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When I look back on all the crap I learned in HS…

Christine tagged me to come up with a list of five classes that I wish they’d taught (or I’d taken) in high school.  Here’s my list, in no particular order:

  1. An economic history of the United States.  It wasn’t until I got to college and took a class on the American Labor Movement that the Jacksonian era and the bank wars made any sense to me.
  2. A class in US history that got past World War II.
  3. A class in robotics. 
  4. A sex ed class that used Cycle Savvy as the text book.
  5. Spanish.  I took 6 years of French, but and then a year of college German, but am not fluent in either.  I’d have far more chances to use Spanish.

The most useful classes I’ve taken (at various levels of schooling) are:

  1. Typing.  (6th grade — on manual typewriters — I hated every minute of it, and am so glad that they made me take it.)
  2. American Government (high school.  Not because of the content, but because the teacher made us write papers that could not be longer than 3 pages, double spaced.)
  3. American Labor History (college)
  4. Microeconomics (grad school)
  5. Statistics (grad school)
  6. Group Dynamics (grad school)

The most useless classes I’ve taken are:

  1. Drafting (mandatory at my high school)
  2. "Energy shop" (You had to take a shop, and didn’t get to choose which one.  The only part I remember is making a wind powered goose ornament)
  3. Yiddish (took a term of it in college, mostly because my favorite teacher was teaching it)

I’m not going to tag anyone, but post a comment if you feel like taking this one up.

Related posts:

  1. My father is right
  2. Teacher Man
  3. What do you want to be when you grow up?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “When I look back on all the crap I learned in HS…”

  1. jen Says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am

    I second your comment on typing. A huge skill, it enabled many things in my life. I think it’s a much more common skill (and more required skill) now than it was in the 80s when I took it.
    I very much wish that somewhere in my education, either thru modeling or in school, I had learned more about resolving conflict. I was raised as a “good girl”, i.e. always give in to those around you but make them pay later thru yucky passive/aggressive techniques. In my angry 20s I swung the other way towards just yelling at people when I got mad. Now, at 40, I think I finally do an OK job of handling a conflict without flipping out or caving in unduly.

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