I read in the newspaper yesterday that there is a college in London that has a course in which they teach teens to walk in heels “to prepare them for the business world and their social lives” (yes you are correct – I was not reading The Financial Review).
I initially thought that this was a huge travesty – a complete waste of valuable education time and resources. And then I thought long and hard and I remembered high school. Upfront I can tell you – there is very little that I learned from my high school text books that I use in my business or social life
- I know that there are three rock types – igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic – but until this very moment I have never had to recall that information before
- I recall with some misplaced fondness dissecting a flower to find its stigma, style and ovary but I can guarantee you that I have never once been to a friend’s house or even a restaurant and had to pull that trick out of my hat to keep the people entertained.
- I know how to look up sin, cosine and tangent in a log book (okay I don’t really but I do remember those terms and that is saying something) but not since my HSC has someone even suggested I do something vaguely similar to that.
- I can recite great big chunks of Shakespeare and I can even quote some Afrikaans and Hebrew texts (there is something to be said for going to a Jewish school in South Africa) but I cannot remember anyone trying to get me to do this at work. In fact I once tried but I was in Australia and when I recited Afrikaans poetry I think there was some consensus that I needed a mental health day. Or three.
- I remember learning a whole heap of dates in History classes. I also remember forgetting those dates straight after the exam. Cramming can only stay in your head for so long.
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But there are things that I learned at high school that have stayed with me through the years and that I really do use in my business and social life.
- I learned that any sandwich tastes better with corn chips in the centre
- I learned that you can get away with almost anything if you are hiding in a cubicle in the girl’s toilets, however cigarette smoke can be smelt from quite some distance
- I learned that you can make a long skirt considerably shorter with a few roll downs on the waist
- I learned that if you are not allowed to wear have no make up you can pinch your cheeks very hard until they have a red “glow” and you can use texta on your lips. But you will not look very good.
- I learned that in the long run good friends are more important than good grades – sorry people who are studying hard at school. I believe this is true
- I learned that the “mean” kids were just insecure and that the “cool” kids were only cool because we saw them that way. They were really no different from anyone else. Sadly I only learned this on about the last day of high school.
So maybe teaching kids to walk in high heels is not so silly. God knows I can’t walk in them now.
What did you learn in high school that wasn’t in the text book? And does anyone remember how to use a log book?
I only finished high school in 2007 and I have no clue how to use a logbook. Clearly they taught us all well….
I learned that it is often the weirdest nut-case people that can teach you the most.
Also, it is never a smart idea to send emails from Mum’s email account to teachers in an attempt to get out of compulsory sport. Never ends well.
And finally, the school canteen is a rip off and you should always bring your own lunch from home.
I’m sorry to say that the things I learnt in high school were mostly negative
1) if you reach out to people sometimes they don’t respond in kind they just burn your arm off
2) not all people are kind, deep down
3) having your head in a decent book cures all kinds of loneliness
But there were a few positive sparks in there
1) truly passionate teachers make anything wonderful, even math
2) sometimes a little bit of adversity is a good thing in the long run
I graduated last year and I have absolutely no idea what a log book is, I tried my best to stay away from the Maths block in my final years… Some important things I have learnt from the whole high school experience include:
-When you write ‘stay in touch’ in someone’s yearbook, you rarely mean it.
-Sometimes it’s best not to indulge people by listening to their ‘I’m going to fail all my exams!’ freakouts.
-People aren’t always going to like you.
-You’re not going to get along with everyone and the bigger your personality the more people you’ll clash with – but that’s ok.
-Bitchy is never the answer.
-Word smarter, not harder.
I have to say that I have no idea what a log book is!
Things I learnt at school
– It doesn’t matter how hard you try, sometimes you just can’t make it into the popular group, and you know what? It doesn’t matter anyway, because you hardly ever keep in contact with those people anyway.
– You don’t need to know how to “prove a triangle” because, honestly, we all know a triangle is a triangle.
– When the teachers used to go on about keeping your shirt tucked into your skirt and that personal appearance was important, they wern’t just nagging about the school uniform, they were right!
