# What Should You Have Learned in High School, But Didn't? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 12, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560 "2004-08-12T18:05:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Consumer\_Sovereignty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Consumer\_Sovereignty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Consumer_Sovereignty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/41 "2004-08-13T06:15:35Z")
Never learned astronomy in high school physics. Not properly, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/42 "2004-08-13T07:12:03Z")
> [@Cunctator](#): > > I’m surprised by the number of people who did not cover compound interest, loan calculations, bank and cheque balances etc in their maths classes. This was standard stuff in maths when I was at school. I remember doing numerous problems for homework in third and fourth form, with only logarithm tables to help us out. At least in Alberta the only place you are _really_ taught that stuff is if you take Financial Management or Math 24… at least they did about 4 years ago. CALM (Career And Life Management) was a mix of things including budgeting, sex ed, writing a check… and that’s all I remember. Compound interest may have been covered in math class but I forget. Bank and cheque balances were FiMan, math 24 is merely ‘applicable math’ I was registered in it for a day. I took one look at the text book and said I’m outta here… because I already knew what was in the text. They have since changed math here, but I am so glad I missed out on it. Anything that requires a $100+ graphing calculator so you can take the course makes me wonder… ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/43 "2004-08-13T13:23:11Z")
It seems to me that, for many of the life skills topics (such as family budgeting, cooking, check writing), the schools don’t teach them because they assume you’re going to learn them at home. Ditto for sex ed (in some schools, anyway). Of course, if this were GD we could muse about the role of parents in their childrens’ education, how many parents are poor role models, whether it’s the business of schools to teach things that should be taught at home, what _should_ be taught at home vs. at school, yada yada yada. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/44 "2004-08-13T13:44:38Z")
[QUOTE=dnooman] "I can analyze Proust, but alas a shady car salesman can outwit me. Were I taught such simple things as practical compound interest, car payments, minimum payments on credit cards, loan rates and federal interest rates, I would not be a fool."QUOTE] I challenge anyone in North America to show me a high school math curriculum in which interest rates are not used as one of the examples for using exponents. I mean, I know we all have trouble with finances, but it’s just not true to suggest high school skipped this. You did learn about interest rates. It’s called MULTIPLICATION and EXPONENTS. Honestly, you cannot tell me that you graduated from high school and wasn’t taught how to figure out what 19% of something is, or what the concept of an exponent is. How hard is it to multiply X by 0.19? That’s Grade 8 material. Calculating compound interest is a little tougher but it’s all there in high school. What I think we have here is people blaming human nature (the propensity to spend more than we earn) on high school, it being very fashionable to talk about how much high school sucks, and being a lot more fun than blaming themselves. It is simply not true that people get into trouble with credit cards because they weren’t taught the concept of multiplication in high school. People get into trouble with credit cards because they lack foresight and self-control. If you teach everyone credit card math you will still get people in their 20’s charging for bigass stereo systems they don’t need just because they want them. You will still get people who don’t want to budget because it’s just not a plesant subject. _I_ got into trouble with credit cards and I knew perfectly well what the interest rate meant. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/45 "2004-08-13T13:53:21Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > My mother taught me to read and spell before I went to Kindergarten. They had never encountered a kid who was already literate before going to school, and they freaked out and sent me for evaluation and decided that I was some kind of genius. They created a special program so that I could take Grades 3, 4 and 5 in two years. When I came back to Grade 6, I was two years younger than everybody, and an outcast because I was supposed to be smarter than everybody. Jesus Christ, people, I could just read. That was the total extent of it. I had no natural gifts of intelligence, I could read before the other kids. Was it worth getting beaten up and called names and being made fun of? No. I feel your pain. I was in a very similar situation - I could read before I started infant school, and eneded up skipping the final year and starting junior and secodnary schools a year early. I then went on to university at the age of 17, too. Fortunately I had plenty of friends at school, but anyone that took a dislike to me had plenty of ammo. ---
**Author:** ![LifeOnWry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@LifeOnWry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LifeOnWry)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/46 "2004-08-13T14:06:45Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I challenge anyone in North America to show me a high school math curriculum in which interest rates are not used as one of the examples for using exponents. > > I mean, I know we all have trouble with finances, but it’s just not true to suggest high school skipped this. You did learn about interest rates. It’s called MULTIPLICATION and EXPONENTS. Honestly, you cannot tell me that you graduated from high school and wasn’t taught how to figure out what 19% of something is, or what the concept of an exponent is. How hard is it to multiply X by 0.19? That’s Grade 8 material. Calculating compound interest is a little tougher but it’s all there in high school. I think, personally, that it’s a matter of application vs. theory. I remember a number of wise-ass kids raising their hands and commenting to a math teacher, “Dude. I am, like, never gonna need this in REAL LIFE.” In 11th grade, I had a math teacher who didn’t dismiss that comment, but went on to explain HOW mathematics apply to “real life”. He explained percentages in terms of interest rates, geometry in terms of measuring a window for curtains, and so on. We had a class-wide “AHA!” moment. And, in general, I would suggest there’s sufficient theory presented in high school academics, but that application is too often neglected. Also, guidance is often lacking - had I a clue that math and geography were more germane to “real life” than, say, photography class, I MIGHT have chosenmy electives with more care. (Then again, I was a kid, so I might not have…) ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/47 "2004-08-13T14:33:01Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > [ul] > [li]I had never heard of Charlemagne.