# What were the most useless skills you were taught in school?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [June 5, 2026, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648 "2026-06-05T19:11:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 10
### Author:  [@Mighty\_Mouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mighty_Mouse)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/181 "2026-06-07T18:32:44Z")
My daughter had to create a signature for her passport that is sort-of cursive. Otherwise she writes in print. The only people I know under 30 who write in cursive are those who went to certain Catholic schools where writing in cursive seems to be some kind of religious requirement. And of course their handwriting is illegible to me.
I do write in cursive, but I’m older Gen X, most people my age do. My cursive is also illegible. If I write notes I expect others to read, I either print or write VERY slowly and carefully in pencil. Like a note in a wedding, farewell or condolence card.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/182 "2026-06-07T18:55:49Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Just like Steve Mnuchin’s printed “signature”, it’s purely symbolic.
All signatures are purely symbolic. Whether Mnuchin signs contracts that way or not is irrelevant: He could sign contracts that way, and it’d be exactly as valid as if it were cursive.
> [@RivkahChaya](#):
>
> I firmly believe that, if all children across the US were being taught conversions as I was, that was _the **exact reason** the conversion failed_.
It’s a large part of it, at least. The hard part about converting between American units and metric is that it involves American units.
> [@Peter\_Morris](#):
>
> Are you implying that lawyers _don’t_ use clear unambiguous language? You find legalese hard to understand, so you think it is unclear?
Sorry, quite the opposite. Legalese is, as you say, clear (or at least, good legalese is: There are some bad lawyers who think it’s just to be a shibboleth, and they write bad legalese). My point is, that lawyers need to learn how to write clear legalese, and I think that learning a programming language would be a valuable step in learning that, since programming languages are (and need to be) even more clear (though they have the advantage of dealing with only a very narrow domain, as opposed to legalese that has to be able to encompass all of human activity).
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/183 "2026-06-07T19:58:24Z")
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> **But my signature is still cursive** , just like that of almost every literate human being on the planet!
China? Japan? Cherokee? Korean?
My signature at one time might have been based on cursive, but it is now a scrawl that no one would call cursive. One time they said my signature was not legible, and i said- “I can write my name, but that is not my signature”.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> All signatures are purely symbolic. Whether Mnuchin signs contracts that way or not is irrelevant: He could sign contracts that way, and it’d be exactly as valid as if it were cursive.
Right.
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### Author:  [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/184 "2026-06-07T20:50:58Z")
I worked the last 14 years of my career in a Montessori school, and the preschool kids learned to write cursive early. It’s a public school, though, so there were always kids who came in later who never learned.
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/185 "2026-06-07T21:16:45Z")
I learned in kindergarten to walk in a line to another location. Hands packed tight to my thighs. Mouth shut. Eyes forward.
It’s never served me well. Mainly because no one else knows Miss Peterson’s rules on walking in line.
Their education is lacking, I fear.
🤨
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/186 "2026-06-07T22:02:03Z")
> [@glee](#):
>
> amo
> amas
> amat
> amamus
> amant
My orthodontist, head boy of an important Catholic Boys School, commented on the irony of being taught the first conjugation with a strap
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/187 "2026-06-07T22:06:58Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> Teaching history as a series of dates to memorize tells you almost nothing of the panorama of it.
> [@](#):
>
> “Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To ‘learn’ history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.”
… Or is that still too soon?
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/188 "2026-06-07T22:07:05Z")
> [@rbroome](#):
>
> I guess it is just me but every one of the useless skills mentioned so far either was valuable or would have helped me I as I grew up.
It’s not just you. Looking back at my education I think all those “useless” skills were quite valuable _based on what was happening while I was in school._
It’s obvious some of the posters here have never lived without pocket calculators. Well, they didn’t come out until I was in college (and even then they were hella expensive) , so memorizing multiplication and division tables and using a slide rule were everyday tasks. When I was in journalism school in the 1970s typing was considered such an essential skill that it was actually a requirement for graduation. Writing in cursive was a marker for elementary school teachers to evaluate hand/eye coordination and fine motor skills, plus putting words on paper was faster than printing, and an important step between learning to print and typing or shorthand. And while I didn’t take calculus, everyone I knew who went on to major in math or science in college was grateful for at least an introduction to calc.
As for diagramming sentences, when I was senior editor at my agency, I found it incredibly useful for taking the work of my coworkers who weren’t strong writers, and diagramming problem sentences to a) figure out what the hell they were trying to say and b) using the diagram to explain to them how to write it better.
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2026, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/189 "2026-06-07T22:13:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> If we’re counting obsolete skills, probably technical drawing. I wasn’t very good at it in school, because at the time, the proper tools for it didn’t exist. Now that they do, I’m pretty good at CAD.
My department suggested that students be taught CAD in the late 1970’s. The mechanical engineering department insisted that pencils were important. However, as I knew even at the time, there was no teaching involved: you were assessed on pencil skills you either already had, or never had.
