Toe in the Water

Being Schooled

Being Schooled

Lilli asked an interesting question in Question of the Day yesterday. “What is something you learned in high school that you have never used in your adult life?”

I’ve seen it asked before and know that most people answer with a branch of mathematics. Algebra is always a popular response and geometry gets several adherents too. I was a bit weird in that there were several occasions in my life where algebra proved useful.

As I was reading through the answers to Lilli’s questions today, I asked myself, “Can you remember when something you learned in school had a sudden and unexpected use?”

Language sprang to mind and I thought of Latin. Though I never liked having to learn what little I did of it, it came in handy when learning French. And then it was useful in deciphering other languages that I did not learn. Like Spanish and Italian.

Afrikaans proved a point of contact with Dutch people on the internet years later. They would laugh at my spelling but it was, at least, a way of understanding each other.

And French came abruptly into prominence on a train journey between Luxembourg and Brussels.

Geography I would love, even if it had never given me an understanding of my present position and situation on the earth’s surface. And History places me in time and supplies me with a past.

Chemistry I hated but have to admit that I’ve used some rudimentary memories of it on occasion. Pretty much the same goes for Physics.

Then there were the things they didn’t teach us. What the Americans call Civics we never touched on. And being aimed at University, I never had the chance to learn Woodworking, Mechanics or Household Economics, all of which I studied for myself after leaving school.

The net result is that I am grateful for what I learned in school. Even when it turned out not to be tremendously useful in real life, it was interesting and, at times, good fodder for the imagination. And, when it comes down to it, would school have been any better if they’d taught nothing but what was to prove useful in practice? Maybe I’m a weirdo but that sounds incredibly boring to me.


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