Hmm,
I went to an ‘alternative’ high school… so:
– how to make a fabulous fake id (sadly I believe that it much harder to do these days – I’m sure someone much younger can confirm whether or not that is the case!)
– being in a band definitely gives you more cred, even if you’re no good (sadly haven’t been in a band since high school, possibly why I no longer have cred – just realised I said cred twice, not sure that that word has been used since I was at high school…)
– in some circles it is frowned upon if teachers don’t share their dope stash with their students. In other circles it is frowned on if they do…
Academically? Hmm, I believe photosynthesis as something to do with plants? (unrelated to the previous comment I swear!)
I learned that just because u get knocked down it doesn’t mean u can’t get back up again.. Apart from that I have learned all my other lessons when I left school….
Fab-o post, Lana! Loved it!
I remember learning about cells. The nucleus, the mitochondria (I think?)…and the turning the top of the skirt down? Yup. Learnt that one as well.
You are spot on about the “mean kids”. Spot ON. I don’t know about you, but at our school, all the “cool” kids ended up not doing so well out of school. Too busy worrying about how they looked no doubt. 😉
Great post. x
Great post!
I learned that education represents “teaching/learning” the answers to questions. But if the student hasn’t asked the question yet (true in most cases)…there won’t be much learning going on (except of course the lessons I learned about herbs ;-), girls, and the like. I had a lot of questions…and I learned a lot)!
I learned the defense mechanisms that I still use today.
I learned that 2 people can experience the exact same events…and perceive them completely differently…that school, like the world we live in, is often a reflection of what’s going on in our minds.
I learned that some of the best people I’ve ever met, I met in high school. Mr. Pencil especially! He is one of the greatest people I know…25 years later.
I have actually had to drag out not only the rock thing but the flower thing in the last week. Six year olds have insatiable curiosity and will not accept ‘because’ as an answer…
That said, the most important lesson I learned at high school is that peaking at high school is very real and very harsh. Actually, I probably learned that after high school, but the lesson remains the same – the last thing you want to be is the most popular chick at the small town high school.
Some of the good things I learnt at school were in Commerce – how to write a cheque, withdrawal/deposit slips, work out interest, etc… ‘Real life’ skills.
What I have since learnt is that you will not end up doing the job you pick out of the Careers Guidebook in Year 10. The jobs you’ll probably end up doing do not EXIST when you are in Year 10.
And that the ‘cool kids’ peak in highschool, the rest of us save our glory days for adulthood.
2 things
1. You cannot learn how to pash on either an orange or the mirror. Does not work.
2. The meanest kids are the ones that now wish they were you.
🙂
I’m afraid all that I learned is that I will NEVER ever ever ever send my daughter to an all girls school. I am sure there are great ones out there, and I would never argue with anyone’s choice for their own child- but that’s mine. I had four miserable years at high school (years 7 and 12 were actually good) where I was bullied psychologically and physically by a particular group of tough chicks and hated every minute.
Gosh, that got a bit angsty, didn’t it?! On the plus side, I also learned that nothing lasts forever and developed some wonderful friendships through sport and a drama group outside of school. And Uni was bloody fantastic- so much so that I stayed there 10 years 😉
Great blog!
The things I learnt?
How to walk very quietly past the maths teacher’s room that liked to dish out corporal punishment, I can still creep up on anyone I want to!
That I hate sewing.
That if the best days of your life are in high school it’s a long road ahead of you.
That all you need is 1 other person to make you feel safe.
That high school is only 6 years of your life, and from there it’s onwards and upwards.
That you really can empty a whole can of hairspray on to one persons hear… and that damn it looks cool! (well, not really, but we thought so in 1987)
This was a great read! I was thinking about my old English teacher just the other day and how encouraging he was and that got me thinking about the things I learned from high school as well.
Things I learned:
– although those years seemed hard at the time you should treasure them, because you can’t ‘go home again’.
