Which subjects do you think are unnecessary?

[Shiny Umbreon]

Post saying the subjects from your school you think wouldn't affect your career unless you especifically study that. In other words, which subjects are not important for life? I know many think there are some.

 

[Lt. Surge's Raichu]

Well, it's much of the math that i know i don't need in my life.

 

[Kuro]

Most of Maths and Chemistry is unnecessary, and also some of Geography, even though I take it.

But most of the time, it depends on what you do in life that determines what subjects are necessary to you.

For example, I take French and Spanish.

 

[mewthree w/armor]

Math, Science, Finance, and most of Accounting...really useless for me. Subject I have ZERO interest in, and are as hard as hell.

 

[Erimgard]

well seeing as I have not yet chosen a career path, I can't decide which subjects are useless or not, that said, I agree that a lot of math is unnecessary.
I'm also fairly sure that the only possible scenario in which diagramming sentences will help you in life...is if you are an English teacher and have to teach kids to diagram sentences....

 

[coachwhipneoship]

Math! Algebra in particular! I could rant for hours on end about how much torture they put me through, attempting to teach me a subject I not only cannot comprehend, but DO NOT NEED and I am quite sure NEVER WILL. I could have put my energy to much better use in all my other classes that I actually enjoyed and saw real-life connections to. But no, they insisted I needed all this mathematical garbage, almost of all which confused me beyond belief and seemed utterly random and unnecessary. Unless I EVER thought I was going into a field that would require knowledge of how to do this, what was the point of marring my otherwise excellent report card with Cs and Ds beside the word "Math"? No matter how much I struggled, math for me was like boating school for Spongebob; when it comes to it, I'm pretty much 'unteachable.' XD

But yeah. It was stupid. I continually asked, "Remind me WHY I'm bothering with this again...?" And they'd say, "Uhhhh...well, you'll need to know how to do it to pass the tests and get a good grade..." And I'd say, "HUH? I'm suffering through this junk JUST so I can suffer through tests on it and scrape some barely passing mark?! That's the reason?! I might as well not take it, and not need to worry about it...!!!" It was like, 'You have to take it because you have to take it.' Wha...

There were other subjects I at some point or other had trouble with and wondered why I should need them in the first place, but on the whole math is the only one I still resent. I remember I once considered history unimportant, but now I see how foolish that was; history, especially with the right instructor, can be one of the most fascinating and important subjects of all, for anyone. I felt so enlightened after a really good history class and realized how amazingly little I had known before, and saw EVERYthing in a whole new light.
But, having graduated high school and been forced through more math in college, I withdrew from my impossible algebra class and managed to do well only in the simplest college-level math offered. Being my major is "Communications," I am hoping I never see it again. :D Because, really...the only math I use on a daily basis is the simple stuff you do in elementary school, maybe middle school. And if I ever did need some advanced formula or something, WHEN in the world would I not be able to refer to something else to get it? What was the point of all that memorizing of things that made absolutely no sense to me, of trying to grasp what I was supposed to do with all these numbers and variables that I just could never understand? I don't know.

Now, I guess since I've got no interest in math and most things that require an advanced knowledge of it, I'm a bit biased. I see sentence diagramming and geography on the thread, and since I like those subjects and find them easy/interesting, I consider them rather important in everyday life (not that anyone's going to ask you to diagram a sentence or where a certain country is and have it matter whether you know or not.) I just think that more people should have some idea of what the world looks like and where things are (I'm usually surprised that what I know is often not common knowledge) and the skills involved with sentence diagramming and such grammatical English stuff are just helpful as a foundation for any study of any form of language. I'm sure you could say the same things about math--that the skills involved in doing algebra are helpful in other areas, and certain fields require a lot of math. I'm only interested in sciences and whatnot insofar as they DON'T need a great deal of difficult math to solve problems. But yes...that's my main useless subject. XD

 

[Cherrim]

Aww...everyone's saying math. :[ I'm pretty much going into math next year for university (Computer Science, though I didn't know this before, is pretty much all math XDD).

But yeah, for me, the useless subjects are geography, history, phys. ed, art, religion/philosophy and...English I guess. Though I still need English to get into university anyway. :\

Lol, and I guess Japanese was pretty useless, but it was fun all the same. XD

 

[Kamui]

hmm, I think History..
am not sure..
Math is hard, but I need it ;)

 

[Hakeen]

Maths..

I got to choose all the rest of my subjects, which are easy as. I've already got the basics of maths, but all the difficult stuff, they can leave that to someone else. And, I don't want to fail a class, so rather fail, I just don't want to do it.

