Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Moderators: John, Sharon, Fossil, Lucky Poet, crusty_bint, Jazza, dazza

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Delmont St Xavier » Sat Aug 23, 2014 9:07 am

RDR wrote:What was most pointless to me was the system that was in use at the time (I'm 40 years out of school), the junior and senior secondary one. It was nice to be told at 2nd year, effectively you were stupid and thrown on the scrap heap, and barred from certain subjects totally. The focus was on 'technical' subjects, didn't matter you were totally useless at metalwork or woodwork and would have actually liked to do history or English. The best you should aim for was an apprenticeship - boy!
Allied that to teachers who couldn't give a toss, who liked to remind you every day that you were thick or useless and like someone else further up this thread says they were only interested in the bright 'sparks' not in trying to develop potential and a system which didn't bother about discrimination in the slightest.
Am I bitter? :x You bet I am. So having seen all three of my daughters through the system, now, despite its flaws its still 100% better.
Eventually, I did it the hard way, work, night school, college, university and professional qualifications, so the potential was in me and I got to prove them wrong...but how many were there who could have done so much better??


Love it!

I recognise that scenario too and mirror it to some extent. I wasn't a bright spark at all and like you I didn't want to do the technical subjects, I wanted to do Latin and English my favourite subjects (I know, I can hear some asking what the f**k Latin?) I was also taken on a tour of the University of Glasgow by our class teacher who seperated us into two groups and I was in the group that was told, 'You'll never get to study in this place."

Well....some years later, entry via DACE and I graduated from that University - was I spurned on by her comments? I don't think so but I remembered them on the day of graduation. Every child in the system has a gift, every adult has an ability but we're too quick to write people off....
"Listen, it's too big a world to be in competition with everyone. The only person who I have to be better than is myself. And in your case, that's enough."
Delmont St Xavier
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 726
Joined: Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:04 am

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RDR » Sat Aug 23, 2014 1:11 pm

Delmont St Xavier wrote:
RDR wrote:What was most pointless to me was the system that was in use at the time (I'm 40 years out of school), the junior and senior secondary one. It was nice to be told at 2nd year, effectively you were stupid and thrown on the scrap heap, and barred from certain subjects totally. The focus was on 'technical' subjects, didn't matter you were totally useless at metalwork or woodwork and would have actually liked to do history or English. The best you should aim for was an apprenticeship - boy!
Allied that to teachers who couldn't give a toss, who liked to remind you every day that you were thick or useless and like someone else further up this thread says they were only interested in the bright 'sparks' not in trying to develop potential and a system which didn't bother about discrimination in the slightest.
Am I bitter? :x You bet I am. So having seen all three of my daughters through the system, now, despite its flaws its still 100% better.
Eventually, I did it the hard way, work, night school, college, university and professional qualifications, so the potential was in me and I got to prove them wrong...but how many were there who could have done so much better??


Love it!

I recognise that scenario too and mirror it to some extent. I wasn't a bright spark at all and like you I didn't want to do the technical subjects, I wanted to do Latin and English my favourite subjects (I know, I can hear some asking what the f**k Latin?) I was also taken on a tour of the University of Glasgow by our class teacher who seperated us into two groups and I was in the group that was told, 'You'll never get to study in this place."

Well....some years later, entry via DACE and I graduated from that University - was I spurned on by her comments? I don't think so but I remembered them on the day of graduation. Every child in the system has a gift, every adult has an ability but we're too quick to write people off....


I can't say I was consciously motivated by it, other than I was pleased to finish school and get out.
The late Sam Galbraith, when education minister liked to mention the fact that the Scottish Education system wasn't as good as the teaching profession liked to pretend it was.
Another thing about the school system at that time was that violence towards pupils wasn't just tolerated it was endorsed. By that I don't mean the belt but teachers, male ones in particular thought it was fine to assault students any which way they pleased, so in no particular order I was hit with a blackboard eraser (the wooden one) on numerous occasions, hit with a guttie, had knuckles ground into my head and belted across the knuckles with a wooden ruler and I wasn't badly behaved being quiet to the point of almost being introverted.
This didn't happen to me but the PE teacher in particular, was a sadist, and if you displeased him, you were tied to the wall bars and he would invite some of the bigger lads to fire balls at you. Needless to say he always picked on the ones he thought weak and this was supposed to build character.
I don't pretend that the school wasn't rough and a significant number weren't even doing 'O' grades. Of course composite classes were the order of the day, the back of the class being the ones not doing a certificate. Classes had around about 50 in them.
in a way it didn't matter if you liked or disliked the subject, you would be pushed to be able to hear anything the mostly useless teacher was trying to tell you.
The rector was another sadist and the depute a drunk, who mostly reeked of whisky and kept a bottle in his office for when he needed a nip.
The late 60's early 70's the golden era of Scottish education.........NOT :evil:
He advocated for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich and labour against capital.
User avatar
RDR
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 1648
Joined: Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:58 pm
Location: West Coast

