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

Calculus. Mind you I'll probably need to revise that to help my DGS soon!

I had a good all round basic education and choosing the subjects I was best at, which was needlework, I followed a completely different career.
If I had followed my head instead of my heart, who knows where I could have ended up. The mind boggles.

Home economics

I cook, clean, sew, do DIY, manage household finance etc..

.. but use none of the methods or recipes or theory taught in Home Ec!

Some of the above mentioned, or logarithms, algebra. Also German.

Pye formula

Same for me, sine, cosine, tangent, logarithms. Hated maths, hated my maths teacher she was shouty and scary and impatient. I dared to say I didnt understand something (hand up of course) & was made to stand up for rest of lesson. I suppose I shut down and just muddled through for rest of school life. In adult life thought I was no good at maths but have held senior roles and can add/ subtract, multiply and work % in my head. Left with a C.S.E. grade 2 despite As and Bs G.C.E in all other subjects. Just shows how a teacher can influence you.

Logarithms - an absolute mystery to me! I actually managed and understood Trigonometry but algebra I didn't manage well - in fact Mathematics in general I found difficult and failed my O Level first time around, but my maths teacher, albeit very nice was crap! The only time I ever got thrown out of a class was when she said to me when I told her I didn't understand was "Oh Rachel, the problem is you don't know the basics" I responded "well please teach me them" to which she replied "I can't as I do not have my books" This sent me into orbit and I said "well if you, the teacher, can't teach me without your books, what hope do I bloody have?" I was then ejected, ha, ha!

Having said that, I do reckon that my Junior School education was great (bizarrely, I was sat in the 'library' of a distant relation in Los Angeles in 1984, and flicking through Time Magazine (of which there were literally hundreds!), I came across a photograph of an example of a Junior School in Yorkshire, England - and there it was my unmistakable school hall!! My very well respected Headmaster had one hand and was both lovely and terrifying at the same time!) I also went to a generally good Grammar School, one of the very last, and I do think that I did get a reasonably good all round knowledge of stuff and can hold my own in a pub quiz!

curilox Oh heavens Calculus had been erased from my memory until I read it above!! ds by dx or something unintelligible like that?

I had a mnemonic for Trigonometry, strangely from the crap maths teacher, that I still remember to this day! Blimey ...... so if you need to ever again work out whatever with triangles, here goes

Sine = Perpendicular/Hypotenuse (Some People Have)
Cosine = Base/Hypotenuse (Curly Black Hair)
Tangent =Perpendicular/Base (To Plaster back)

Ha, ha, gillyknits you have reminded me about a lecturer I worked with at an Agricultural College in the 1980's - he deliberately stuck a question in to his students' end of year exams saying something like "how many bricks does it take to build a wall 3ft high?"

They were generally so thick that most actually put down a number - the ones who said of course that the question was not answerable got the points! Gave us many laughs over the years ....

Latin has stood me in good stead.
I never thought it would be of any use but it’s a amazing how often it helps with roots of words and languages and also quiz questions.

As a retired teacher, I've often questioned the sanity of the curriculum. Quadratic equations anyone? Learning the import/export figures of various remote countries? The table of elements in Chemistry? All pretty useless!

What really would be useful:

Budgeting and financial awareness
Relationships, contraception and parenting basics
Study skills and exam techniques
Assertiveness and public speaking
(and many more, I'm sure)

Education is for broadening the mind, developing your thinking! It does not need any other purpose!

Sorry. Hetty, I disagree, all the things you mention as pointless, I have found relevant in my life, either work - well perhaps not quadratic equations or outnof work.

Nobody knows as a child or as a teacher what information will be important to a child in later life. Did you recognise when they were 5 years old those children who would become engineers or chemists or study medecine, pharmacy or the numerous other subjects were tables of chemical elements is really useful knowledge or who would work in industry alongside physicists and mathematicians and be glad they understood what quadratic equations are?

My knowledge of geography and the main imports and exports of various remote countries was very useful when I ran an information centre and discovered that a secrtary with a degree in geography had filed all the correspondance about a project in Taiwan in the folder labelled 'Middle East'

Over the last two years when Columbia and Venezuela have been in the news, my knowledge of those two countries their trade and geography has been very helpful in understanding the problems they now face and the factor in that country that lie benhind them, even though my knowledge of South America is based on detailed studies done for my A level geography many moons ago.

I am 82 and it was the first year of A levels I took pure maths applied maths chemistry physics and history,could not afford uni but had o fantastic career in nursing and did not use any of it

Wish I could go back and learn for the sake of it. Didn’t pay attention at the time. But also think skills lessons in basic plumbing, putting furniture together, etc would have been more useful than five years of Latin!

My hatred of Chemistry is probably the reason why baking is not one of my strong points GrannyLiv maybe if I’d worked harder and took more notice I wouldn’t have such a soggy bottom .

Yes me too Shizam I would love to redo English literature , just for the sheer enjoyment of it.

A few of you have mentioned Latin - as I wasn't quite in the 'top set' I wasn't allowed to do it although I really wanted to, and would probably have been fine at it - I do remember the first week of every year at school from the age of 13 to 18, there being amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant being on the blackboard ....They made me do RE instead .... although the teacher was the best laugh in school, it did me little good!

Have to say this post has got me a bit nostalgic, although I did have the bullying at times (red hair, freckles and NHS specs, called me 'Elton') and low self esteem too (still have) generally I think my school days were quite good.

At school I had to take physics and chemistry instead of cookery and needlework, the latter would have been of use to me.

I’ve lived a happy and successful life without ever needing to know how to read contour maps.

I’ve never had to knit a string dishcloth since I left school.

Things have changed and a lot of the information we memorised is easily looked up now. I've found Latin useful - but only really for plant names in my hobby of gardening. I really wanted to do woodwork bur girls had to do 'domestic science' instead. It was all very basic stuff that I knew already so a complete waste of time. I've taught myself woodwork in later life.

Various branches of mathematics, especially logarithms and using a slide rule for calculations is something I've never used, also vectors.

I took Latin to A level and Ancient Greek to O level and, as I'm an avid pub quizzer, some knowledge of the roots of words has come in very handy.

Also, I've never felt the need to make another smocked apron!!

Ha, ha, this is making me laugh!

In Needlework we had to make our Dad's a tie for Father's Day - despite my sewing teacher living next door to my Aunt, so sh knew me, I must have been at the back of the queue when the fabrics were chosen, as I ended up with the most disgusting gold brocade curtain! My Dad was duly grateful and said he would keep it for best, funny really, we obviously never went anywhere requiring a tie after that?