learning about geography, long division or how “they” wanted me to grip my pencil. There was so much else I would have rather been doing but it was because I just wasn’t ready to learn it or even give it a chance. As time went on though, classes started to get more and more interesting and exciting to me. Sometimes it was a teacher who made class fun but sometimes it was just me deciding to focus and give the material a chance. I’m actually SHOCKED to find out about Amy’s dislike of geology. What?! All the different land formations and rock types! Hotspots that form islands and volcanos! How mountains are formed and eroded by weather! Different global climates and weather patterns! Anyone?! Geology was one of the many classes that peaked my interest. Along with science, biology, history (although I will I found some of the material to be a bit boring and useless information), psychology and even math. Oh and art! Art was one of my favorite classes both in middle school and high school. Something about listening to music, sitting in an otherwise quiet room and painting with water colors was the most relaxing thing to me. To sum up my experiences, school started out as a struggle for me and got progressively better. Once you get to middle school and get to start picking some of the classes that you want to take, your interest and enjoyment level might go up. My advice for now would be to try and find something interesting in what you are being taught each day and try to notice and pay attention to anything you find to be interesting so you can take more classes on it down the road.
this is a reply to Jamie’s reply. Am I allowed to do that on Miles’ blog? Geology class was a troubling bottleneck that could symbolise the angst of my youth. I first took geology class in 7th grade at WCCA where we learned that the earth was created in 7 days and was around 6,000 years old. Then, I transferred to Stanley and got to take geology a second time because they taught it in 8th grade. We were taught about carbon dating and instructed that the earth is over 4 billion years old. That is a bit of a time gulf for which to account. But, perhaps, it was that gulf which piqued MY interest and became place where legends were born…
“That’s life for ya.” You have a great way of answering long, overly complicated posts. I am glad you blog. Also, I agree with you. A ton of stuff that is taught in school matters VERY little compared to things they don’t teach.
glass half empty 
You make a lot of great points. I don’t think anyone can deny that you’ll learn a lot of stuff in school that you’ll never need to know as an adult. However, I think school is important for a lot of reasons beyond learning facts. I made a lot of friends at school and learned how to get along with others. I also learned how to have balance in my life between (home)work & play. You also ‘learn how to learn’ as far as how to retain information and study (even if what you are learning won’t serve you down the road).
In college I was able to take classes that get down to the fine details of the subject…things that I actually use to in everyday life! You also get to choose which classes you take, which is awesome. It sounds like you don’t like history, but like numbers- so you could major in math. I also got to take a class all about bugs…it was my favorite class ever, even though it doesn’t really help me in my day to day life 🙂
Another thing I liked about school is that you get a lot of days off…a whole 2 weeks for Christmas break!? At my job, I only get 2 DAYS. Also- school days are shorter than work days, so be sure to enjoy that while you can!
My only advice is that I think you can find the really valuable aspects about school if you look hard enough!
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how do get an emoji? but i totally agree school awesome the problem is the teachers don’t really know that you are not gonna use it in your everyday life but there are flaws to how the school works. what wonder is if they get to grade us why don’t we get to grade them.
