You want a simplistic answer to a simplistic question? The operative word in the sentence you quoted is Lessons, the plural of lesson. Primary school is the accumulation of knowledge as a child without an express link to some specific purpose. Overall the lessons help later in life in a variety of ways. Cursive writing is a pretty simple skill to learn. It allows for faster writing and it helps with motor skills which a young child needs.
You’re competent to have an opinion.
I’m stilll mad at my mom for not speaking Hungarian to us when we were kids. She grew up in the bad old days (that are coming around again, shit) when speaking anything other than English was completely sus. When I tried studying it later, it was very difficult. And to add insult to injury, my mom criticized my accent.
I asked my father about that once. His parents were first generation and grew up fully bilingual, speaking fluent Serbo-Croatian. My father can speak just a very little bit. I can’t speak a word. Not only was it to some degree an issue of assimilation (but less serious where he lived, where ethnic enclaves were common), but he said the main reason was that his parents preferred to have a language of their own the kids couldn’t understand 
.
Sewing. I’ve never sewn anything since school.
Yes. I think everybody does that on some level. Lefties more so because of smearing. You should appreciate modern pens. The Pilot Precise V series dries instantly and writes streak free until empty. I’m sure other’s have followed in their path. The pen came out in 1980.
My mom (second oldest of seven) grew up in a small town with a lot of other Hungarians. They moved into Columbus (OH) when she was six or seven, and they lived in the German part of town. She was often the only Hungarian and/or Catholic in her school classes. That marked her.
I made an ashtray out of clay in school.
Boy, that skill sure came in handy!
I’ve sewn buttons back on when they’ve come off (although that’s not something I was taught at school). Does that count?
Typing class was the most useful thing I learned. I can still rip off 80 wpm while others are hunting and pecking at thier keyboards.
History was outdated, incomplete, and biased. English literature was boring but I did like a few books we read. The Brothers Karamazov was a usless slog and is why I still hate Russia. It was like something you have to do in prison, you are sentenced to read this awful book.
The most useless skill was playing the Recorder, a small flute everyone had to learn. Why, why , why?
Because they were cheap, cheap, cheap to buy, buy, buy.
How about a ‘most useful skills’ thread?
Matrices in mathematics. Also Critical Path Analysis.
Intervisibility in geography. Only used it once, in the army, and that was for a test paper.
Well, (a) you’d flatly stated that “lessons people think are useless in school are the ones that provide a foundation for a more satisfying and productive life”, which struck me as a, uh, ‘simplistic’ claim — and (b) if it’ll help, I’ll shrug and mention a second ‘lesson’ that also took classroom time away from, y’know, useful stuff that’s provided a foundation for a more satisfying and productive life.
Metal shop helped me learn how to make a money clip. I gave to my dad. Even polished it myself. About five years later, I found it in the back of a drawer. I understood. It was ugly as hell. I’m positive that I haven’t made a single thing from metal since, nor really wanted to.
Some people have been naming skills that they’ve never used, but the OP wasn’t really explicit about whether “useless skills” means skills that have been useless to you or skills that are useless in general.
It is possible to know from personal experience that a skill is usefull, but it is not possible to know purely from personal experience that a skill is useless. Just because you’ve never had a use for a skill, that doesn’t mean that other people haven’t. Or that you never will in the future. Or that you haven’t had opportunities to use that skill that you haven’t taken advantage of.
I don’t think its particularly simplistic. A well rounded education provides broader opportunities in life. It doesn’t require a person use everything they learned and by extend to discard everything not used as useless. It just allows more avenues to pursue. You don’t have to go back too far in history to see examples of people who were taught a single skill and that became their future.
I assumed either/or. Cursive is close to useless or at the very least unnecessary in general in modern society. I don’t regret learning or knowing it and have used it heavily at times in my life. But I have zero objection to it being dropped from school curricula. Spend the time on other stuff.
Learning how to use a T-square on a drafting board, use technical lettering or draw a proper-looking vector, etc. was likely useful to a small minority of students when I went to school. But it was utterly, utterly useless to me. And I imagine it hasn’t been of much practical use since computer design overtook free-hand drafting an age ago.
A LOT of what kids learn as “skills” are just vehicles to insert the ideas behind the skills into their cute little heads.
And yes, there are a bunch of teachers and school administrations that confuse teaching the skill as an end goal (WRONG!) with teaching the concepts the skill demonstrates and instills (RIGHT!).
The problem is, that general statement isn’t much help on specifics. What if the time I’d spent on cursive had been spent on, say, geology? Or astronomy? Or any one of a dozen other subjects?
Given what you’re saying here, I could argue that studying a different subject would’ve likewise been part of a well-rounded education that provides broader opportunities in life — allowing more avenues, instead of that single-skill stuff — but, for some reason, I was required to broaden my education with cursive rather than with geology. I was required to broaden my education with cursive rather than with astronomy. I was required to broaden my education with cursive rather than with something that could just as easily be plugged into talk about ‘roundedness’.
A very astute observation. And this is exactly why I say that learning higher math like calculus, a computer language, and being exposed to liberal arts like literature, are an important part of education even if one never directly or obviously uses those skills in later life.
Then you might know more about geology or astronomy, but you wouldn’t be able to sign your name to a legal document.