# 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:** 20
### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2026, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/381 "2026-06-11T22:29:47Z")
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> That is one very specific style of cursive.
In fact, the specific style of cursive most American students were taught in most of the 20th Century was the [Palmer Method.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method) It replaced [Spencerian Script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencerian_script) which had been widely taught. Spencerician was itself a version of a style known as English Roundhand. Palmer was faster to write
Palmer script
> **[Palmer Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method#/media/File:Palmer_Method_sample.jpg)**
>
> The Palmer Method of penmanship instruction was developed and promoted by Austin Palmer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was intended to simplify the earlier Spencerian method, which had been the main handwriting learning method since the 1840s. The Palmer Method soon became the most popular handwriting system in the United States.
> Under the method, students were taught to adopt a uniform system of cursive writing with rhythmic elliptical motions.
> The method developed around 1888 a...
Spencerian script
> **[Gem City Business College](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gem_City_Business_College#/media/File:Spencerian_example.jpg)**
>
> Gem City Business College was a business school in Quincy, Illinois. It was founded by DeLafayette Musselman in 1870.
> The Musselman Building was part of the school. The five-story building opened in 1892.
> Robert O. Brown wrote a history of the college published by Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in 1958.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2026, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/382 "2026-06-11T23:37:00Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> The pattern breaks after that.
A different pattern continues though.
11 x 12 = 132. The outside digits are the multiplier (12 : 1\_2) and they add up to the inner digit (1 + 2 = 3 : 132).
So what is 11 x 24? It’s 264. What is 11 x 36? It’s 396.
It does start to get complicated as the numbers get larger, but the pattern just needs tweaking to accommodate.
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/383 "2026-06-12T00:01:48Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#):
>
> A lot of forms have a block for _printing_ your name and a block for _signing_ your name. If you don’t know cursive, do you print your name in both blocks?
I print my name in one block, and make an indecipherable scrawl in the other block, while thinking to myself that I’m perfectly capable of writing in cursive exactly as I was taught but well the thing is fuck cursive heh no seriously fuck cursive oh sure I can now give an amiable chuckle about the whole thing but really all kidding aside fuck cursive.
Maybe I’m alone in this? I also have things to say about pledging allegiance.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/384 "2026-06-12T10:18:59Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#):
>
> Spencerician was itself a version of a style known as English Roundhand.
As mentioned in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “When I Was a Lad” (“I copied all the letters in a big round hand.”).
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### Author:  [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/385 "2026-06-12T10:44:43Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> > [@aceplace57](#):
> >
> > The pattern breaks after that.
>
> A different pattern continues though.
>
> 11 x 12 = 132. The outside digits are the multiplier (12 : 1\_2) and they add up to the inner digit (1 + 2 = 3 : 132).
>
> So what is 11 x 24? It’s 264. What is 11 x 36? It’s 396.
>
> It does start to get complicated as the numbers get larger, but the pattern just needs tweaking to accommodate.
If you want to know if a number is cleanly divisible by eleven, make every other digit a negative igit, then add up the total through the entire number. If the total is zero, then the number is a multiple of eleven
396 becomes 3 - 9 + 6 = 0, so it fits.
Of course, today people would just put it into the calculator on their phone or whatever. or most likely would even care. but back in the day tricks like that saved you the time it would take to work out through long division.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/386 "2026-06-12T13:08:45Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> teachers writing on the board in cursive
To follow up on this, we have Einstein
[ ](https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/f060bb28-0de4-449a-8885-1a000fcc566f/einstein-blackboard-abc-gmh-250314_1741965568922_hpEmbed_9x5.jpg)
Feynman
[https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/img/FLP\_II/f35-00/f35-00.jpg](https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/img/FLP_II/f35-00/f35-00.jpg)
Homer Newell
[ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Homer_E_Newell_NASA.jpg)
You may have just had the wrong teachers 😛
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/387 "2026-06-12T13:12:16Z")
I do not think such tricks are useless, but mentally calculating whether a number is divisible by 7 or 11 is probably much more rare than by other small factors, and, therefore, the tests less well-known.
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### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/388 "2026-06-12T15:16:07Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> A different pattern continues though.
>
> 11 x 12 = 132. The outside digits are the multiplier (12 : 1\_2) and they add up to the inner digit (1 + 2 = 3 : 132).
