For me, I always thought it was asinine that we had to memorize the dates of battles in various wars. Even in those ancient times (the early 1960's), it was possible to look that information up; albeit, you'd have to make a trip to the library in order to do it, but you certainly didn't need to have that information committed to memory.
Abstinence only sex education.
I am old enough that I was never exposed to that idiocy.
I reckon you're looking at it the wrong way. The skill of being able to learn faintly ridiculous and pretty much useless bullshit and regurgitate it on demand is highly lauded in the modern business environment.
Most insane was watching propaganda films like Reefer madness, and Public enemy number 1. One Film had a guy in his raise apartment, he only took one puff, then had an LSD trips. It got really weird, he started clucking like a chicken, and then ran around the room faster and faster then ran and crashed through a window and plunge to his death. Us kids looked at each other, Wow man!!! where can we get that shit.
Another super 8 film had women smoking reefer at a log cabin, they got undressed. First time I had seen a naked woman. Then they went laughing and screaming running into the lake, naked. From all the hot mini shirts in class, I could not hide my rock hard boner; the books keep slipping off my lap like a tent.
A nuclear siren alarm would go off. Then all us kids were trained hide underneath our desks for safety
I can't think of anything I had in HS that I have not used in life. Even algebra, I have solved for X in real life. I hated typing classes, and look at me now. I am a quilter, so I use geometry all the time. I hated PE, because of the uniforms and mean girls, but we also learned how to bowl, riflery and archery. But then, I went to school in the 70s, when education was real.
Postulates and Theorems in 10th grade geometry.
I went to Catholic school, so, religion.
@RobLawrence Thanks. I can't complain too much, they did a pretty good job in all the other areas, for the most part.
Same here. What possible use would I have for knowing when the Battle of Antietem was and who fought in it? Ugh. And that's all Am. History was. Names and dates, names and dates.
Also, algebra. I have never had to find x outside of a maths class.
I hated having to learn the NAMES of the rules for proofs in geometry. Learning the rules was fine, but having to know what to do, which order, why, and what each rule for each step is called...is tedious as hell.
But the winner is scientific notation in chemistry. You know, 10 * x^y used to express very large numbers. It wasn't the actual topic that was inane, it was the timeframe.
it took two WEEKS before half of the class could comprehend it as a means to express large numbers. 15 hours of class time wasted because people couldn't wrap their heads around moving a decimal point and writing it into 10 times the small version of the number to the power of how many times you move the decimal. Granted our chemistry teacher wasn't great but still.
Penmanship.....
@RobLawrence I was left handed and my teacher spent 2 years trying to break me of that by using very nefarious methods.
Learning to play a trumpet in band.
@RobLawrence I sucked! Lol
La plume est sur le bureau.
For me it was: Meet Sandy and Sue. This is Sue's house. This is Sanduy's ball. Kick the ball Sandy.
I was fluent in French and English at 5 y.o. I was exempt from English as a second language in French elementary and most of HS.