 

[_Prince_]

Maths No no no, it's a killer and also history no.

 

[Jack O'Neill]

Mathematics and the sciences are most definitely NOT unnecessary. All American high school students must be required to take Advanced Placement physics, chemistry, and calculus regardless of general level of intelligence.

Even the social sciences have their applications, though one is not bound to apply them to most daily situations. As with math and the sciences, AP history (both world and American), government, and economics should be required for all American high school students.

Mastery of the English language goes without question if one is living in a dominantly Anglophone country like the United States. I was going to go into a rant about so-called "bilingual" education for Spanish speakers, but that's neither here nor there; suffice to say that Singapore and the Philippines are ideal models for the United States to follow in regards to bilingualism. AP English language, literature, and composition should be requirements for high school graduation in the United States.

If there has to be a useless subject, then it has to be what people would refer to as "physical education." South Korean high schools have the right idea by not considering physical education to be true academic education and thus not including it in their respective curricula.

 

[coachwhipneoship]

Mathematics and the sciences are most definitely NOT unnecessary. All American high school students must be required to take Advanced Placement physics, chemistry, and calculus regardless of general level of intelligence.

Even the social sciences have their applications, though one is not bound to apply them to most daily situations. As with math and the sciences, AP history (both world and American), government, and economics should be required for all American high school students.

Mastery of the English language goes without question if one is living in a dominantly Anglophone country like the United States. I was going to go into a rant about so-called "bilingual" education for Spanish speakers, but that's neither here nor there; suffice to say that Singapore and the Philippines are ideal models for the United States to follow in regards to bilingualism. AP English language, literature, and composition should be requirements for high school graduation in the United States.

If there has to be a useless subject, then it has to be what people would refer to as "physical education." South Korean high schools have the right idea by not considering physical education to be true academic education and thus not including it in their respective curricula.

Yikes! We were never *required* to take an AP class of any sort--I ELECTED to take AP Psychology, European History and Art History. But thank God I never needed anything beyond Algebra in math, or I'd never have gotten out of it alive! AP and Honors-level classes are voluntary...
I was required to take normal-level Physics and Chemistry but I didn't like them one bit, and though Chem was interesting, as soon as math entered into it...my grade started falling. xD; I enjoyed Biology, Earth Science, and Astronomy--because little math was involved in the classes. And Calculus?! I've never had to face it and I don't think I ever will (thank goodness!)

Quite honestly...I've never needed any of the things they attempted to teach me in physics, chem, algebra, etc. I've found psychology and other social sciences to be much more useful in life. I would agree with you about history, government, English, and so on (though I have never had an Economics class either...)
As for Phys Ed...it's funny you should say that. I used to hate it, but by the end of high school I didn't so much any longer. I don't think it's an academic subject and that we should be graded in it (I have no idea about the rules of games like football and basketball and I don't care either, if they want to test me on things like that, they might as well test me on anything)...I just think they're trying to give students time to be active and exercise, which I don't think is a bad idea.

 

[Margot]

Well, I want to go into an animation production-like career so classes such as American History, chemistry and French are of no use to me. I know that learning a foriegn is important and all, but I don't plan on working in France at all. History is just a more indepth and boring class of what I already learned in Middle School.

And I don't like geometry either ;; but you can use that in a lot of places so it's not completly useless. Especially since one college said that 'Geometry and shapes is the basis of animation" >.>

 

[Idiot!]

History and Arts are not a nessecity in real life and yet we have to have them. I don't plan to be an artist, so Arts is useless. Even if I were to do spriting, Arts is still useless because spriting not included. People say History is interesting, but I don't think so. Our teacher unfortunately doesn't know how to teach efficiently, so I had to go for extra classes, which means more time wasted.

 

[~*!*~Tatsujin Gosuto~*!*~]

I think Algebra is one because it makes no sense and 2 because I hate it. What are we ever going to use 3X + 9 = 17? or something like that. Oh yea and Trigonmetry

:t354:~*!*~Queen Boo~*!*~

 

[Cherrim]

I think Algebra is one because it makes no sense and 2 because I hate it. What are we ever going to use 3X + 9 = 17? or something like that. Oh yea and Trigonmetry

:t354:~*!*~Queen Boo~*!*~

You're using the results of it right now. =D Not directly, but to study computer science/engineering, you need to take maths in high school. And to make the programs like vBulletin or even your OS, you probably have to have a background in CS. So it's not a "we" thing. Lots of people do need math. XD;

As with math and the sciences, AP history (both world and American), government, and economics should be required for all American high school students.