Oh and believe me i am enjoying my tiny life
LikeLike
I came here to comment on the original blog post, but I must take a detour to comment on Ramey’s comment. Whilst, he may not have gone on from his college bug class to become a famous entomologist, he retained enough obscure bug related data to provide highly entertaining commentary every time a bug flew, crawled, inched or crept past us on his recent trip to Fiji. And while his knowledge of bugs may not be sufficient enough for him to quit his day job, it did earn him a few free tropical pina coladas. And everyone knows that winning something by way of useless trivia is the bee’s knees! Ok, so what did I like about school? Oddly, most of my good memories of school revolve around food. For instance, I liked Tuesdays because it was hot dog day. I also liked when I would get forty cents in my lunch to buy the chocolate covered peanut butter filled wafers from the snack shack. Thanks mom. I liked nachos and later the cheese zombies. And I liked when it rained and all the worms would come crawling through the halls. Apart from my culinary appreciations I also relished the opportunity to discover what made me tick. I enjoyed noticing that there were things I really disliked concentrating on and things that I really enjoyed concentrating on. The ones I strongly disliked helped the ones I did like stand out in clearer focus. For example, if I had not HATED geology with such volcanic passion would I even have noticed how soothing and liberating I found creative writing or important I found the self expression of public speaking? Had I not felt so suppressed in the rote memorisation of historic dates, times and places would I have truly appreciated the freedom I felt in story telling, or how important sports and physical movement were to my need to release built up energy and for my overall well being and carried that with me for the rest of my life? I also struggled with accepting some of my teachers and their position of authority. Some of my teachers were really great and I liked learning from them and felt happy to do the assignments as inflicted, I mean, instructed. And then some of my teachers, I felt like, “Really, I have to listen to THIS GUY for a year?” THAT was the beginning of a lesson even greater than the subjects I studied in school. How to navigate through a stretch of life when someone has authority over you that you don’t jive with. It can be challenging, yes? But rewarding in the end to resolve the inner conflict, and in the process, perhaps gain empathy and even respect for someone who is different than you. I’ll let you know if I ever break through to that level of maturity. The opportunity in school to try language, art, music, sports, study different subjects and notice what interests you in life is pretty cool. Sadly, and to your point, the educational focus on less relevant curriculum leaves the balancing of my chequebook still eluding me, doing my taxes still haunting me, and if I had fully understood how interest works at 18, I would have thought twice before taking out my student loans! I CAN, however, still tell you all the states in alphabetical order, all the being verbs, helping verbs, conjunctions, and prepositions and I can diagram the snot out of a sentence…WHY can I do these things and not balance my check book, WWWHHHHHYYYY?
LikeLiked by 3 people
thats life for ya
LikeLiked by 2 people
First things first, I’m loving this blog Danger. Keep up the good work! I first read this post on the day you posted it and I wanted to comment immediately but I was too overwhelmed with anxiety just thinking about my days in elementary school and had to come back to it later. I was a lot like you. I found my classes to the material being taught to be boring useless to me! I would stare at the clock watching the minute hand tick by slowly and the hour hand gruelingly slower, waiting for break, then lunch and then for the glorious sound of the final bell signaling the end of my school day so I could go ride my bike or play sports. Nothing was worse to me than sitting in class on a sunny day learning about geography, long division or how “they” wanted me to grip my pencil. There was so much else I would have rather been doing but it was because I just wasn’t ready to learn it or even give it a chance. As time went on though, classes started to get more and more interesting and exciting to me. Sometimes it was a teacher who made class fun but sometimes it was just me deciding to focus and give the material a chance. I’m actually SHOCKED to find out about Amy’s dislike of geology. What?! All the different land formations and rock types! Hotspots that form islands and volcanos! How mountains are formed and eroded by weather! Different global climates and weather patterns! Anyone?! Geology was one of the many classes that peaked my interest. Along with science, biology, history (although I will I found some of the material to be a bit boring and useless information), psychology and even math. Oh and art! Art was one of my favorite classes both in middle school and high school. Something about listening to music, sitting in an otherwise quiet room and painting with water colors was the most relaxing thing to me. To sum up my experiences, school started out as a struggle for me and got progressively better. Once you get to middle school and get to start picking some of the classes that you want to take, your interest and enjoyment level might go up. My advice for now would be to try and find something interesting in what you are being taught each day and try to notice and pay attention to anything you find to be interesting so you can take more classes on it down the road.
LikeLiked by 1 person
this is a reply to Jamie’s reply. Am I allowed to do that on Miles’ blog? Geology class was a troubling bottleneck that could symbolise the angst of my youth. I first took geology class in 7th grade at WCCA where we learned that the earth was created in 7 days and was around 6,000 years old. Then, I transferred to Stanley and got to take geology a second time because they taught it in 8th grade. We were taught about carbon dating and instructed that the earth is over 4 billion years old. That is a bit of a time gulf for which to account. But, perhaps, it was that gulf which piqued MY interest and became place where legends were born…
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“That’s life for ya.” You have a great way of answering long, overly complicated posts. I am glad you blog. Also, I agree with you. A ton of stuff that is taught in school matters VERY little compared to things they don’t teach.
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