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How much of your school knowledge have you forgotten?

nush

Member
I remember being told my handwriting was bad and I’d never get a job unless I learned to type. I remember being told I’d need to be good at maths because I won’t have a calculator in my pocket at all times. I remember being told computer games are a waste of time.

So, that was all wrong.

Most of what you are taught in school is outdated by the time you hit the workforce and you have to relearn how things really work in reality.
 
History and Biology I’ve forgotten except for the basics and fun facts.

Math was my favorite subject growing up. It’s one of the few subjects in life where 95% of the time you’re simply right or wrong based on evidence, which to me is more of a relief than subjects where you had to write a long essay to be graded moreso on opinion than fact. I still use math quite a bit for work, random measurement taking here and there, and for expenses. I try to use a calculator as little as possible to keep my mind sharp.

I still type quite a bit and read quite a bit. On a side note I would definitely use my Chemistry knowledge if I had more reasons to do so.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Everyday I use algebra and Pythagoras theory oh wait no I don’t.

Things like measurements. Area , addition, subtraction, division and multiplication I do use on occasion but using a calculator. Which I was told I would mener have on my pocket and I do and it’s on my phone

I’ve forgotten a lot of things from school. Simply because I never use them in my day to day life.
The most useful thing I learnt at school was how to read.

Growing up I felt as if school had a template for all students and if you didn’t fit it or tick those boxes you were labelled a bad student.
 
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John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
Most of what you are taught in school is outdated by the time you hit the workforce and you have to relearn how things really work in reality.
I quit my BSc in Criminology 2 years in.
But at the time I kept in touch with a few fellow students who graduated.
And they all told me the same thing; they applied about 20% of what they learned at University on their actual job.
The rest they learned on the spot.
 
only went to high school. some people i knew left after 4 years but i did the 6 years. was going to go to college but couldn't decide what the fuck i wanted to do.

i focused on English, Music, Physics, Art. Forgot a lot of it. Can't do physics shit anymore. Even though English is my first language and at one point thought I wanted to be an author I can hardly put a sentence together or write any kind of critical/creative writing anymore. I still remember a lot of musical stuff but the more complicated theory/musical reading I can't do anymore.

other subjects i did were maths, spanish/german, biology/chemistry, computing. computing is probably the thing i've strongest at and know a lot more now than i ever did in high school. can't speak any spanish/german now. can do basic maths but none of the formula stuff.

i stopped any kind of meaningful education when i was 18.

I remember this old bitch telling me that i could not use a calculator in real life everytime i wanted after growing up...
i remember that too but this was in the 90s and early 00s before smartphones. now we have calculators in our pockets and access to AI. if i have a more complicated math question i put it into chatgpt or wolfram alpha.
 
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AJUMP23

Member
I read and study so it is hard to tell what is new knowledge or old. I guess I have forgotten how to use commas and semi colons. I never was good at grammar.

I like history so that has been a lifetime of additive knowledge.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
History, Italian, Latin, a good lot.
Science and geography, some of it.
I never had a really good math teacher after elementary school, and I was good enough at it to get good grades because so many others really struggled with the basics. So I was never pushed to really get it, and now I can do little beyond basic algebra and geometry.
 

Rival

Gold Member
I’ve forgotten most of what I learned but I have learned that 99% of it was bullshit anyways and I am succeeding perfectly fine without knowing how to divide fractions, what a covalent bond means, or what the fuck an adverb is. It was all a lie.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Everything math-psychics was a necessary foundation for my acquired knowledge as an engineer.
Sounds good.

I was the opposite. I took my share of chem, bio and physics and calculus, but my interest was business so accounting, business admin and economics I enjoyed more. I was terrible at biology. I could never remember all the terms and what did what.

I'm fine with schools teaching a wide breadth of topics since every student has exposure to topics they'd never learn at home. I dont know if things have changed, but I'm hoping high school preps kids with courses about personal finances, living on your own, finding a job, college life etc... Kids have enough exposure to classic subjects. Need some practical stuff as opposed to the third history or geography class that has limited career impact. Interesting content if you like it or it leads to a job, but some stuff you can just google it as textbook material.

Life skills are hard to learn unless you engage in it yourself or have someone forcing you to do it.
 
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ahtlas7

Member
Commonplace in science, engineering, computer science, data science, but not so much outside of those fields.

Let’s say you have a drone with onboard sensors that you’re programming to fly itself using machine learning. You’ll have linear algebra matrices to store and process the sensor data in, triangulation and vectors for positioning in 3d space, calculus for gradient descent algorithms for computer vision.

Plenty of math to be comfortable with!
Thinking Think GIF by Rodney Dangerfield


I’m so glad I was educated in the arts
AI enters the room
I’m so glad I made my money 15 years ago
 

NahaNago

Member
That's like 21 years ago for me

I feel so old now everytime I think of Highschool
I still don't feel old whenever I think of highschool but it does feel like forever ago.

