'Qwerty' rules, but the rest was all a big waste of time
I had a moment of revelation a decade and a bit ago when my stepdaughter asked me to lend her a hand in balancing some equations for her high school chemistry course.I immediately went into blind-panic overdrive at her request: Chemistry! I thought. Damn, I want to look good and ever so wise in her eyes, so why did she have to ask me for help with a course I tanked in? A course I never did get! But, I thought, I’ll accede to her request. Maybe I can somehow fake it.
And so I did. And within minutes a concept that had been alien to me – balancing chemical formulae – became vividly clear. It was so logical. It all made fine sense. I could help her with her homework and she was none the wiser. Amazing what little age and acquired wisdom can give a body.
So, no, I was not good at chemistry. I hated it. It bored me back then. So did mathematics, French, English grammar, woodworking, gym (oh, how I hated gym; it still upsets my stomach thinking about it). OK, time to come clean: I hated the whole goddamn thing. I detested high school and still conclude that anybody with a lick of common sense also had to detest high school or there is something wrong with them.
You see, for its clientele, high school is irrelevant. It does not address the priorities of (in my case) a lad’s life. My priorities were: angst about not having a cool car; angst about not being as cool as I wanted to be; angst about the 50 or 60 girls with whom I definitely wanted to have sexual intercourse (I was successful with ‘none’ of them, I am finally prepared to go on record about this); angst about how my biggest crushee ‘wasn’t really into me’ and anxiety about what I was going to do after I flunked literally everything by the end of my senior year.
I was a mess.
All high school students are messes, and schools do a shabby job of addressing that reality. I know, for I wasn’t just a student, I was also a high school teacher. Which, by the way, offers some evidence that I didn’t actually flunk everything in my senior year.
The problem for me lay with that aforementioned irrelevance of my course material. I wasn’t going to be a chemist, so why did I want chemistry? Likewise, I had no aspirations in the direction of being a mathematician, or anything related, like an engineer, accountant (math and boredom captured in a single professional calling). Was I going to become fluently bilingual living out on Canada’s west coast? Hardly. I think at last count there were 17 francophone Canadians west of the Rockies. And hey, when I went to France, I actually found I could get by and did not need to discuss the writings of Sartre in the non-translated versions, and no residents of Grenoble were remotely interested in discussing gerunds.
So, at the end of it all I came to a profound conclusion: all my high school courses were a waste of my precious puberty with the exception of one: Typing!
One year I had a spare block. I had to fill it. I decided on typing. I decided on typing for two reasons: 1) It wouldn’t be a bad skill to have and 2) Many, many, many girls took typing (see my earlier references to sexual intercourse as a motivation factor).
The typing teacher was a kind of nasty crone who was charmless and wore way too much make-up. I was lousy at the task and spent a lot of time looking around. Meanwhile, and this was a bit daunting, the typewriters we used had blacked out letters. Yes, folks, welcome to ‘qwerty’, the wide world of touch-typing.
But, even if by the end of the year my word count was up to about 7 wpm, I have never regretted it. How could I have been a newspaper guy without being about to touch type? Now my word count is probably about 75 wpm (no, not error-free, but I’m no longer being graded)
So, aside from the fact that typing has enabled me to earn a living for many years, it was also a godsend at university because I did not need to hire somebody to type my essays, and I could even make a few shekels by typing the essays of others.
My high school years would have been a great success if I’d only had to concentrate on typing. After all, it was the only course of real value I took. Virtually all other knowledge I have I have acquired since my HS years.
What course did you take in school that has helped you in life more than all others?
posted by Ian Lidster at
11:47 AM
17 Comments:
Logic. It was definitely logic. Without critical thinking ability, everything else pales.
~*
Music. No doubt about it. I wouldn't say I'm an expert but learning songs and being able to play them, to be able to understand the language of music, written or heard, has always brought me joy. As the years go by I'm a bit more private about it than I used to be. But I still enjoy it. Without my HS music teachers, I would never have had this. I'll name them. Kirkwood, Jackson, Robinson. I owe them big time.
And to you, GOML, I know those teachers and they're good guys.
I can't name a single one. I didn't learn how to paint or appreciate other artists or look analytically at art until after I'd finished university, too, and teacher training was a pathetic joke. I learned it all in the trenches. I say we bring back the apprenticeship system!