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Scotty100 » Sat Aug 23, 2014 2:50 pm

Sex Education!!!!!!! The teachers at my school were Marist Brothers and Jesuit Priests!!! Enough said! 8O
User avatar
Scotty100
Second Stripe
Second Stripe
 
Posts: 94
Joined: Fri Dec 10, 2010 6:30 pm

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby hillbilly » Sat Aug 23, 2014 4:42 pm

Skool!!
THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN :
But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,
You dirty-bearded, blocking up the way?

THE PILGRIMS :
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further:
hillbilly
First Stripe
First Stripe
 
Posts: 77
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:58 pm
Location: YOKER

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RDR » Sat Aug 23, 2014 4:57 pm

Scotty100 wrote:Sex Education!!!!!!! The teachers at my school were Marist Brothers and Jesuit Priests!!! Enough said! 8O


Don't think we ever got that at school in those days, unless you count the unofficial lessons....
He advocated for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich and labour against capital.
User avatar
RDR
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 1648
Joined: Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:58 pm
Location: West Coast

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Dexter St. Clair » Sun Aug 24, 2014 2:20 pm

Scotty100 wrote:Sex Education!!!!!!! The teachers at my school were Marist Brothers and Jesuit Priests!!! Enough said! 8O


Name that school.
"I before E, except after C" works in most cases but there are exceptions.
User avatar
Dexter St. Clair
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 6252
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:54 pm

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RapidAssistant » Mon Aug 25, 2014 12:05 pm

RDR wrote:What was most pointless to me was the system that was in use at the time (I'm 40 years out of school), the junior and senior secondary one. It was nice to be told at 2nd year, effectively you were stupid and thrown on the scrap heap, and barred from certain subjects totally. The focus was on 'technical' subjects, didn't matter you were totally useless at metalwork or woodwork and would have actually liked to do history or English. The best you should aim for was an apprenticeship - boy!
Allied that to teachers who couldn't give a toss, who liked to remind you every day that you were thick or useless and like someone else further up this thread says they were only interested in the bright 'sparks' not in trying to develop potential and a system which didn't bother about discrimination in the slightest.
Am I bitter? :x You bet I am. So having seen all three of my daughters through the system, now, despite its flaws its still 100% better.
Eventually, I did it the hard way, work, night school, college, university and professional qualifications, so the potential was in me and I got to prove them wrong...but how many were there who could have done so much better??


Oh yeah - I can concur with all of that! I'm a bit further behind you agewise but my experiences in the early 1990s were pretty similar. Sure, by that time they had Standard Grades which were supposed to give everyone a reward, even if it was a poor one. (A Grade 7 is called a "Course Completed", rather than a "Fail" - it's not P.C to say that word now....), but the discrimination started again when you did you Highers, where the old system lingered on. If you didn't get a half decent Standard Grade, you were frozen out of doing the Higher, which in turn stopped you from aspiring to higher education. No point in wasting time with slow developers, who will just hold back the investment in the high flyers. I was the former at Maths, I just couldn't get any of it at all and struggled badly (made all the worse by my time being consumed through being forced to do Higher English against my will, read my post at the beginning of this thread) = my Maths teacher told my Mum at parents evening that I didn't stand a hope in hell of qualifying for a science or engineering course at Uni, never mind surviving it - and I'd be better off thinking of another career.

Anyway, I showed the b***ards when I later defied the odds, got into Uni and got a Masters with Distinction in Engineering after a long, hard and bitter 5-year struggle, and ended up becoming a half decent mathematician - I even posted a copy of my degree certificate to them out of spite. And there is nothing quite more satisfying than doing something out of spite, is there?!!?!?
RapidAssistant
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 587
Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:22 am

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Lucky Poet » Mon Aug 25, 2014 2:12 pm

Dexter St. Clair wrote:
Scotty100 wrote:Sex Education!!!!!!! The teachers at my school were Marist Brothers and Jesuit Priests!!! Enough said! 8O


Name that school.