I remember probably like maybe 1%. I've been thinking lately of refreshing my studies on chemistry, history, science, and math. Then again those youtube videos that quiz college students on American history make me feel like a genius from the little bit of history class I remember.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
I've taught ESL for five years and started teaching game development this year. I hate teachers and I hate school. It's not a waste of time but what we were taught and the way we were taught was so bad and a waste of time. When I have kids, I am never sending them to public school, ever. I'm still mad I had to learn electron orbitals.
That's a weird example to be mad at. Maybe you were too dumb to understand it, but it could be that the kid sitting next to you went into a career in chemistry and is doing something beneficial to humanity.
 
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Durien

Member
The presidents...I can tell you the first couple, then Abraham Lincoln, then the last couple. I could tell you names but I don't know what number they were. I would be hit or miss on state capitals too.

My son was complaining about precalc. I took precalc as well and he asked how often I used it in my job in IT. I laughed at him. I told him I do use a bit of algebra. Anything higher than that was useless. He also asked me a math problem and I had to look it up to remember. Once I looked it up, my memory was like ahh ok and I sat down with him and explained through it. He goes, you had to look it up? I told him I fix computers, not launch rockets..

I got out of IT and I am back at school majoring in psychology. I was meeting with the transfer advisor and he saw I had calc1 and 2. He said, drop those and take statistics.

And the peasants rejoiced ;)

I wish schools were smarter about what they taught. You have schools pushing ap classes to get into a college but what good is AP Calculus to a kid who wants to go to school to be an art, history, or English major? But the schools push it if you plan on going to college.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The presidents...I can tell you the first couple, then Abraham Lincoln, then the last couple. I could tell you names but I don't know what number they were. I would be hit or miss on state capitals too.

My son was complaining about precalc. I took precalc as well and he asked how often I used it in my job in IT. I laughed at him. I told him I do use a bit of algebra. Anything higher than that was useless. He also asked me a math problem and I had to look it up to remember. Once I looked it up, my memory was like ahh ok and I sat down with him and explained through it. He goes, you had to look it up? I told him I fix computers, not launch rockets..

I got out of IT and I am back at school majoring in psychology. I was meeting with the transfer advisor and he saw I had calc1 and 2. He said, drop those and take statistics.

And the peasants rejoiced ;)

I wish schools were smarter about what they taught. You have schools pushing ap classes to get into a college but what good is AP Calculus to a kid who wants to go to school to be an art, history, or English major? But the schools push it if you plan on going to college.
My bro is quite a bit older than me and does business and finance as well. I remember asking him at some point (I was probably still in university or maybe I just graduated) about all the stuff we learn like how to calculate Net Present Value and shit like that. He laughed and said it's done for you on computer. lol
 

Durien

Member
My bro is quite a bit older than me and does business and finance as well. I remember asking him at some point (I was probably still in university or maybe I just graduated) about all the stuff we learn like how to calculate Net Present Value and shit like that. He laughed and said it's done for you on computer. lol
Lol exactly.
In school: let's spend 2 weeks memorizing states and their capitals.
Real life: I can look it up in 2 seconds on the internet if I REALLY need to know.

Same thing with presidents. Touch off on recent presidents and those that made important decisions at points in history.

What they REALLY REAAAAAAALLLY need to teach is troubleshooting life skills. At appropriate ages. Money management skills, nutrition, etc and for the f'ing love of God, manners and spelling. I understand we have autocorrect but taking notes, writing letters, my daughter is in 6th grade and spells like 4th grade.
 
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TransTrender

Gold Member
Hard calc, linear algebra, applied mathematics, all of physics, and the functions within. I still know all the concepts so it's not hard to Google the details and implement from there.

Luckily with my job it's FFTs and second order concepts for the most part. The hard math and stats are handled by others but I can still understand and break it down for others.
 
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Griffon

Member
Everything I know about my job (and everything else in life) is from web tutorials and stackoverflow.

Traditional school past age 10~12 is a massive waste of life. We have much better ways to learn now.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Lol exactly.
In school: let's spend 2 weeks memorizing states and their capitals.
Real life: I can look it up in 2 seconds on the internet if I REALLY need to know.

Same thing with presidents. Touch off on recent presidents and those that made important decisions at points in history.

What they REALLY REAAAAAAALLLY need to teach is troubleshooting life skills. At appropriate ages. Money management skills, nutrition, etc and for the f'ing love of God, manners and spelling. I understand we have autocorrect but taking notes, writing letters, my daughter is in 6th grade and spells like 4th grade.
One thing I never understood is how or why teaching material is so rigid. Just because the teachers have textbooks and certain curriculum to follow it doesn't mean it has to be word for word all the time. It's like they dont care or know how to adjust.

