Useless Skills

Kids are learning skills today in class that will be useless to them in all future employment. I started out learning how to type on a typewriter. That’s how old I am. I have no clue how to use and iPad. I haven’t even touched one yet. In the near future devices like the iPad will likely replace notebooks in school, just as the ballpoint pens replaced inkwells, and inkwells replaced chalk. There’s already a move to give underprivileged children in India iPad knockoffs made for under $40 for use in their schoolwork.

With that being said, there’s a fundamental shift in what’s useful in school. Kids use to gripe about how they’ll never use math in the real world, and they still do, but the best jobs in programming, accountancy and investment embezzlement involved copious amounts of math.

School use to be about the, ”3 R’s,” Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. If you read that sentence then you know how the first two don’t really count. Writing and Arithmetic don’t start with, “R.” Every teach who presented this idea to their class glossed over this fact and quickly moved on. They’ve been teaching kids how to read with incorrect spelling. Even as I write this, my computer is telling me every spelling mistake I’m making. I couldn’t spell, “Arithmetic,” correctly after two tries, and had to go to Auto-Correct. Much like people will roll their eyes and say, “Why do we need to learn math? I have a calculator,” we don’t need to learn how to spell when a computer can do it for us. No one proof-reads their own work, not when a machine can do it faster and better.

Reading is going out the doors in all sorts of ways, as people move over to the internet to get their information. Books and magazines are being pulled from shelves, while half-assed blogs flourish. If you think the internet is a wealth of intellectual knowledge, think about how every article you read online is 40% stock-photos, if not 98%. The average blog has as much reading material as the caption to a photo in Maxim. Think about where the bulk of text is online. The comments section for every article is longer than the article itself, and it’s all flame wars. Same for forums and Wikipedia. Professors will scoff at Wikipedia entries and disallow them because of their accuracy. Do you know what’s also a poor source of information? Books. Yes, books. History books, Encyclopaedias, medical journals: the whole lot of them. If you’ve ever taken a university course you’d know how important it is to get the exact edition of the book your teacher requests, because all previous editions are automatically invalidated. Knowledge and opinions are always advancing, or rather changing because it’s rarely for the best, and a dog-eared paper on Shakespeare is as outdated as it looks if you’re trying to use it in your studies. To master a subject you have to pour through hundreds of contradictory texts to form your own viewpoint, and then be shot down because of a reference you didn’t make use of. So why not just let Wikipedia dictate your opinions? When all the Encyclopaedias are thrown in the trash, it’ll be the only Encyclopaedia left.

Writing is the same. When computers can take voice dictation, there’s no need for notes. No need for notes means there’s no need for cursive. Can anyone even read their own handwriting? Everyone has spent years of their lives from an early age perfecting their penmanship, only to have it ridiculed. You’re graded on it as well. Your handwriting can make or break your grade. Some people may not even be able to decipher it. Today’s note could be tomorrows captcha. Every major assignment you do, from university onwards, will require a typewritten submission. It’s increasingly unlikely that your work will ever make it to paper as we move towards a mythical paperless office. In yesteryear, people complained about your handwriting. Today, they’ll complain about your font choice.

Science is a crapshoot as well. Obviously, there’s room for advancement, but what you’re learning in class will be disproven tomorrow. Then there’s the grey areas, like say, the Boss Higgins particle. The science for it seems fairly sound, but since it’s an ongoing experiment, teachers will only teach the theory in class using air quotes. They’re also forced to teach the alternative theories as the main theory has not been proven as fact. Plus, not to offend, they have to gloss over most areas like Evolution. It’s like not having anyone run in track and field because someone’s in a wheelchair.

Gym class, obviously, is mainly useless. You don’t, “teach,” physical fitness, but rather you practice it. Or more likely, you don’t. America is made up of about 40% obese people now, and all those fat adults and fat kids had to, “learn,” gym like the rest of us. Gym does teach you teamwork, or more specifically that it’s survival of the fittest. Team sports teaches you that it’s not who you are or what you do, it’s who you know. That’s the only real skill you can ever get out of school.