Forgotten School Subjects that are Worth Revisiting
As a child, it is extremely common to hear your parents or older family members say, “Enjoy your time at school, these are the best days of your life”, whether you believe this statement is true or not as an adult depends very much on your individual experience as a student. However, we can all agree that as children we all thought this was nonsense as most people found school to be an uninteresting waste of time.
While it’s true that a lot of the things we’re taught in the school system have little use in real life, like algebra, many skills and pieces of information we learned can be handy to remember in adult life. In the past, attempting to go back and relearn things would have meant signing up to some kind of course or committing endless hours to researching in a library, but nowadays the plethora of information on the internet means you can self-teach all the things you’ve forgotten. So, here are some of the most valuable subjects you might want to revisit.
Grammar
While the 21st century technology boom has caused a massive decline in the use of pen and paper, we are writing more than ever. In the past, the only people who did excessive typing were those whose jobs required it, but these days most people spend a considerable amount of time writing electronically using mobile phones, tablets, and laptops to communicate with friends, update social media and debate online. We also have to type when communicating with potential employers when applying for jobs, which makes refreshing yourself on grammar rules vitally important.
While programmes like Microsoft Word provide spell and grammar checks for documents, this is no use when speaking directly with a recruiter via LinkedIn or email, leading to thousands of applicants failing because of common grammar mistakes. As well as making you seem more intelligent and confident when applying for jobs, practising these skills will help you communicate better online, which is vital these days and will only become more important as time goes on.
Mathematics
Many people may have hated studying maths at school, with its complicated components like algebra, pi and Pythagorean theorem making it a difficult subject to learn as a child. While these facets of the subject are not that useful in everyday life, plenty of other maths skills can be extremely useful. Simple addition and subtraction help us to calculate things like personal budgets, weight loss, shopping expenses and travel time, while multiplication and division can help with working out the costs for a big holiday with your friends or splitting a bill at a restaurant.
Additionally, learning probability and percentages can help when playing casino style games like roulette, which are governed by mathematical systems, rather than chance like many believe. While these maths skills aren’t guaranteed to help you spend less on your shopping, reduce arguments between friends or win you lots of money in Vegas, they can make your life easier, so it’s good to refresh yourself on them as an adult.
History
History is one of the most unpopular subjects to learn at school largely due to the repetitive nature of the stories and the singular perspective they’re told from. Wherever you go to school, history is taught from the perspective of that country, which often gives students a warped view of reality. Additionally, before the 21st century a lot of history was taught using only books, which made it difficult for students to engage with the subject. The result of this is a world where many people don’t know the true history of their countries, which makes it difficult to grasp some of the things going on today.
There are many ways to learn or relearn history today, from video games, to YouTube and Netflix documentaries. YouTube is a great place to start, with plenty of videos that condense key historical moments into easily digestible short clips, so it’s easy to get back into history as an adult.