For example, it's a lot more boring if Teacher X teaches math using the bland examples given. You can teach the exact same methodology and formulas using modern topics people care about. Like instead of the book saying Sally has 4 fish..... who gives a shit. Modernize it and make it 4 music tapes or 4 GIJOE toys (you can see I'm going back to the 80s). But you know what I mean. Any subject that can be tailored to keep students interested should be done best as possible. I know I'd enjoy math or accounting class more if it involved sports or an arcade. Interest is lost when it's Robert's Radiator Shop. It can be the same calculations. Just spruce it up so students can enjoy it more and at least in that moment of time think it's like real content.

My nieces would show us what math they are doing in grade 6 and my bro and I thought this was stuff for younger kids too. It was retarded how dumbed down it was. Instead of using numbers and logic, they were literally doing this so called "Japanese style of math" where to do multiplication you draw interconnecting sticks and count the intersections. Nobody is learning the concept of numbers or multiplication groupings doing it this way. The real way is to teach a student that 3 x 5 is 3 groups of 5 and add it together. And you start small. 5 +5 = 10. Add 5 more = 15. Counting stick intersections is just drawing a clever visual method and going by the end results with nothing learned.

Although getting good grades and not skipping school are important, my dad would be displeased if he saw us cutting corners like using Coles Notes for English class (in the US it's Cliff Notes). Even though he knew it'd probably lead to good grades, he'd still be kinda of pissed saying "you're not learning anything dong it this way"
 
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MaestroMike

Gold Member
i barely even remember what happened in games that I played a couple/few years ago. i approached school/classes like it was a game I cheated sometimes from some chinese/indian exchange students when I was desperate, but if I could avoid it I played it straight
 

Durien

Member
One thing I never understood is how or why teaching material is so rigid. Just because the teachers have textbooks and certain curriculum to follow it doesn't mean it has to be word for word all the time. It's like they dont care or know how to adjust.

For example, it's a lot more boring if Teacher X teaches math using the bland examples given. You can teach the exact same methodology and formulas using modern topics people care about. Like instead of the book saying Sally has 4 fish..... who gives a shit. Modernize it and make it 4 music tapes or 4 GIJOE toys (you can see I'm going back to the 80s). But you know what I mean. Any subject that can be tailored to keep students interested should be done best as possible. I know I'd enjoy math or accounting class more if it involved sports or an arcade. Interest is lost when it's Robert's Radiator Shop. It can be the same calculations. Just spruce it up so students can enjoy it more and at least in that moment of time think it's like real content.

My nieces would show us what math they are doing in grade 6 and my bro and I thought this was stuff for younger kids too. It was retarded how dumbed down it was. Instead of using numbers and logic, they were literally doing this so called "Japanese style of math" where to do multiplication you draw interconnecting sticks and count the intersections. Nobody is learning the concept of numbers or multiplication groupings doing it this way. The real way is to teach a student that 3 x 5 is 3 groups of 5 and add it together. And you start small. 5 +5 = 10. Add 5 more = 15. Counting stick intersections is just drawing a clever visual method and going by the end results with nothing learned.

Although getting good grades and not skipping school are important, my dad would be displeased if he saw us cutting corners like using Coles Notes for English class (in the US it's Cliff Notes). Even though he knew it'd probably lead to good grades, he'd still be kinda of pissed saying "you're not learning anything dong it this way"
Dude, my son went from Montessori school from k though 5 when they stopped. He then went to public school where they were teaching common core. Holy crap dude. He would do the math and they would say, "wrong, the answer is right but he didn't draw like a bazillion boxes or circles or some other nonsense so it's wrong. So then he gets the answer right but half asses the number of boxes. We go to parent teacher conference where we ask her, why is he getting these wrong. The answer is right but because he doesn't draw the circles it's wrong? The teacher looks at us and says, "i am trying to teach the kids to be engineers." We retort with "you are talking to 2 engineers, both with over 20 years experience." The next day he goes to school and the teacher tells our son, "do it the way you know how, I'll just grade you on the answer."
 

xDagmaRx

Neo Member
I still remember some history things , but when it comes to math, I’ve forgotten like 90% of it, don’t even know how to do fractions anymore.
I literally loaded up fraction munchers on an apple II emulator last night and it surprisingly came back to me. My wife on the other hand kept losing on basic vowel sounds in word munchers.
 

xrnzaaas

Member
Forgot almost everything, but that was many years ago. I still remember a bit of German I've learned in high school (as the second foreign langauge), but I didn't use it except for playing one German game so it gradually went away. Also doesn't help I never liked it and I wanted to learn Italian or French in school, but we didn't have a free choice.
 
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