Worst idea for a game show ever.

And I first read that as 'Marxist Brothers' - a screwball comedy agitprop education doesn't sound all that bad.
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
User avatar
Lucky Poet
-
-
 
Posts: 4161
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2007 1:15 am
Location: Up a close

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RDR » Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:06 am

RapidAssistant wrote:
RDR wrote:What was most pointless to me was the system that was in use at the time (I'm 40 years out of school), the junior and senior secondary one. It was nice to be told at 2nd year, effectively you were stupid and thrown on the scrap heap, and barred from certain subjects totally. The focus was on 'technical' subjects, didn't matter you were totally useless at metalwork or woodwork and would have actually liked to do history or English. The best you should aim for was an apprenticeship - boy!
Allied that to teachers who couldn't give a toss, who liked to remind you every day that you were thick or useless and like someone else further up this thread says they were only interested in the bright 'sparks' not in trying to develop potential and a system which didn't bother about discrimination in the slightest.
Am I bitter? :x You bet I am. So having seen all three of my daughters through the system, now, despite its flaws its still 100% better.
Eventually, I did it the hard way, work, night school, college, university and professional qualifications, so the potential was in me and I got to prove them wrong...but how many were there who could have done so much better??


Oh yeah - I can concur with all of that! I'm a bit further behind you agewise but my experiences in the early 1990s were pretty similar. Sure, by that time they had Standard Grades which were supposed to give everyone a reward, even if it was a poor one. (A Grade 7 is called a "Course Completed", rather than a "Fail" - it's not P.C to say that word now....), but the discrimination started again when you did you Highers, where the old system lingered on. If you didn't get a half decent Standard Grade, you were frozen out of doing the Higher, which in turn stopped you from aspiring to higher education. No point in wasting time with slow developers, who will just hold back the investment in the high flyers. I was the former at Maths, I just couldn't get any of it at all and struggled badly (made all the worse by my time being consumed through being forced to do Higher English against my will, read my post at the beginning of this thread) = my Maths teacher told my Mum at parents evening that I didn't stand a hope in hell of qualifying for a science or engineering course at Uni, never mind surviving it - and I'd be better off thinking of another career.

Anyway, I showed the b***ards when I later defied the odds, got into Uni and got a Masters with Distinction in Engineering after a long, hard and bitter 5-year struggle, and ended up becoming a half decent mathematician - I even posted a copy of my degree certificate to them out of spite. And there is nothing quite more satisfying than doing something out of spite, is there?!!?!?


Parent's evenings were not a concept that had developed in my day. Even if they had you wouldn't have got my dad out the pub to go. In any case the only time parents were called to the school, you were in BIG trouble, like when I didn't bother to go for two weeks. The school wasn't concerned at all the reason was I was being threatened by a gang (who subsequently slashed another boy) and I was sent to see the rather oddly named 'Guidance' teacher, whose guidance was 6 of the belt and I'd better not effen skive off again. Sensitivity in Scottish Education in those days didn't exist.
Many years later I did try to get hold of my school records as I was fairly sure I wasn't quite as thick as they would like to make out and in fact a quota system operated on who went up to the senior high school with those from certain backgrounds being effectively weeded out. Of course no records could be found....strange that....
As to subjects, well at junior secondary they liked to concentrate on what would now be called 'vocational skills', so anything manual or towards a trade of some sort. So metalwork, woodwork and tech drawing for the boys and domestic science for the girls.
Arithmetic so you could measure and add up, so essential for a trade but maths, no.
I liked history, but you were taught next to nothing about that, cause why did idiots need to know anything about history?
English, in so much that you could write and spell fine, but any interest in poetry and the teacher declared you were a big p**f.
Science classes were just a laugh, with 50 odd in the class the idea of doing an experiment, far less seeing one was beyond comprehension.
It left me with a total hatred of education which I didn't overcome until years later I went to night school and college and actually met educators who were interested in you and wanted to motivate you.
He advocated for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich and labour against capital.
User avatar
RDR
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 1648
Joined: Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:58 pm
Location: West Coast

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby dimairt » Mon Sep 01, 2014 5:06 pm

My grand-daughter in Melbourne asked me to help with a school project about the "olden days." It was difficult enough to explain about single-ends, gas lighting, outside toilets etc but she was incredulous about being belted at school.
Here's the example I gave. At Cranhill, if you were late you had to wait behind as the lines went in. If Mr. Robertson, PE dept. , was on duty you were in for it.
He had all the late-comers race around the playground perimeter with the last boy in given the belt - one for each pupil in the 'race' i.e. six late-comers, six of the belt, eight late-comers, eight of the belt.If late, I went in through the rear entrance.
The golden days of Scottish education?

