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| Bueller? Bueller?.... |
The other day, I was thinking about my education. How much of my invested time went to waste, and how much was well spent. I surmised that about 75% of the most useful lessons in life I learned through experience working a job since I was quite young, and traveling the world. 20% came from past mistakes, leaving a good 5% to my formalized education.
I've heard teachers tell (or teach) a lot of bogus things throughout the course of my life. Sure, I had a few great teachers here and there (from which come the 5%), but the others taught dry, unimaginative, and uninspired ideas. Teaching wasn't their passion, going by the book was. To compensate for their inability to inspire our young minds, they lied. They lied straight to our pimply faces. Perhaps you'll remember a few of these...
1. You need to learn to do math without a calculator because you won't always be able to use them.
2. Learning cursive is important because you'll have to use it in high school and college.
3. If you don't pass gym, you won't make it to high school.
4.Algebra will come in handy in the "real world."
5.The point of education is to get a well paying job.
So what about you? Go on! What lies were you told?
Haha! I agree with every single one of those! Math was always my downfall in school (I failed a semester of Geometry in the 10th grade and took three tries to pass Math 1111 in college!) I don't use any of the number stuff that I struggled to learn! I also remember getting out of college and thinking 'Now what?!' Unless you're going into a career like nursing, there's not a direct route to having a career. (Man was I jealous of those nursing students!)
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do laugh about all the years that my guidance counselor tried to get me to take typing. I resisted and declared, "I'm an artist! I'll never have a job that requires typing!" Cut to now....I spend all day at a computer! Oh well, I get by. :)
That post is funny and I too agree with the above. I was told by my English (my third language) teacher that it wasn't enough to know how to spell correctly, use the correct tense and build sentences in a grammatically flawless way. Oh no, apparently it would be immensely important for me to be able to explain why and the grammatical background...Yeah right! Since I'm not a teacher and I'm fairly certain I get it right most of the time, I DON'T NEED TO KNOW WHY!!! This terrible attitude of mine did cost me marks at the time though...:-D No, I wouldn't want to go back there for all the money in the world... Love from London xo
ReplyDeleteI agree with number 4, I don't ever use Algebra in the "real world". I hate hate math!!
ReplyDeleteWow, this is actually very true. I was all prepared to be huffy about your post (now that I'm working on my third degree and have all these stuffy ideas about education) BUT you're totally right.
ReplyDeleteUm, well, I think it's a lie that you sound stupid if you don't use complete sentences. That's one. Because I don't like to use complete sentences. <<-- see what I did there?
everything. everything they ever told me was a lie. like "you don't be able to go to the bathroom whenever you want in college so you can't in my class." please. i can get up and leave whenever i want. because that's how i roll.
ReplyDeletehaha #5 is def. true and I always use a calculator!
ReplyDeleteI remember being told that the AP classes they wanted everyone to suffer through would prepare us for college. Total lie. College was cake compared to those.
ReplyDeleteI was fed all of that too!
ReplyDeleteOh this is ALL so true! I'm watching my little friend get through high school right now and I'm like...really, you'll never have to use this again! It's not real life anymore with calculators, internet and mobile devices...everything is at our fingertips!
ReplyDeleteI live on the other side of world to you and we were still fed the same lies!
ReplyDeleteThere's actually a book called "Lies my teacher told me" that focuses on bogus history and social studies lessons we were taught. check it out!
ReplyDeleteha - yeah - def #5. Higher education did NOT lead to a high paying job. or a job at all. though, i will say that i do use algebra from time to time.
ReplyDeleteThis post is a wicked burn, haha. I like it - they are definitely lies!
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure about the calculator one.. just because I tried to play darts with some oldies in a retirement village, and they all added the scores in nanoseconds without the aid of a calculator, while I was busy fumbling around trying to find my phone..
ReplyDeletealso, the best teacher i had? was a stripper and a druggie.
I think anything math-related from high school is a lie. We all use calculators! I use algebra for work sometimes, but geometry and calculus- never. Geometry made me so miserable back in the days.
ReplyDeleteHaha.. I'd forgotten about #2, but that's so true - they did tell us that! It's kind of sad when you think about it. I bet most of those teachers started teaching because they really wanted to make a positive impact and then they lost that passion.
ReplyDeleteOh holy cow...really? "If you don't pass gym you won't make it in high school?!" How awful is that?!!!!
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly I think my brain automatically deleted all those bogus words of wisdom my former teachers told me, because it already knew it's a lie. I really don't remember anything. Haha. It's bad. I know. Maybe it's better though. Hahahaha!!!
I remember one thing though...the Algebra thing, and the calculator. Oh, one thing that just came to my mind is that we needed learn how to write proper letters with those proper sentences, proper spacing, etc etc etc, because we will need this ever single day. Hmmm...never used it. Sure, a few words, but never the whole sentence and never the spacing. Besides, all formal letters were saved and had their style and all, and I only needed to change date, name, and maybe one or two words regarding the topic of discussion, etc. I always laughed hard because it took me about five minutes if not less to do those letters, and in school they forced us to work on those for over 30 minutes!!! :((((( Ridiculous!
And every day?! Nope. Maybe one per day, or so.
Oh well. Life is the best teacher anyways!!!!
This is hitting REALLY close to home as we make changes in our monkeys education.
ReplyDeleteHehe, these are all so true. this is is funny you mentioned these, I wanna go see that movie 'Bad Teacher'...while the gym one is def not true, I wish I did understand math and pay more attention in that class. I was having trouble doing simple subtraction the other day. hehe...NIce post
ReplyDeletexoDale
ha. none of those apply to me except i still can't do basic math, figure out tip, or sale items
ReplyDeletemy mom was a math teacher for over 30 years, whoops
i'm currently taking college classes after being out of school for thirty years, and came right out and told my (younger) teacher that i was living proof one will never use algebra in their adult life.
ReplyDeleteI think the key with maths is to find someone else who can do it REALLY well so you don't have to :)
ReplyDelete<3
Haha. I think you've got it all covered here! I despised math with a passion. And I'm pretty sure I forgot about 90% of it. But whenever I do need to solve a math problem quickly--cell phone calculator to the rescue!
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