'In health class, we had to plan a wedding': 20 useless things people actually learned in school

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Mar 27, 2024 4:00 PM EDT

Every school has its unique quirk within the curriculum that makes absolutely no sense. If there is one universal truth to education that extends from pre-K age through senior year of high school, it's that at any given moment, you are likely to encounter a head-scratching methodology to the way a certain subject is taught. 

Health class is always common fodder. Ensuring that everyone knows how to square dance is another bizarre lesson. I'm sure when students reach adulthood and are trying to wrap their brains around doing taxes correctly, they will be thinking, "if only I mastered square dancing, everything else would fall into place." When I was in elementary school, we had a P.E. teacher who enjoyed forcing us all to do 15 push-ups if we didn't catch a football with no warning. Scrawny children with poor hand-eye coordination like me were understandably scarred from this experience. Years later, all I learned from this experience was that this teacher was a very unhappy man who needed to flex his false sense of authority to make himself feel better. I guess knowing that you will encounter folks like that in life is the only valuable lesson there.

Keep scrolling below for these top useless things people learned in school, according to this r/AskReddit thread. For more stories like this, check out this post about a teacher who made HR scramble when they took their much-needed vacation.

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  • 01
    BANFF NATIONAL CREA Pately Pemind Adventure DEA ΤΟ PO Everything Teachable COURSES PROFESSOR/INSTRACTAR T: WAY TOO EASY STUDY GROUP 2+ CHALLE EFFORT RATING CHALLENGE 0.50 TALENT 5 BOR FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING 6/6 2 0.75 ZONE OF COMFORT BOT AT 街 WHAT Cor TAKES AWAY" FROM SOMETHING ELSE (STORY, SOCIAL, WORK) DRIVE TIME TRACKING HOW ANJOM Am DO YOU Chokse A COURS B FOURSE C Course D ૬ THIS ON MOST 1.00 در = 1.33 1.25 Ho 108 1.50 ZONE OF GROWTH ΑΒΙ VILLING TO ive? 1.75 T WORK SUR PAIN 2.00 (MAYBE) WAY T
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  • 02
    r/AskReddit Posted by u/highnrgy What's the most useless thing they teach in school?
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  • 03
    Ravensqueak The tongue/taste map. Not only useless, but incorrect. 28.6k Share
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  • 04
    Toshi3xx The entire life of my school founder, the worst of all is that they teach us the same thing all the years. 27.6k Share
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  • 05
    ZappaLlamaGamma · I graduated in 1991 for context and, while living in Phoenix, they taught us square dancing in gym class. I must say though that the most useful skill that I was taught at that school that I use every single day is typing. 23.7k Share ...
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  • 06
    zachdrop_ In order to graduate middle school you were required to complete the Cupid shuffle, cotton eyed joe, and electric slide in front of your class. I guess this taught us the concept of pure embarrassment 22.5k Share
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  • 07
    smango19 They taught competitive cup stacking in my elementary school. Still have no idea why. Edit: This was in central Canada, but clearly it was widespread across a lot of North America. Please stop asking me if I went to your school, I probably didn't 15.8k Share ...
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  • 08
    evilcaribou In my experience, the way gym and PE were taught were pretty useless because they never taught us how to train or improve our athletic abilities. It was just weeks of half heartedly playing basketball with minimal adult supervision, and then one day we had to run a mile and the coaches would go out of their way to humiliate anyone who couldn't just get up and run a mile under 10 minutes with no training or preparation. It put me off running and exercise in general for a long time.
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  • 09
    High_5 I was taught that Columbus knew that the world was round, but everyone else thought it was flat. So, yeah. That. 11.2k Share ..
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  • 10
    Ferum_Mafia The way the US public school system teaches it, Spanish. You learn it maybe half a year then forget it over the summer. You'd think with years of education we'd be better Spanish speakers but it's essentially useless the way it's taught. 10.2k Share
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  • 11
    gaylurking 'You won't have a calculator in your pocket in the real world!' Edit: yes I know how do do math I'm an engineer and I like math theory I promise I'm not a brain dead mobile addict 9.5k Share ...
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  • 12
    KoalaDeluxe According to my son, apparently everything... 9.3k 9.3k Share
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  • 13
    dumbinternetstuff. They mostly taught us to ask permission in order to use the bathroom. ↑ 6.7k Share
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  • 14
    V-_-V Not useless, just poorly taught: History It was just a collection of dates, names, and numbers. Memorize this stuff, we'll have a test. The significance of so many historical events was never taught or discussed. WW2 was the only one that was somewhat approached at scale, but even then it boiled down to Germany was off about WW1 and Hitler hated the Jews. This was at a good high school too, the whole class was in advanced classes (IB / AP). 2.7k Share ...
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  • 15
    RedDawnRose ⚫ That classical literature is the end all be all of reading. I get some books have cultural significance, but that doesn't warrant a 6 week in depth analysis of a book kids can't relate to, with most being about challenges they will never face, culminating in an essay that's basically "I understood it" repeated over and over backed up by quotes. If you want your kids to never touch a book in their lives ever again, THAT is how you do it. 2.6k Share
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  • 16
    [deleted] Cursive. I have never used it outside of signing my name. 1.8k Share ...
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  • 17
    myheartisstillracing. , They don't do it anymore, but back around 2000 in health class we all had to plan a wedding. Like, pair up and budget out a rental space, food, rings, etc. Looking back: What. The. ? Edit: Just to clarify, I think learning to budget is an incredibly useful life skill that should absolutely be addressed in high school. I think tying it to a wedding for 16 year olds was really weird. 1.5k Share
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  • 18
    Lichruler. Square dancing. I have no idea why the they thought it was necessary to teach a bunch of middle school kids square dancing (in California, not some backwoods school), but I have never seen anything related to square dancing since then. And this wasn't even a one time class or something... the teachers carried on for MONTHS teaching it. And then I never heard about it again. 1.3k Share
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  • 19
    Individual_Wallaby25. Righting and spelleng. 1.2k Par31d011a youseless Share 559 559 Share
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  • 20
    C [deleted] - Double spacing after punctuation. I can't unlearn the habit. 1.1k Share
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  • 21
    Plenty-Letterhead 780. The universal experience of learning how to play Hot Cross Buns on the recorder. 660 Share
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  • 22
    Malk_McJorma Muggle Studies... oh sorry, wrong thread. 579 Share
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school FAIL students kids askreddit teacher reddit thread Reddit Terrible Teacher funny
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