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### Author:  [@sunacres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunacres)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/190 "2026-06-08T01:44:52Z")
I’m with @rbroome on this. I think most folks here are complaining about having had shitty teachers. Being educated means wide exposure to arts, culture, science, etc. but most importantly developing the skill of learning. The utility of the subject matter becomes paramount in career training, but otherwise it isn’t necessarily the point. Sadly, many teachers don’t get this and are just sadistic brutes.
I can’t think of any skill I was taught that didn’t contribute in some way to my understanding of the world.
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### Author:  [@ricepad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ricepad)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/191 "2026-06-08T01:48:14Z")
> [@sunacres](#):
>
> I can’t think of any skill I was taught that didn’t contribute in some way to my understanding of the world.
IMO, even the stuff I don’t use taught me that I don’t like doing/can’t do that stuff. Like art. I’m a crap artist. But if not for 8th grade art, I wouldn’t know how crappy an artist I really am. And I can _do_ differential equations - or at least I could at one time - I knew I hated them and would never want to use them. Hence, in high school I knew not to pursue a lot of STEM careers that would have used DiffyQ.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/192 "2026-06-08T01:52:44Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> It’s obvious some of the posters here have never lived without pocket calculators. Well, they didn’t come out until I was in college (and even then they were hella expensive) , so memorizing multiplication and division tables and using a slide rule were everyday tasks.
That kind of basic math knowledge also alleviates quantitative cluelessness. Do people really prefer to haul out their phones and bang some numbers into a keypad in order to know, for example, what 18 times 6 is?
With a little basic arithmetic knowledge embedded in your memory, your brain can automatically rewrite that as 9 times 12 and remember that it equals 108, in about half the time it would take you to put your hand in your pocket to start pulling out your phone.
Furthermore, that way you have the experience of **actively constructing** your quantitative knowledge from some elementary facts, rather than just passively receiving it from a device, and having no cognitive checks on whether the number makes sense or had a data entry error or what.
Some of these complaints about the “uselessness” of such elementary skills are a bit like hearing, say, basketball players complain that it was useless for them as kids to do drills where they threw the ball in the air and clapped their hands before catching it, because when playing a basketball game you never do that. Um, yeah, right, but the point is it helped give you the skills and agility that support the things you **do** need to do.
I get that some people were traumatized by poor math teaching in school and never want to go to the effort of thinking quantitatively again, and that calculating devices make that possible for them. I’m not telling those people that they should make themselves suffer through mental arithmetic instead of using technology to avoid it.
I’m just saying that their aversion to quantitative thinking doesn’t automatically mean that learning quantitative thinking skills and facts is “useless”, merely because technology now makes it feasible to avoid quantitative thinking entirely.
Same thing for diagramming sentences. As others have pointed out, the fundamental purpose of that technique is not to give students the ability to transcribe the words of a sentence all mixed up and laid out on little line segments. The purpose is to understand different parts of speech and how they work together in grammar and syntax. If your teacher wasn’t able to help you make that connection, that’s too bad, but it doesn’t make the skill itself intrinsically useless.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/193 "2026-06-08T02:11:35Z")
> [@sunacres](#):
>
> Being educated means wide exposure to arts, culture, science, etc. but most importantly developing the skill of learning. The utility of the subject matter becomes paramount in career training, but otherwise it isn’t necessarily the point.
While this is true, on the other hand we were going to spend the same amount of time in school regardless. If we hadn’t been taught the things we were, we would have been taught something else. Which would also support development of the skill of learning things, but which might have additionally been useful or enriching in its own right.
I should also mention that some students do still learn cursive. Several of my students know it. But they learned it because they wanted to, because they thought it looked neat. Learning things because they wanted to is going to do far more for them than being forced to learn anything. Even more so for my student a few years ago who wrote out all of his homework in Elder Futhark runes: Practically speaking, that’s even more useless than cursive. But it’s still what he chose to teach himself.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/194 "2026-06-08T02:29:30Z")
> [@Melbourne](#):
>
> > [@Chefguy](#):
> >
> > Teaching history as a series of dates to memorize tells you almost nothing of the panorama of it.
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > “Instruction in world history in the so-called high schools is even today in a very sorry condition. Few teachers understand that the study of history can never be to learn historical dates and events by heart and recite them by rote; that what matters is not whether the child knows exactly when this battle or that was fought, when a general was born, or even when a monarch (usually a very insignificant one) came into the crown of his forefathers. No, by the living God, this is very unimportant. To ‘learn’ history means to seek and find the forces which are the causes leading to those effects which we subsequently perceive as historical events.”
>
> … Or is that still too soon?
