I used a slide rule for high school chemistry, then used a calculator in college and professional life. As an engineer I used calculators and computers, but a kept a slide rule on my desk, I only to mess with people. Now I collect them.
My high school offered some things as electives, and some as requirements.
Cursive was a requirement; chemistry and physics and biology were requirements; geology, like theater and metal shop and calculus and Latin, was optional.
Oh my lord, yes. When those first appeared I tried to replicate my signature. Absolutely impossible. I still sorta sign my name, but it just comes out as a snowflake unique different unrecognizable squiggle every time. Nobody comparing those to my written signature are going to recognize them the same, ever.
You sound like a shill for Big Kitchen Scale.
When my brother talked me into joining the Navy and getting into nuclear power school, one of the incentives he mentioned was that they’d teach me how to use a slide rule. He was misinformed (or misleading me, but he didn’t become a recruiter until a few years later).
Are you saying you had cursive instruction in High School? Or are you just comparing HS electives with grade school requirements? I first learned cursive in third grade, as the follow on from printing. Also there was no Latin or geology to be found in my High School, I would have loved to have taken geology. I’d also rather have been smote dead than have been forced to take Latin, as used to be the case. I know it’s still arguably useful as an intro to Western latinate languages, but I sucked at “foreign” languages generally.
I sign all the touchscreen things with an X. Whether with fingertip or stylus. Works great. Try it; you’ll like it. 
I’m behind the times; I still sign things “Twitter”.
That was my reaction. Cursive in High School? I was thinking all of that list in primary school.
Another vote for “cursive and sentence diagrams”. Even as a kid it struck me as really wasteful to be teaching sentence diagrams when it was obvious that much of the class could barely even read at all. And cursive was worse than useless for anything other than writing a signature, there’s no point in writing things down in near-unreadable script. Printing is slower but at least I can read it afterwards.
The various stuff I learned to do in metal shop was useless in the practical sense, but I enjoyed it and that’s a useful thing in its own way.
Macrame. Never have I used it since 5th grade art class.
Square roots, though I admit I had problems with them. Math is not my strong point. Never got beyond geometry, and I have never had to find the volume of anything.
I can understand your disappointment finding the gift in the back of a drawer but many handmade childhood gifts fall into that category. But if you referred to an actual metal shop class, that entails learning to use a metal lathe, milling machine, casting forge and other tools. Standard classes have a student make a tool box that consists of a brake bender, cutting tools, riveting tools and spot welders. Like all classes, it’s a learning experience that should steer a student into other learning opportunities if they desire.
My final project in metals shop was a foot long knife. I had to get permission to make it. It went beyond the generic projects students were tasked with and I think that was the point.
The mechanical drawing class I took was useful when I wanted to modify and expand my garage many years later. It ended up being a complete rebuild. I had to provide the city with scaled drawings of the project. The drafting tools I bought (used) from school turned out to be useful.
It does not fit in what sense? It is true that Ælfric drew an analogy with Latin (“dativus is forġiefendlīċ”), but how is referring to the English case of the indirect object as “dative” misleading? The case in question can occur in the object of a preposition in Old English, as can various other cases.
Are German students confused when the “Wem-Fall” is referred to as “Dativ”?
See, I would have assumed required cursive would mean that he had to write in cursive. That was true of one of my schools, too, to the point I never considered writing in print until college.
This was in Junior High School. We didn’t have most of the equipment you mentioned.
And as someone else has mentioned, the OP was not clear as to whether they were asking about a skill that was useless to someone personally; or if, rather, they meant useless to all of us.
And I really wasn’t that disappointed. I didn’t give it to him under the impression that he would love it. I gave it to him because at 12 years old, I had absolutely no use for a money clip and didn’t know what else to do with it.
Fast moving thread! But back to signatures on US paper money, look at Steven Mnuchin’s signature. He got called out for printing his signature instead of using cursive.
Heh heh
I’ve often thought that there’s a close correlation between computer languages and the instructions that air traffic controllers give to pilots. They both use a subset of English words to communicate a clear, unambiguous course of action.
Anyone remember the Koeppen system?
ironically they taught it to us in social studies class and not earth science
(By the same teacher who explained to us the physical differences between the races)
Well, my young adult niece is a lawyer, and her cursive signature is an important part of her professional identity. Maybe I inhabit a different world than the rest of you, but I have yet to see a signature that isn’t cursive.
According to Mnuchin’s own statement about that, because the “signature” would be there forever, he wanted something “clean” and readable. IOW, it sounds like this isn’t his actual signature that he would use to sign cheques or legal documents, but was motivated by egotism so everybody could see his name. I’m sure that there exists someone, somewhere, who actually prints their signature, but I’ve never seen it.
ETA: Yep, his original signature was an illegible scrawl ..
Ahem.
