# Gaps in my (your) education
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [October 11, 2020, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689 "2020-10-11T04:11:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Aescwynn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aescwynn)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/21 "2020-10-11T18:49:44Z")
Since the pandemic started, I’m brushing up on French with Duolingo, and dipping my toe into Italian, Spanish, German and Russian. I really enjoy it.
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### Author:  [@Aescwynn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aescwynn)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/22 "2020-10-11T18:54:15Z")
Just a pointless quibble, but Shakespeare was written in Early Modern English. Chaucer was Middle English and Beowulf was Old English.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/23 "2020-10-11T19:06:51Z")
Right, for comparison, this is Middle English:
> [@](#):
>
> Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
> The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
> And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
> Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
> Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
> Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
> The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
> Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
> And smale foweles maken melodye,
> That slepen al the nyght with open eye,
> So priketh hem nature in hir corages;
> Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
> And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
> To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
> And specially, from every shires ende
> Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
> The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
> That hem hath hopen whan that they were seeke
You can recognize most of the words, and if you really strain at it, you can piece together what they mean, but you can’t just read it.
And here’s Old English (AKA Anglo-Saxon):
> [@](#):
>
> Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
> þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
> hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
> Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
> monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
> egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
> feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
> weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
> oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
> ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
> gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.
You probably don’t even know all of those letters, and as for the words… well, “we” at least means “we”, but I couldn’t tell you much more than that (you might be able to puzzle out more if you know one of the Low Germanic languages).
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/24 "2020-10-11T19:35:54Z")
_I had a lot of fun reading “Huckleberry Finn” and “A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” in fifth grade._
You probably didnt actually read A Connecticut Yankee. The book goes on and becomes very grim dark.
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### Author:  [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/25 "2020-10-11T19:48:42Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> You probably didnt actually read A Connecticut Yankee.
Yes, I did - till the end. It was a Romanian translation for a children collection.
One can easily notice that the word “Connecticut” in the title is left out:
[https://www.libris.ro/img/pozeprod/59/1002/B2/570097.jpg](https://www.libris.ro/img/pozeprod/59/1002/B2/570097.jpg)
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/26 "2020-10-11T19:58:46Z")
Yes, right, The kiddie version is bowdlerized. But I cant blame them. The book starts out as a light hearted comedy and at the end turns extremely grimdark.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/27 "2020-10-11T20:00:27Z")
> [@Die\_Capacitrix](#):
>
> A small suggestion, if you want to learn Shakespeare, watch the plays and/or read the plays out loud. This is the recommendation from multiple teachers and professors. Patrick Steweart’s been reading a sonnet a day for the last few months, if you want to get some small bites in. He’s definitely easy to listen to.
A few years back I went through all of Shakespeare (even King John) and this is a good suggestion. However by the third or fourth play it became much easier to read, and halfway through I was dreaming in blank verse.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/28 "2020-10-11T20:03:20Z")
I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye. I’ve never read War and Peace. I did read Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov for English in high school and am not interested in plowing through another Russian novel.
I made it through Ulysses but I don’t think I have long enough to live to do Finnegan’s Wake.
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### Author:  [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/29 "2020-10-11T20:06:55Z")
I was homeschooled from age 6 to 17. Technically attended a long-distance high school but never graduated. So I really completed no formal education from kindergarten up until college/grad school, where I got 2 degrees.
I have only seen little bits of Disney movies like Aladdin, the Lion King, etc., never the whole thing.
I have not read the vast majority of literary classics like Moby Dick, War and Peace, none of that.
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### Author:  [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2020, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/30 "2020-10-11T22:56:18Z")
somehow never learned trigonometry but did learn geometry and calculus is high school.
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### Author:  [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/31 "2020-10-12T04:58:23Z")
I was really into computers as a kid and then I hit high school. With band and Spanish taking up most of my electives, I didn’t have room for computer classes except for the required computers for dummies class which also including typing and a few other things. It sucked that my high school didn’t let you take summer school to get ahead or for enrichment, they had previously and that is how the band nerds used to squeeze in more academics.
College, pretty much the same, doing a double major in 4 years pretty much eliminated any cool electives.