– basic recipes in home economics my class mates are still laughing about on facebook because they cook them for their kids even now
– that adults are only human (although it was amusing to assume they weren’t)
– bitchy girls never get anywhere special
– shakespeare was fun, but effectively useless
– maths is useless for most things
– what a soliloquy is
– all the careers that seemed cool back then aren’t really that appealing (how many wished they could be a singer or a model?)
I went to a convent and learnt that I didn’t want to become a nun, mainly because they didn’t wear make-up or high heels.
I also learnt that I was no good at dissecting amphibians – Year 10 biology lab, fainted.
However, I had a brilliant history teacher. She now is a published author and writes erotic fiction! Bet the nuns didn’t know about that little side interest…
If you learn math’s and English at High Schoool well it has not been wasted. Although there is a lot of time where you could have leard skills such as money & finances keeping & holding onto a job including dealing with work.office politics and of course wearing high heels if you must really wear them
I learned that Twistie rolls rock.
And that being fat, didn’t.
Wonderful post with wonderful comments!!
I learned that in Home Ec, that a short crotch in a pair of shorts is irretrievable.
I learned that the bad boy you kiss at school really is a bad boy. (In paper just recently – Australias most wanted – I shit you not)
I learned that wagging school and skivving off down the beach doesn’t get you a pass in Science.
I learned that typing class was probably one of the best classes – life wise.
I learned Film and TV, whilst incredibly fun, was entirely useless in real life.
I realise now I still don’t know whether I should be writing learnt or learned. English Fail.
Hmmmm. What did I really learn in school?
Well, I learned that middle aged ladies with rainbow eye make up and 80s style white linen dresses and black dyed helmet hair are not to be trusted or believed. Unfortunately I learned this in retrospect, a few years after I worked up the courage to wear white trousers, which was quite a few years after I left school. Bear with me.
We took ‘grooming and deportment’ as a subject for a term, which I suppose the high-heel walking thing is the modern equivalent of. The only problem being that the ‘groomer and deporter’ was an insecure, mean, caricature of a woman. She would have been laughable had she not known exactly how to hit a teenage girl where it hurt – right in the self-esteem. It’s funny, I do remember the good teachers of course, the funny ones and the sweet ones, but this silly old bat only had us for a couple of hours a week, for one term, and she’s the one who comes straight to mind when you ask this question!
She told us all sorts of nonsense about keeping ourselves ‘nice’ (especially ‘down there’, waxing at all times, etc), about how dark colours camouflage and light colours enlarge (“so those of you with problem areas, especially girls who are LARGER around the HIPS and BUTTOCKS, as so many of YOU ARE, need to AVOID WHITE on the lower half”)
She then got each of us to parade (excruciatingly) in front of the class while she proceeded to list each of our perceived (by her at least) flaws and failings, both physical and behavioural.
Booming at me to “lift your face up girl!” she told me I had Princess Diana’s “problem” (a backhander if ever there was one) in that I tended to look down and walk too quickly (out of shyness! hello!) and didn’t carry my height well, slouching too much. Also, “Have you ever had your nose broken?” she shouted, to top it off, only this time she didn’t bother to advise me on what could be done about it if I had. It wasn’t just me she picked on, all of us got ‘the treatment’, though how it ever helped our grooming or deportment remains unclear.
There was no schoolgirl bully who could match this ageing personification of jealousy. Of course I now realise she was a sad woman who got her kicks out of belittling beautiful young women on the cusp of their adult lives, but at the time it was a pretty hard lesson to learn.
I think it’sgreat that so many people have found that it wasn’t the bitchy or cool kids who made it in life. I’ve got to say most of the cool kids from my school are doing fabulous things (tv star, newspaper journalise, uber-rich lawyer).
Never fear! I’m doing ok myself.
One thing I learnt is, even if you’re just cramming to get the good mark one time, it’s often worth getting the good mark. Hard work usually pays off somewhere down the track.
Sweet talking the teachers is also a good way to get on in life 😉
I’m still in high school and I already forgot what I learnt last year.
Hey, what’s with all the talk about “cool kids”? None of my classmates act like that. I mean, there ARE some mean guys and girls, but out of like 90 of us, only four or five in total act like that.