What has been the most important school subject in your adult life?

All of it!

Snuggy - English but only because I liked it. My daughter is a teacher &when I see the effort she makes for her pupils, I realise that the vast majority of my teachers were lazy bullies with no real interest in teaching. Having attended high school in what now would be considered a socially deprived area, I can see how those "teachers" we're simply doing the minimum to get by.

Were

JaneJudge you were fortunate to go to a good school, there wasn’t hardly anything that has been useful to me. We had to put up with unacceptable behaviour from the pottery teacher (walking about with his penis exposed) domestic science teacher talking of her violent home life, art and history canoodling in each others classes, geography having a ‘thing’ with the head girl!

English and history at secondary school plus arithmetic at junior school.

Needlework by far and away the most useful followed by English language and Maths.

English language; as a secretary for all my working life it was invaluable. Shorthand and typewriting come a close joint second place as although retired I use both regularly.

English. I've worked in care for the majority of my adult life and I'm able to accurately and with correct spelling, record the peoples care. That matters.

I did have a giggle when I looked at someone's notes and the previous person had written "Mr X was unarousable this morning". Pretty sure she meant unrousable,as we're not meant to arouse our patients!

The one thing I did struggle with was the correct spelling of diarrhoea but I saw a thread on Mumsnet that gave this tip.... Doesn't It Run Really Horribly Over Each Ankle, so I could stop whimping out and writing "Frequent, loose stools". 😂

Without a doubt English and touch typing course. Forget Binary, Trigonometry and Calculus which I never had any use of at all and I worked in a bank. And never understand them!

Domestic Science and Needlework. Both provided me with horror stories I’ve repeated throughout my life and taught me how pupils shouldn’t be treated.

French & English/English Literature

English and Latin

Biology O Level in 1961.
It gave me so much confidence when I became a SAHM for a few short years in the 1970s It gave me a decent understanding of nutrition, basic anatomy and growth, plants both edible and otherwise.
I was too squeamish to go on with it when it came to dissection, and took the gentle option of French, German and Latin. But I am really only half-educated.

The obvious one for me is music because it has been my life and career. However, nothing is completely separate from everything else so l would say that English and maths were equally important. History is another important subject because it means that a piece of music can be placed in the context of the time it was written, which helps to bring it to life. Finally, French and German. Although Italian is the lingua franca of music, many composers have written instructions in their own language. Sadly not very often in English although Percy Grainger, the early twentieth century composer of Country Gardens fame, tried it. I love his names for the string instruments. Instead of first and second violins, viola and ‘cello, he called them first fiddle, second fiddle, middle fiddle and bass fiddle.

I was talking about this with my son recently. The subject that has been most useful to me is O level Domestic Science which I took as an add-on. We were taught nutritional values and balanced meal planning as well as basic cookery skills. This has helped me to raise three very healthy sons and wean my Scottish OH off sweet things and introduce him to green vegetables! My mother was an excellent cook but limited in knowledge.

In my career, English was most beneficial as I spent many years teaching it as a foreign language in many countries. My grounding in grammar still is useful in many ways, I even am trying to get my grand daughter to understand our language and its construction, grammar having been pretty absent from her school curriculum.

Sociology

Art and Latin, although Art lessons were absolutely useless.

English, German, Latin, history and music.

French was not my favourite subject but I was well taught and it introduced me to grammar as there was minimal grammar in our English language curriculum. It is great to be able to use the language to this day - with some updates.

Math I have loved anything to do with figures all my life since school, carried on and did a 4 1/4 year apprenticeship in book keeping and other office work.

I was a teacher.. PE was my own subject but also involved in Learning Support and Guidance. My fave subjects at school were Geography and History along with PE then English but the most useful subject I was taught was......Latin! It has come in useful my whole life....

Latin and English

English because of my love of reading, correct spellings, how to write a letter and so on.
Maths to a certain degree, though algebra was the most useless thing ever!

English and British Constitution.

mrsgreenfingers56

Without a doubt English and touch typing course. Forget Binary, Trigonometry and Calculus which I never had any use of at all and I worked in a bank. And never understand them!

I have a friend who has a PhD and an MBA who says that her ability to touch type was the best thing she ever learned to do!