In Canada (or at least, in Ontario), students are required to take a half-credit course on Civics. So basically, we have to learn about the government's workings and history and whatnot. I wish the other half were more economics-based, however, since I think that would help me way more in the long-run than the current "careers" course which could easily be condensed into an hour-long assembly or something. <_<;

 

[Ben Kenobi]

English (or whatever your native language is) since it's not like you can do anything with it, except become an English professor or whatever.

 

[mrplanters]

I always thought English was sort of useless. I mean I know that people have to know how to read and write, but I don't see the point of learning simile's and other things like that. My life is not going to based around conversations like this:

"Hey James did you read page 521 out of the textbook yesterday?"
"Yeah the personification was amazing!"
"Yeah so was the use of symbolism and imagery"

 

[Pokedragonfire]

It seems a large number of you believe most advanced math to be useless in everyday situations. I am disappointed.

I don't believe that math is as useless as you think. Math can be applied to many situations, from banking and money management (basically economics), to gambling and similar decision making (probability is very useful.) Many everyday uses of math involve the usage of formulas that you wouldn't realize exist because all you are doing is adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing, even though technically you are solving an equation that is equal to x. Math gives you a greater understanding of what you are doing, allowing you to manipulate the "invisible" formula and solve for a different variable in the previous example.

In fact, while this probably isn't very useful, in my math book the other day there was a problem involving a formula for calculating how many people hear a rumor in "t" minutes. I bet that would be useful if you turned out to be a reporter or something, a job that most would believe requires no math at all.

Even estimation is something that everyone uses everyday and while that may not be "advanced" math, knowing how to do it is quite important.

There are formulas for everything! Traveling problems are solved with math (haha that classic train problem that everyone remembers?), wages, growth, you name it! One time I heard a story about someone who was riding their bike got hit by a car, and admitted to "maybe not looking" and they were said to be partly at fault. Well they went back and measured the skid marks and found the car to be speeding. There are so many uses of math, and I agree they are hard to think of, but they are out there.

Also, Phys. Education, while not totally useless, needs a lot of fixing before it becomes useful. I'd combine it with sort of a nutrition, body care course to allow it to live up to its full educational potential. What it should do is teach you how to apply what you're doing in class to your daily life outside of school, since we do everything in teams at school it becomes useless later. Health class also needs reform, they place waaaaaay to much emphasis on the wrong topics in my opinion, at least at my school. Every other class in my opinion is useful :) Especially art class. And history is only useful if you have a decent teacher >_<

 

[coachwhipneoship]

It seems a large number of you believe most advanced math to be useless in everyday situations. I am disappointed.

I don't believe that math is as useless as you think. Math can be applied to many situations, from banking and money management (basically economics), to gambling and similar decision making (probability is very useful.) Many everyday uses of math involve the usage of formulas that you wouldn't realize exist because all you are doing is adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing, even though technically you are solving an equation that is equal to x. Math gives you a greater understanding of what you are doing, allowing you to manipulate the "invisible" formula and solve for a different variable in the previous example.

In fact, while this probably isn't very useful, in my math book the other day there was a problem involving a formula for calculating how many people hear a rumor in "t" minutes. I bet that would be useful if you turned out to be a reporter or something, a job that most would believe requires no math at all.

Even estimation is something that everyone uses everyday and while that may not be "advanced" math, knowing how to do it is quite important.

There are formulas for everything! Traveling problems are solved with math (haha that classic train problem that everyone remembers?), wages, growth, you name it! One time I heard a story about someone who was riding their bike got hit by a car, and admitted to "maybe not looking" and they were said to be partly at fault. Well they went back and measured the skid marks and found the car to be speeding. There are so many uses of math, and I agree they are hard to think of, but they are out there.

I don't disagree....probability and estimation and whatnot are definitely useful...it's just that I found things like that so easy and used them so often in life anyway to practice that I didn't really include them when I said, "I hate math!"

*thinks back to those awful, awful algebra classes and all the things they tried to teach me which, as I predicted, I have never encountered outside the class* I mean, "factor this" and "solve these equations" and all that. To this day I can't begin to understand how or why anyone could have been so bored that they ever even came up with those things in the first place, nor why I should be forced to do it, nor HOW to go about it. It never made any sense to me; I wound up just doing random things with the numbers and variables and hoping some of it was right. Frustrated me. xp

Heh, anyway. I always sound so anti-math and it's not that I don't realize how often it IS used...I just hated it so much in school, and honestly felt that I'd never need most of what they were teaching, so I might as well have spent my time on things I was better at and enjoyed more.