>
> So what is 11 x 24? It’s 264. What is 11 x 36? It’s 396.
I like that pattern and will use it. I kill time waiting for appointments doing multiplication and division in my head. It’s relaxing and takes away stress from my upcoming appointment.
Now I have a new tool to use.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2026, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/389 "2026-06-12T15:42:38Z")
One I do sometimes is a method I developed (I wasn’t the first to develop it, but I did develop it) for doing approximate square roots in my head. The basic idea is that if x is an approximation for sqrt(n), then n/x is (in some sense) just as good an approximation, and any number in between x and n/x is an even better approximation. And one way to find a number between two rational numbers is to add the numerators and add the denominators. So that gets you a new approximation, and you can repeat.
For instance, for sqrt(2), the first approximation is 1, and then 2/1 is 2, so \frac{1}{1} \< \sqrt{2} \< \frac{2}{1}. In between those is 3/2, so now we have \frac{3}{2} \> \sqrt2 \> \frac{4}{3}. Combine those to 7/5, and now \frac{7}{5} \< \sqrt{2} \< \frac{10}{7}.
(aside: Is there a standard mathematical notation for saying that a number is between two other numbers, without having to specify which of the other two numbers is greater?)
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/390 "2026-06-13T01:48:14Z")
Well, I can imagine someone memorizing a table of logarithms. To four digits, say— that is around a thousand four-digit numbers. Then you can do cube roots, too! More useful than remembering a million digits of pi, anyways.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/391 "2026-06-13T02:05:28Z")
If you memorize the logarithms, you don’t need to memorize the cube roots.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/392 "2026-06-13T02:18:56Z")
That is what I meant— you can do any roots. For example, the decimal logarithm of 2 is 0.3010, a fact I am sure 80% of people reading this thread already have memorized. Dividing by 3 yields 0.1003, while [I had to cheat and look at the table] log(1.260) = 0.1004, close enough so you do not even need to do any interpolation.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/393 "2026-06-13T02:25:02Z")
A signature isn’t useful because it is legible. A signature is useful because it is unique to the signer, and difficult for anyone else to forge. It’s more artwork than words. I don’t know if they still have art class in middle school, but I think they should have a unit teaching students to create a unique signature without learning cursive.
If you print your signature, it is easier to forge. I would imagine a bank would look askance if you sign a mortgage with printing.
I deliver prescription drugs to clients who must sign for deliveries. If they are 20 years old or less, 90% will print their signature. I feel sorry for them.
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/394 "2026-06-13T02:26:55Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> I don’t know if they still have art class in middle school
Wow, why would they end art classes in school? Is that really happening?
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### Author:  [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/395 "2026-06-13T04:13:54Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#):
>
> Wow, why would they end art classes in school? Is that really happening?
Massively and has been for decades. It’s been part of the budget crunch for a million years, but the argument I’ve heard is that it accelerated after 2002 when new academic standards were put in place tying test scores to funding. Anything that didn’t boost academic test-taking became, if not superfluous, at least a luxury that couldn’t always be afforded. This was walked back a bit later, but the knock-on effect I’m sure lingered. Public schools are locally funded in the US - the poorer the community, the closer to the bone budgets are.
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/396 "2026-06-13T07:52:56Z")
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> Well, I can imagine someone memorizing a table of logarithms.
My Dad had to memorize logarithms for the PE exam (Principles and Practice of Engineering). But maybe only 10 were required. There are a couple of situations where just known approximate logarithms in handy. I think because some natural phenomena and equations are just naturally logarithmic, not for multiplication as such (but it’s been a while, I can’t actually remember my own experience).
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### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/397 "2026-06-13T07:59:15Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#):
>
> I would imagine a bank would look askance if you sign a mortgage with printing.
That’s why you have witnesses. Your mark to indicate agreement, witnesses to attest that you made the mark.
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/398 "2026-06-13T09:21:31Z")
But what if the witnesses signed with printing? The universe would collapse into a singularity.
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/399 "2026-06-13T10:03:16Z")
Do you have experience to suggest that banks are okay with a printed signature?
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### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2026, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/400 "2026-06-13T12:24:46Z")
I don’t - but I do have experience that every mortgage (and many other bank documents) require not just a signature, not just witnesses , but notarization. Which in the US, basically means the notary watched the person sign it and verified their identity. Not sure why it would matter if a notarized signature was in cursive.
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