[/li][li]I didn’t know that the Roman Empire had split into two (Rome vs. Constantinople) by the Middle Ages.[/li][li]The Spanish Inquisition, to me, was little more than a joke in a Mel Brooks movie.[/li][li]I had no idea how to conduct scholarly research or to write a thesis.[/li][li]I had no idea who Joan of Arc was (other than she was NOT Noah’s wife).[/li][li]I couldn’t find most major cities in the US on a map. I thought Las Vegas bordered Mexico, and that New Orleans was within a few miles of Florida.[/li][/ul] > > That’s just what I can think of right now. > > What about the rest of you? Did your high school education leave you cold? I knew everything on this list. I had the good fortune to go to a very academically-oriented Jesuit high school in New York City. And I certainly knew who Joan of Arc was, because I went to St. Joan of Arc grammar school, also in New York. But. . . I _didn’t_ know many things. Perhaps because my high-school was so academically oriented, we didn’t have any kind of shop classes, so I didn’t know how to fix anything. Cars were a mystery. Because I grew up in NYC, I didn’t yet know how to drive a car. I knew nothing about the day-to-day practicalities of life (checkbook balancing, etc.). Because my high school was for boys only, I didn’t really know how to socialize with women. I made up for it all in time, of course. But my first year of college (which was also my first time away from home for any length of time) was quite a shock to me. ---
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/48 "2004-08-13T14:34:28Z")
> [@WCStyles](#): > > Anything about Vietnam. I graduated in the mid-Eighties, so there was certainly time to get something in the books, but American History seemed to end with the Cuban Missile crisis. Even with that, we never really learned anything about communism, just that the godless commies wanted to nuke us all, and that our presidents from Ike onward were working hard to avoid pushing the button. Same here. I graduated in 1985 and my teachers (I had lots of American history, just not much world history) always _meant_ to cover Vietnam but always ran out of time. And the commie thing was worse in Florida. We were actually _required_ by the legislature (the Cuabn block in FLorida was very influential) to take a class called “Americanism vs. Communism” (what the heck is Americanism?). I was complainign to my mom once about never covering Vietnam and she said the same thing as **Cluricaun** , her teachers never got to WWII. > [@StGermain](#): > > How to study. I never needed it. I never did it. Heck, I barely did homework and still had a B+ average. I test well and teachers knew I knew the material, so they just gave me decent grades. Well, when college came around and material was being thrown at me in a much faster format and I was expected to actually go out and learn independantly, I just didn’t know how. This is my problem too. I spent all of my college years (all 15 of them 🙂 ) pulling last minute all nighters. I was smart enough to pull it off but it’s not effecient. And poor time-management skills are causing me problems to this day. ---
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/49 "2004-08-13T16:42:53Z")
High school student in Kansas City, Missouri from 1997 to 2001 checking in. I actually had a teacher teach us about checkbooks etc., but it was in _seventh grade_. In high school Gov. and Economics was required in _ninth grade_. Why they didn’t require these classes for our senior year I don’t know (the teacher who taught that class thought it was stupid as well). More seniors have jobs and responsibilities than freshman. I’ve never had a geography class. ---
**Author:** ![ErinPuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/50 "2004-08-13T17:20:12Z")
(I just graduated from high school in June.) I never learned about Vietnam. I learned how to write a check in eighth grade, but I never actually wrote one until last year. I never learned how to write a lab report that didn’t suck, although apparently it was taught. Because I was ahead in math and took geometry in 8th grade, I had basically forgotten it by the time I took the SAT. I was absent the day we learned the uses of “por” and “para” in Spanish, and no one ever went over it again, so it’s the one thing I still get confused on. ---
**Author:** ![Agent\_Cooper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@Agent\_Cooper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Cooper)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2004, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/51 "2004-08-13T20:49:23Z")
i wish i had learned more about basic electrical skills (this could fall in with general household repair 101), car repair, and more about finance. ---
**Author:** ![tygre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c4cdca/32.png) [@tygre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tygre)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2004, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/52 "2004-08-14T00:36:13Z")
I very vaguely recall being shown in Driver’s Ed how to check oil and fluid levels, but we never learned to parallel park, which I still suck at, 14 years later. More than once, in large cities, I’ve wound up hiking multiple blocks since I couldn’t squeeze into a parallel spot. I graduated in IL in '92, and I passed the equivalency test to skip Consumer Education. I knew most of the answers from my voracious reading more than practical experience, though. Never did laundry until I went to college, or cooked more than sporadically. I can use a sewing machine, but I never took typing, which would have served me far better in the long run. Never covered anything past WWII in high school history, and nothing about Mexico or Canada except what directly impacted the US. Everything I know about US History from 1945 onward is from my own readings or college. My home-repair knowledge is from my dad, but I am ignorant of most car-related issues. I can change a flat and drive a stick shift, but that’s about it. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2004, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560/53 "2004-08-14T02:45:08Z")
> [@Jeep's Phoenix](#): > > … > > As far as building and fixing things, I never relied on the high school for that; Dad taught me all of that material. . Hey, me too! Everything I know about building and fixing things I learned from my Dad. I know just as much about these subjects as he does. Which is to say, next to nothing. I am pretty good at changing light bulbs, and I would know how to change one of those old-timey fuses people had before circuit breakers were used. Seriously though after reading this I am glad my parents valued education and we always lived in areas with good schools. I don’t think I took a formal geography class after 5th grade, but it was included in other classes after that. We also balanced pretend checkbooks in 5th grade but never after that. Luckily it stuck with me…it isn’t rocket science after all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-you-have-learned-in-high-school-but-didnt/259560.md?page=2)