Durachdan,

Eddy
dimairt
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 946
Joined: Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:53 am

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RapidAssistant » Fri Sep 05, 2014 1:44 pm

dimairt wrote:My grand-daughter in Melbourne asked me to help with a school project about the "olden days." It was difficult enough to explain about single-ends, gas lighting, outside toilets etc but she was incredulous about being belted at school.
Here's the example I gave. At Cranhill, if you were late you had to wait behind as the lines went in. If Mr. Robertson, PE dept. , was on duty you were in for it.
He had all the late-comers race around the playground perimeter with the last boy in given the belt - one for each pupil in the 'race' i.e. six late-comers, six of the belt, eight late-comers, eight of the belt.If late, I went in through the rear entrance.
The golden days of Scottish education?

Durachdan,

Eddy


Similar story (I went to Eastbank) - We got made to stand in line as well in first/second year at high school through a different entrance to the older kids and the latecomers (by a couple of minutes) got a public humiliation by being made to lift all the litter in the playground (this was at the turn of the '90s - no belts in my era....)

Which happened to me (b....rds!!! :evil: :evil: ), and I always took it personally, in fact I've still got a chip on my shoulder about it.

Until I got wise to the assistant headie's vile practice, so on the days I was late, I learned to slip in a fire exit on another part of the building which was invariably left open most of the day, and there were seldom any teachers in the vicinity of it to catch you. So I'd get in that way, and magically turn up at reggie class through taking a different route and nobody was the wiser.
RapidAssistant
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 587
Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:22 am

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby RDR » Fri Sep 05, 2014 7:13 pm

Random belting story, but I once got the belt for throwing a sausage at someone....except the teacher told me it wasn't for throwing it, it was for wasting food!
He advocated for the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich and labour against capital.
User avatar
RDR
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 1648
Joined: Fri Apr 02, 2010 9:58 pm
Location: West Coast

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Josef » Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:45 pm

RapidAssistant wrote:If you didn't get a half decent Standard Grade, you were frozen out of doing the Higher, which in turn stopped you from aspiring to higher education. No point in wasting time with slow developers, who will just hold back the investment in the high flyers.


I can vaguely understand the reasoning. The problem, though, is probably one of duration. You have to go to school for x number of years. You sit O/H grades in 4th/5th year, and you're deemed not mature enough to understand subject matter for those exams before you're a certain age.

My least favourite subjects were the ones I had to endure in first and second year before gratefully being able to drop them in third. History - basically memorising a list of Kings & Queens of England/UK in chronological order. Art - still lives, etc.

My favourites were the Highers I did as a one-year course. Geography, Economics, Biology. Because it was a single year, they cut out all the crap they teach you as filler over a five-year course (as they have to do normally, since you sit the Higher in fifth year).

I confess to thoroughly enjoying Latin, but we had an excellent teacher, something that was seldom true in other subjects.

What I found to be disheartening throughout formal education was the realisation at every step that what you'd previously been taught for the previous qualification was simplified to the point of worthlessness. Classic example : first year University Chemistry. Day one :

Lecturer : Hands up everyone who has Higher Chemistry.
{Most hands raised}
Lecturer : Well, forget that crap. It was all lies.

And he was right.
User avatar
Josef
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 8144
Joined: Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:43 pm

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Fossil » Tue Sep 23, 2014 7:08 pm

I remember getting hit in the balls once with those tiny white bars of soap in the shower after PE.

Simpler days
Bum tit tit bum tit tit play yer hairy banjo
User avatar
Fossil
-
-
 
Posts: 12310
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:07 am
Location: Pitt Street

Re: Your most pointless subject at school was.....?

Postby Josef » Tue Sep 23, 2014 8:23 pm

Fossil wrote:I remember getting hit in the balls once with those tiny white bars of soap in the shower after PE.

Simpler days


And have they had any connection with soap since?
User avatar
Josef
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 8144
Joined: Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:43 pm

PreviousNext

Return to Random Distractions

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 58 guests