I had several subjects I liked, History, German, Math, Physics, but my favorite always was English (as a foreign language). English lessons started in 5th grade, and I had been looking forward to it because I wanted to know what the people on the radio and the records were singing about. Learning English opened a new world and whole cultures to me, as well as a lot of fine literature. It also helped me a lot in my career as an IT guy, and most of all made it possible to communicate with you all at this board!
Math usually every year until high school. I still like math, but chemistry and especially physics, I think I like more.
The reason I always hated history class is that I took it back when we had to memorize all the kings, wars and dates. I loved art history, though.
Biology. I raised insects and spiders and actually bought a Harvard university textbook in grade eight. I was reading college-level textbooks (generally) in high school and won some awards too. I have a very good visual memory, which makes it easier for me than most people. Too bad this doesn’t apply to most other topics!
I like particle physics. Too bad that wasn’t a course by itself. (I am bad at math, so I can’t do most of physics.)
And I like history.
If we’re sticking with high school. I’ll go with social studies and science. For social studies I had world geography, world history, American history and government/economics. World history was the only stinker for a semester, first semester had a good teacher, he left on a LOA (alcoholism rumored) so we got the track coach who was pretty bad.
Science was biology, chemistry, physics and Anatomy/earth science. The physics class was notoriously difficult but the teacher was great.
With band and Spanish, I didn’t have room for many computer classes or electives
Foreign languages. I took credit courses in Mandarin and Inuktitut, and loved it.
The only high school course I got A’s in was Physics, but in those days, Physics was analog thinking, not advanced Math.
The most life-useful thing I learned at school was touch-typimg. 20th century blacksmithing – t I suspect the keyboard will die before I do.
For high school, I had many good teachers but the class I enjoyed most was Modern History. The teacher was very gifted and able to simplify complex events without missing anything fundamental. Indeed, the class was at a university level. A third of the time was spent studying the history of political ideas from Solon and Gracchus to Marx and Kissinger. A third analyzed important events in modern history from the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam. The final third of time was spent collecting and analyzing current news from papers and The Economist and using this as a basis to discuss recent history in many countries (such as Lebanon or the Warsaw Pact) to provide background to the events happening at the time I took the course. RIP Mr. Bakker.
History. It’s a subject I’ve enjoyed throughout my lifetime.
I love this idea. I think this was the approach my history prof used to teach the Peloponnesian Wars during the Bush Jr. era as an allegory for American infighting. Although apparently these days it’s more often thought of as a parable for US-China relations?
I do wish, however, that more profound peaces were taught. It’s always this battle or that war, and only through reading authors like Thadeus Russell on my own time did I ever learn about what everyday history was like for the common people. Is the “Great Man Theory” still dominant in most history education?
Science classes. I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a “scientist”. I didn’t really realize what science was until I got well into my college years, though.
In grade school, it would have definitely been reading classes. Every year, we’d get a textbook full of short stories and such, which we would work through over the course of the year, but invariably, I would read all the way through it before Christmas. 
In high school, it was physics. It interested me a lot, and we had a very good, engaging teacher.
In college, it was the one semester of meteorology I took as an elective (I majored in business). When I was a kid, I had been very interested in meteorology, and getting to learn more about it in detail was fascinating.
Sorry, I missed this earlier.
My history teacher used a “cause and effect” approach. Sure, we may have been studying ancient Greece, for example, but he showed us how what happened there in those days affected subsequent history. If you’ve ever seen the TV show “Connections,” hosted by James Burke, my teacher took the same approach.
He was always adamant that what happened in the past will affect us in the future, and so geared his classes towards that approach. It helped that he was a friendly and personable guy with a great sense of humour, who could accept wisecracks from the class clowns, as long as he could throw out a few himself. Yes, we learned kings and wars and dates, but those took second place to cause and effect in our study of history.
I always loved English and Literature. When I was in first or second grade, we had grammar workbooks to fill out. Near the end of the year, I decided to just go ahead and finish mine. A classmate noticed, and asked me to finish hers too. Next thing you know, I had done the workbooks of half the class. The teacher was not pleased.
As for any reading or literature courses, I would read through the whole textbook as soon as I got it in my hot little hands. (After a while it was always the same stuff anyway, The Monkey’s Paw, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Most Dangerous Game, etc.)
I wrote a novel when I was in fifth grade. Hopefully it’s not still lying around somewhere!
I did flunk a reading class once. We moved in the middle of a school year and I somehow got placed in a reading class in which the whole curriculum was to read comic book versions of classic stories and write little reports. I was offended.
I loved most science classes - biology, geology, anatomy but hated chemistry. I was also a reader, so any class that I could read in was for me. Some history classes were interesting, like the Modern History class I had in jr high. We covered the JFK assassination thoroughly. The teacher was obsessed with it. It seemed like most history classes covered the same events over and over. We barely learned anything about WWI & II. I didn’t even know there was a Korean War until I saw MASH!
Geography, “physical science” (a combo of physics and chem), biology, and art.
Happy to have you aboard!
I always loved the science courses. Except for 10th grade geometry, math was easy but boring. The same for pre-calc and calculus. Then I discovered abstract algebra and I was hooked. Never looked back.
Well thanks Hari, I appreciate that!
sociology was very enlightening, so was psychology and criminal justice
I wish I had taken a course in affective neuroscience, I think I would’ve liked that.
Easily any of the science classes - biology, life/earth science, chemistry, physics, and advanced science my sr year. Uncle Ed Jarman taught chem & adv sci, and was a hoot, with eyes splayed so far apart you never knew where he was actually looking. And most of adv sci was cooking in the classroom dressed up as actual labs 
That, and Latin - three years of it, I was the only 3rd year student, and spent all my time either translating Latin works (e.g., the Iliad), or teaching the 2nd year students I was lumped in with. Remember just enough about it to be really useful on Jeopardy!
History followed closely by English. Never could figure out why people had such trouble with Shakespeare. The language was very straight forward for me. Of course I a) was raised by a librarian and a science teacher, and b) didn’t get most of the jokes until I was much older.