All of us spent a lot of time in school. Learned lots of useful stuff and quite a lot of chaff. What is the most useless thing you learned in school - be it an outdated skill, a product of bizarre teaching, or bad advice?
I had to think for only thirty seconds, and then I thought of my Catholic religious ed in third or fourth grade (this was in the seventies in Germany where religious ed in public schools was obligatory):
When we learned about the book of Exodus, our teacher at one point showed us a glass with some dried plant specimens. He explained to us that this was the plant from the Levant that could be identified as the manna that fell from the sky in Exodus and prevented the people from starving, so the story must be true. I called bullshit on that even at the age of nine.
Solving a quadratic equation. I have never used it once. Ever.
Wow. That dude was useless. I’m fairly certain that what he said was never RC doctrine.
To answer your question, I think the most useless thing I was supposed to learn was the confederates were not fighting for slavery. I knew that was nonsense when I was a kid, and of course I know it’s still nonsense regardless of the “lost cause” mythology that’s so popular even today where I grew up.
Hah, that’s funny! I always use to say that you could wake me up at three in the morning, even if I had been on a bender that night, and I could rattle down the formula for quadratic equations perfectly. I’ll never forget it, though I actually haven’t had to solve a quadratic equation in 25 years or so, but well, I’m an engineer 
Writing a program for a stack of punch cards.
That. I’m not sure I even remember how!
Pretty much all of the American history taught through high school. It was all white-people centric, skewed to the colonialist outlook, and much of it was patently false. College was a little better, but still biased. On the plus side, learning history on my own has been pretty rewarding.
Oh, and Econ 101. I still have nightmares about that Samuelson textbook.
The Krebs Cycle (no, not Maynard G.)
The college I went to required one semester of physics, one semester of chemistry, and a whole year of biology. One of the tortures of that year of biology was memorizing this intricate portion of the digestion and energy production process. Admittedly important. But not to me nor anyone who wasn’t a pre-med or similar student.
A conservative is an American and a liberal is a communist.
About 45 years ago, my algebra teacher made each of us stand up in front of the class and sing the quadratic formula. I could still do it but have never needed it.
I don’t remember.
Writing in cursive.
I got into a “computer” class in high school which was the most pointless course I’ve ever taken. They focused too much on obsolete technology, such as coaxial Ethernet, in a course taught in probably the early 2000s (I’m class of 2002) for people who were presumably not planning to go back in time to the 1980s. I actually know about Ethernet coaxial line termination, which is probably less useful than knowing how to rebuild a carburetor or measure IV infusion rates with a stopwatch.
I shouldn’t be too harsh, I suppose, given that the class was taught by someone who was working in the industry by doing things like maintaining Wyse dumb terminals our public library was then still using as part of an electronic card catalog.
If you’re going to teach an intro course, focus on theory. If you can’t focus on theory, at least keep the practice up to date. If you can’t do that, find a different course.
I can still recite the first page of the Canterbury Tales…in middle English.
What the point of that was I’ll never know, unless it was to improve some memorization brain muscle.
Wow. I solve quadratic equations all the time! Course, I’m a math teacher…
To answer the OP, I hated English/Literature classes. I had no interest in reading any of that stuff then, and I’m still a bit irritated I had to waste my time with it. There was no improvement to my life from reading a few Shakespeare plays or To Kill a Mockingbird.
lol that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone
ive noticed math teachers hate English-type classes and English teachers hate math-type classes …
one of my grade school teachers hated both so we visited one room for math and another for “language”
Ha!! My 8th grade teacher pounded into our little heads that the war was fought for states’ rights first and foremost
Well, there was that whole thing about the American revolution.
Had a teacher that insisted that we wouldn’t pass unless we mastered the slipstick.