What was the subject you learnt at school that you never had to use in life?

I've never really understood, and certainly not used, matrices, or calculus or most of trig come to that.
My Father wanted me to learn Latin, and I tried, but made a complete hash of the end of year exam. The Latin teacher took me aside and told me, "some people are made to do Latin, you're not." I'm glad to say I was able to give it up, but I still find it useful for word roots and European languages.

I was hopeless at maths apart from simple addition and subtraction, I found long multiplication and division difficult. What I did manage to assimilate came in useful in my nursing career though.

Everything I learned has been useful, and I went to night classes to continue my history and English literature education. I managed to pass the 'O' level which we were not offered at my Secondary Modern school. My school English teacher sought me out at Woolworths on the Saturday after the results came out, to congratulate me.

Triganometry

I think I have probably used everything I learned at school - except maybe sine/cosines & tangents - but only because I couldn't remember how to do them!
(They would have come in very useful when renovating our houses - calculating angles for tiling / flooring / roofing etc)

I think we use things we learned more than we realise , I wish I had learned more.

I'm dis-calculate so all that Maths was totally wasted on me- just went right over my head. Ditto any form of science.
Luckily I was very good at English & languages so they have been useful.
Also cookery although I got a lot of that from Mum & Grandma too.
I have to thank the prefects for the amazing amount of Shakespeare I can quote. That was what we had to learn in detentions & I was a regular. Say no more!!!

Beating an egg white on a plate with a flat beaded knife.

It's the stuff I learnt at school that I used in life for over forty years afterwards that shocks me: how to be an effective victim of psychological bullying, how to have low self-esteem, how to feel totally worthless ...

Ghastly school.

Matrices, algebra and any form of organised sport. The rest, even equations and geometry has come in handy. I had to give up history and geography to do latin and German (would have liked to keep geography) and likewise made to do physics and chemistry instead of biology. Have used the languages and improved upon them over the years -latin was handy there too - and the English language, which I used in one of my careers, was always a delight

Simultaneous equations.
I failed my Maths O level mainly due to having a teacher that seemed to spend more time picking out misdemeanors to try and put most if not all of the class into detention after school (that failed because he didn't know he had to give 48 hours notice and the students literally came from all over the county, not just the town!) rather than actually teach !

Not particularly useful, but I'm often surprised at how much poetry I know, or half know. I think it was a regular homework task to learn a poem accurately, including punctuation, and then having to write it out as a test.

I made a wooden pencil case and s pineapple upside down cake - never did either again.?

Whilst enjoying the subjects, I wasn't successful at school (exams / nerves !) but in my early 30's I did adult education in the evenings. Got 5 GCSEs and 2 A levels. My love of maths took off from there and I've used it a lot. Some algebra the other day. Went onto do a honours degree and got a 2.1

I struggled with Art at school but I think it is taught better these days. I work as an LSA and sometime support students in Art as well as other subjects. I've realised alot of it comes down to confidence and I'm a lot better at it than I thought I would be. I've produced some quite good pieces when I've had the chance to have a go.
I don't think I've benefitted from much that we did in PE though - although I bunked off from that much of the time!

Well the England hockey team has obviously missed out on my undoubted skills in goal, but I've never been called on to go back in. And binary maths. I never understood what was going on in the first place, so it's not likely to be helpful now.

Just about everything else has had some use, even if just in a quiz or a crossword. Even the fencing might yet come in if I have to fend off an armed attacker, and I could always shin up a handy rope to escape if my ripostes are a bit rusty.

Most things remotely associated with maths. Sewing lessons were utterly useless but I am still working as a well trained designer maker. Cookery utterly parlous and I am now considered a very good cook. My mother was good at both so I guess it's an inherited gene rather than the result of an expensive education.

Art was looked down on and I was prevented from doing A level even though it was my passion. I bucked the trend and got into art college, and later gained a 2:1 BA Hons in Art History.

Latin was gruelling but probably the subject I most appreciate. Having had Shakespeare rammed down my throat every day for 7 years you won't find me any where near one of his plays. I do acknowledge the beauty of the language, comedy, tragedy but I had enough.

And yes came out of one of the top academic girls schools with low self esteem, touch of rebellion and low expectations. Still feel resentful, despite an interesting and changing life.

I wish I had learnt to touch type - I had to learn that later in life.

Lots of people have mentioned trigonometry. I might have had that in my list, but a few years ago I was working in a school and the maths teacher left suddenly. I was given year 11 maths to teach and their next lesson was trig. I spent the evening refreshing my memory and the next day confidently taught it! So it did come in useful after all. Everything else has come in useful.

What all these posts are feeling me that maths was very badly taught. All process without any reasons to do it. No-one made maths interesting or, God forbid, fun.

I went on a long maths teaching course once and the scales dropped from my I eyes, I started to enjoy teaching primary maths. Still no idea of tan, cosign, logtables of course. I am so proud of my GD who enjoys maths and is quite good at it. I always understood that maths was for boys. Such a shocking notion.

I, too, was completely flummoxed by algebra, trigonometry and log tables. Learning how to deal with financial matters in the real world, such as mortgages, banking, insurances, loans and bills would have been so much more useful.

I loved Maths - it was either right or wrong!

I’ve used everything I learned at school except trigonometry- hypotenuse, sine cosine tangent and all that ! I didn’t use my German until my 40’s but then I married a German. I loved modern British history to understand my dads part in the war but our version was a bit warped though ! Having lived in Europe a lot I can honestly say we weren’t taught the truth. I didn’t use Geography much until my daughter studied it and now she has a PhD in Geography I have to pull it out of my head to get what she’s doing. Lol

In my life I think the only things I have learnt and appreciated are typing and driving neither of which were offered at school. I did chemistry, physics and biology at university and take a great deal of interest in those subjects if they come on the TV.
such as Brian Cox.

Sports, Art and French, I took and passed A level French - never used it since

Algebra. The triangle in the school band ? shorthand.
Went on to be an audio typist in my younger days.

I'm sure we've used most things we learned at school without realising it. It's also fun to remember things we were taught but have now changed with the times.