I took a basic HTML class one summer that work paid for but aside from that, I am far more ignorant than the 8th grade version of me would have thought
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### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/32 "2020-10-12T13:13:22Z")
My cars guts are a complete mystery to me. It would have been nice to have taken an auto shop class so I would know how to change my oil at least.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/33 "2020-10-12T13:29:42Z")
Gosh, I’m ignorant of so many subjects it’s hard to choose, but I think my most embarrassing gaps are in history and geography. It seemed as though every year in history class, we’d spend a couple of months talking about the Mesopotamians, and then zoom through the rest of the material, often not finishing the textbook (which only went up to about 1960 anyway). And I didn’t fill in the gaps on my own, so that’s on me.
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### Author:  [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/34 "2020-10-12T13:31:40Z")
> [@Sitnam](#):
>
> My cars guts are a complete mystery to me. It would have been nice to have taken an auto shop class so I would know how to change my oil at least.
I can change the oil…but that’s about it. I would add I also wish I knew more about how to fix things around the house.
And I don’t think I’ve traveled enough. I’d love to see Alaska and more of the New England area (I’ve been to Boston). Outside the US, I’d like to see Iceland, Switzerland, Japan…too many to list.
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### Author:  [@brilliantnerd2050](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brilliantnerd2050)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/35 "2020-10-12T13:43:56Z")
It was the same recommendation my father gave me because he says that all famous sayings in Spanish come from it
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/36 "2020-10-12T14:11:50Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#):
>
> Gosh, I’m ignorant of so many subjects it’s hard to choose, but I think my most embarrassing gaps are in history and geography. It seemed as though every year in history class, we’d spend a couple of months talking about the Mesopotamians, and then zoom through the rest of the material, often not finishing the textbook (which only went up to about 1960 anyway). And I didn’t fill in the gaps on my own, so that’s on me.
I’ve bought and read world history books; the problem is I forget everything. Last year I went on a World War I kick, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, and now I couldn’t tell you much about it. I have just the vaguest recollection of what I learned.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/37 "2020-10-12T14:37:15Z")
Strangely, for a man with a BS in Computer Science and a MS in Information Technology and Management, my science education was somewhat lacking, I feel.
I mean, I took all the requisite courses to graduate from high school and college, but I somehow managed to sort of skate out of some of the harder courses. I mean, after all that, I managed to take 1 year of high school chemistry and 1 year of high school non-calculus physics. Meanwhile, I took a ton of biology, physical geology, historical geology and astronomy.
I kinda feel like the chemistry in particular is something of a gap. I mean, I’ve sort of absorbed a fair amount in the course of the other sciences I studied, but nothing comprehensive.
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/38 "2020-10-12T15:02:30Z")
At least you tried!
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### Author:  [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/39 "2020-10-12T15:11:55Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> My greatest frustration is I’ve never had any basic economics education. I had a course in undergrad called political economy but it was extremely biased toward leftist policies (to the point the professor showed a Michael Moore documentary.) I didn’t learn much from it. Then in grad school I tried to take an economics course but they wouldn’t let me in because they were reserved for Social Policy students (I was Social Work.) So I have no real idea how the economy works, or the stock market, or the federal reserve, or anything.
Same here. My small rural town education did not even mention the words “economics” or “finance”, etc. We were being raised to be farmers and factory workers and cannon fodder, not business owners or managers. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I was even aware of the subjects. I feel that I missed out on some fundamental concepts that would be useful to teach to children. Consequently, I have a layman’s interest in the subjects now.
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### Author:  [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2020, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gaps-in-my-your-education/922689/40 "2020-10-12T15:33:56Z")
I had consumer economics in high school. It was an excellent course, covering things like why credit card interest can be devastating, giving a rough sketch of how the stock market works, how to prepare your taxes, how mortgages break down with points, amortization, etc, how to balance a checkbook, etc.
I later had a macroeconomics class in college, but the professor was terrible. He’d go off on tangents and never finish. More and more I wish we had some of that in public schools so that when candidates for office say they plan to do such and so, more of us would have an intelligent grasp of how that’s likely to impact us.
On the other hand…
> **[Economics](https://despair.com/products/economics)**
>
> The science of explaining tomorrow why the predictions you made yesterday didn't come true today. “If all the economists were laid to end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.” - George Bernard Shaw PERFECT FOR: Paul Krugman (ugh) Jim Cramer (UGH)...
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