As an academic slack ass the only time I actually 'achieved my potential' was after I turned 30 an d had to take some courses at SFU so I could teach something specific. For the first time in my life I really wanted those A pluses and worked damned hard to get them.
Youth is so wasted on the young. (Who said that, anyway?)
You mentioned an experience I've also had and found interesting: some of the topics which seemed so blasted awful and intimidating the first time around aren't so bad when one brings the experiences of an adult to them.
I found all of the courses I took in high school useful, with one exception: health. It was taught by a P.E. teacher of the gum-smacking, lipstick and big hair variety. She pronounced the name Freud as "Frood". We did not learn anything practical such as how to track our periods, protect against pregnancy or STDs, or how our health would eventually go to hell in a handbasket if we subsisted on candy, cookies and heroin. We were told, however, that females have a menstrual cycle. Since all of us had experienced it by then, that information came as no great surprise.
Typing was nice. The high school building was an old one, built before air conditioning existed. I sat in the back of the room next to a hunky guy I had a mild crush on. During class, he'd remove his shoes, roll up his sleeves, and unbutton his shirt. Very titillating.
I 100% agree on the typing. I took a whole year of it because nothing else would fit into my schedule. It's proven to be invaluable since I'm a very fast and accurate typist.
Other than that, I loved French but it's not very useful in LA. Read some good books in English but hated discussing them in class where there always seemed like their had to be a right answer.
Perhaps the value of the schooling is solely so you'll be able to help those younger than you when the time comes?
So true about the best lessons being the ones we don't need school, to learn.
I wished I had taken typing, but it was suggested nurses didnt need to type. Why we needed to cook & sew I am not sure!
Maths is still a mystery, but I have had no trouble with money. The best courses I took were as an adult.
I was good at band and chorus. And English grammar.
I had 4 years of horrid gym. Now I am a total gym rat. But I would still never be picked for any team and still can't to run a mile without stopping.
I passed biology and chemistry only because I showed up and did all my homework. I tried to blow up chem lab . I was good at that. Horrid at all science. And forget algebra.
I am horribly ADHD with a severe learning disability in reading retention. So school was horrid.
This post made me laugh. However I loved chemistry so it wasn't a waste of time for me in pharmacy plus I married a chemistry professor! Then one of my children did become fluently bilingual and went on to get a PhD in French and the other became a chartered accountant. So all those subjects weren't wasted on some of the students and as you say you must have absorbed something from it all.
Strangely enough one of the most useful subjects I took in high school to my mind was five years of Latin. Not only did it help with English but it was useful for the other languages I have studied over the years.
I taught myself to touch type much later in life.
I'm a journalist, as you know, but I never did a touch typing course. I still bang out my stuff with two fingers. I did, though, do shorthand at college and passed my 100 words a minute. That was useful for reporting at court and councils. I hardly ever use it now though.
anybody with a lick of common sense also had to detest high school or there is something wrong with them.
1) I guess that means I have a lick of common sense. It was the worst period of my life.
2) That photo is scary.
3) As for classes, I guess if you're talking workwise - typing, since for some reason that is still unfathomable to me I ended up as an admin. I still don't know how that happened. If you're talking life in general, probably my lit classes, I had some great literature teachers who broadened my horizons immensely.
I'm with you on the typing class. It's the only skill I learned in HS and still use.
classical civilisation, it was the first time I had real enthusiasm for a subject and fixed it in my head that you could actually get a job you enjoy.
oooh i remember typing class! everyone was cheating except for me. we had these timed typings and we got to pick the best of two. we were supposed to begin with a whole new one with the second typing but everyone just continued their first one and turned that in. i ended up getting a high "B" but at least i earned it fair and square. yeah typing is a very valueable skill indeed. although nowadays you gotta learn to type with your thumbs.
so good to see you ian!
For me, it was also typing. Gosh, when you mentioned "qwerty," it brought back so many memories!
Thoughtful post.
I have two...you'll hate one of them...lol
Typing. and Math.
But you're so right that accountants capture math and boredom in one profession. That career damn near sucked my soul out. Never.ever.ever.again. I'd work as a secretary if I had to before I'd go anywhere near accounting again. That is one godawful career path.
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