What were you taught poorly at school?

[Reecejackox 410]

History not broad enough 

[SharpWit 2,778]

The most personal I feel like was how math is applied to everyday life. The math teachers at my middle school had this giant pie chart of math careers that they thought would be an inspiration, but half of them we had never heard, most were hyper specialized, and they didn't take the time to really go into it. I think it would have been very beneficial to apply what we were learning to real life settings through word problems, like upscaling or down sizing a recipe, solving a medication dose based on the weight of a patient, cost analysis of materials for a project, inventory to sales management, everyday budgeting for short term and long term spending, hiw much would have to be saved to get that thing we want, ect. We rarely ever touched on anything like that where it really applies.

General life skills would've been good as well.

Spoiler

The closest I had available was personal finance and culinary.

Personal finance had two big projects. The first simulated how to budget for a car, groceries, family, and housing for a month. We drew careers and the families we had to single handedly support randomly out of a hat, find a car on Craigslist that could fit that family and meet all of these other parameters that were unrealistic, picked our groceries from Safeway's website exclusively when they were one of the most expensive grocery stores at the time for our area, and we had to find a home. I don't remember exactly, but I think everyone had to commute to Seattle since we live in Washington state, so that provided a whole list of obstacles. The income of our careers was also out of date but the prices of everything wasn't. The worst part of that was that we a minimum amount to spend on various things like entertainment, clothing, and furniture. We had to find things to buy, but couldn't get them if they were too good of a deal! 

The other project was practicing investing over a 3 month period with a program that tracked what we would have made with a budget of $1,000. The only people who had any more than what they started with were those who invested in Tesla.

Culinary was fun, but the class had next to no funding, amd was really just intended for kids to have food handling permits so they could get a job as soon as the year was over.

 

[Brony Number 42 10,076]

I never learned tensor calculus in college.

[Old Accnt. 3,150]

everything I do wish it could have been better since I am lacking a lot of things now oh well it is what it is

[Evil Pink One 13,519]

Names .................

[TBD 17,262]

“Back at school it never made much sense
Now I pay but I can't pay attention
Teaching me the hardest lessons of my life.”

[Electrified Airstream 18,552]

ICT when I was in secondary school, the entire class failed the course because the teacher taught us the wrong syllabus. 

[Cash In 22,722]

Everything. I can't remember much of what I learnt from school other than the fundamentals. The only exception is computing, which was the one class I was interested in. But even then, our teacher for that never taught us anything, so everything I learnt was solely from my own research.

[Dreambiscuit 10,578]

Everything was taught poorly. No one cared what they were teaching, or simply lacked the skill to present it factually or with any degree of aplomb. It was all a laborious act of forcing info down the throats of the students between bullying by other students and intimidation by teachers. History was laughable because it was ‘taught’ as a modern reinvention of the actual facts, according to the latest trends. What a farce.

[misaokuser89 139]

how to multiply/divide decimal numbers 

[Steve Piranha 29,453]

Being decent human beings 

[Clawdeen 15,977]

Everything but I'm from a...poor town so... I can't say I expected quality education from here. Let alone good quality of anything really....

[Starlight Serenade 3,843]

This topic's question is ambiguous on the type of school, so I will briefly discuss both high school and college.

Every subject in high school was taught poorly. If any piece of information stuck for a long period of time, outside of rote memorization, it really depended on the teacher's method of retaining information.

In regards to college, I'd say all general education subjects. Allow me to elaborate further.

For those that aren't aware - the first two years of any college undergraduate program in the US are typically filled with general education courses.

It does not matter if you went to a small lesser known junior college or even Harvard College, you will end up studying the same material as mandated by law and department of education. 

I am aware of this knowledge as over the years, I have met and discussed these topics with people who studied and worked in various aspects of academic institutions across different levels (local, state, and federal).

The general education courses are basically remedial level courses, in which their main goal is to get all students across the board ready for their respective field of study. These courses are also prerequisites that students must take before taking higher level courses that pertain to their major. 

I personally encountered this when I first attended community college as I did honors and advanced placement courses, only to learn that my college level courses were rehashing material I learned years prior...

What is worse is that I barely remember any of the material I learned in those years too...alongside others that I have met from different schools, even students from the Ivy Leagues!

Unfortunately, I have learned over the years since graduating that many colleges and universities have "levels" and "tiers" to these remedial courses as public school education has been falling across the US.

What shocked me was to see someone that I knew, take the same college math class four times before they finally passed it...and the class is only taught once a year!

(Additional note - you could test out of some general education courses, but there is only a small allowable limit of courses that would allow for that. There is also AP credit that students could transfer from high school, but only if the students could afford to take the class, book(s), and exam fee)

 

 

[Envy 6,267]

Definitely writing. I was not prepared for academic writing at all when I entered college. It was not for lack of my ability, as I became quite skilled at it quickly, but before I got there I was doing horribly. The "papers" I had to write in high school were nothing like what I had to write starting in college. It was night and day and threw me for a loop.

[Acinonyx 147]

Mostly everything.

I had awful undianosed dyslexia at the time that no-one noticed so nothing ever really went in. Spend most of the day disassociating instead.

Even today I have to self teach most stuff as teachers are just bad unless it's a 1 on 1 session.