# What were the most useless skills you were taught in school? **URL:** \ **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:** 1\ **Showing post:** 224
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2026, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648/224 "2026-06-08T15:15:40Z")
Yes, I sort of know that. I even started a thread about cursive to learn more about your (the USA’s) tribulations with it. > [@What is cursive?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-cursive/971828): > > Intrigued by this article: I asked myself: what is it that Americans cannot read or write? Do they mean any fluently handwritten text that is not in AllCaps (which I see in Wikipedia is rather called block letters when handwritten)? It may be terminological confusion on my part, because the word cursive (or kursiv or cursiva) means italics in Spanish and German, while in [Italian](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrittura_corsiva) there are even [chinese characters](https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrittura_corsiva#/media/File:CMOC_Treasures_of_Ancient_China_exhibit_-_classical_poem_in_cursive_script.jpg) described as cursive. Then French distinguishes between [cursive](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_cursive) and [scripte](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89criture_scripte) handw… Thoughts and prayers, I guess. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-the-most-useless-skills-you-were-taught-in-school/1030648)._