This is exactly right. As a kid I disliked history because all it meant to me was the need to remember dates. That’s not what history is. It’s about major human events that shaped the life we have today, and understanding how and why those things happened.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/195 "2026-06-08T04:21:03Z")
> [@Filbert](#):
>
> Behold this diagram from the instructions on where to place the supports for a polytunnel, I’ve shown it to a few British people and it took them all a few seconds to even notice:
>
> [https://construct.firsttunnels.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/6dg.png](https://construct.firsttunnels.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/6dg.png)
That is nuts, but I will say it again explicitly: converting units, at least the way @RivkahChaya described, is useless, because if the UK used the metric system no one would sell you a “6ft polytunnel” in the first place, and it would be absolutely illegal to use any non-standard units on official plans and blueprints. So there will be nothing to convert.
> [@rbroome](#):
>
> As far as cursive- I don’t understand. Who doesn’t need to write things down on occasion? Do you print words in block letters? I’m confused.
I think some people think there is a difference between “cursive” and “non-cursive” hands beyond these just being a couple of crude style descriptors applicable to the infinite possible variety of handwriting.
The only question is, can you write fast enough for general purposes, and legibly/aesthetically (can you read your own handwriting? 🙂 Not useless.
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Yes. Of course. Who would do otherwise? That’s how English is (legibly) written.
To this day, I have never learned how to “print” words, except I can (and have occasion to) do pretty good Roman square capitals— those are _inscriptional_ and not _print_, though.
Come to think of it, referring to “print” when you are talking about handwriting is a huge red herring. Misleading, and what does it even mean when you are _writing_ the letters? Ask: is it Italic? Looped? Do letters join up? Different countries have completely different models for students to imitate.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/196 "2026-06-08T04:44:43Z")
> [@Disinfectus](#):
>
> This was in Junior High School. We didn’t have most of the equipment you mentioned.
I envy you. I went to a parochial school prior to HS and we didn’t have any kind shop class. That would have been fun. The city has since torn down every single school because… I have no idea why… and I don’t think they have shop classes anymore in the fancy new HS. But it’s AIR CONDITIONED.
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### Author:  [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/197 "2026-06-08T05:39:51Z")
> [@doc481](#):
>
> How to hide under your desk in case of nuclear bomb. OMG duck and cover!!
That’s now completely useless. I’d never fit under there.
> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> Signatures as we know them today only became legally required with the passage of the Statute of Frauds by the English Parliament in 1677. Until then, a “signature” could be a seal, symbol, pictograph, or something else that was distinctive. But a “signature” as we understand the term today does usually involve cursive writing.
Thanks for posting that. I’ll have to look it up.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> What do you want cursive for?
Nowadays, I use it to take notes on what happens in our DnD campaign. Just doing it to keep in practice.
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### Author:  [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/198 "2026-06-08T07:12:59Z")
> [@Epson printing magenta instead of blue](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/epson-printing-magenta-instead-of-blue/10306/8):
>
> Cursive is probably “the new slide rule,”
But, unlike slide rules, cursive is still usefull.
You don’t have a slide rule any more. But you still have grandparents, and old photo albums, family bibles, old recipes, etc.
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### Author:  [@Filbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Filbert)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/199 "2026-06-08T07:53:38Z")
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> > [@Filbert](#):
> >
> > [https://construct.firsttunnels.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/6dg.png](https://construct.firsttunnels.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/6dg.png)
>
> That is nuts, but I will say it again explicitly: converting units, at least the way @RivkahChaya described, is useless, because if the UK used the metric system no one would sell you a “6ft polytunnel” in the first place, and it would be absolutely illegal to use any non-standard units on official plans and blueprints. So there will be nothing to convert.
Not really, it’s not like everything pops out of existence because it stops being sold. In fact it becomes even more important when you have older stuff made in one set of measurements needing to be repaired with newer stuff in another to know how the conversion works.
The UK does use the metric system mostly, just not 100%, there’s a few hangovers for reasons of tradition. The road distances being the main one, probably because it’s such a big job to change at this point. Liquids are metric except pints of beer in pubs and sometimes milk, beer for home consumption mostly being 500ml. I don’t think there are any exceptions left for weight- except the informal use of stones for humans, you can use either on medical forms.
Domestic sheds and greenhouses are odd- typically the ad will say something like 6x4 (often with no units) but the accurate size given in the description will always be in metric (and may actually be quite far off 6’x4’). If it’s sold with a description in imperial units but they don’t have to be accurate, while the metric ones have to be given and they do, which is it really? The polytunnel instructions only gave the imperial units for the length and width, which are dependent on the user’s accuracy, all the materials supplied were sized in metric.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2026, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/200 "2026-06-08T08:13:21Z")
> [@Filbert](#):
>
> typically the ad will say something like 6x4 (often with no units) but the accurate size given in the description will always be in metric
I work for a signage company here in Australia. We put up Real Estate hoardings that are often described as 6x4 or 8x12, but they’re actually 1800x1200mm and 2400x3600mm
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