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

English literature and language

Margiknot

Everything! Obviously the 3Rs, but French, all sciences, music, literature, domestic science, needlework - have all been useful. I wish I could have continued some subjects like history for longer. Higher education dictated my career but some of the practical subjects from earlier education years ( cooking, dance, music, sewing, arithmetic) are most used.

I think most of us could write what you wrote. It is just listing the school curriculum that makes up a good education, but which was the most important one to you from that list. The one that crepet into your soul, or would have completely changed the course of your life if you had notstudied it?

English without a doubt.

Everything! Obviously the 3Rs, but French, all sciences, music, literature, domestic science, needlework - have all been useful. I wish I could have continued some subjects like history for longer. Higher education dictated my career but some of the practical subjects from earlier education years ( cooking, dance, music, sewing, arithmetic) are most used.

Cumbrianmale56

Depends what you want to do in adult life. People who go into engineering would say maths, physics and design technology, someone who became a musician would say music and maybe a foreign language like German if they wanted to be an opera singer. It all depends.

History has been my passion most of my life and was the most important school subject I studied.

It has had absolutely no relevance to how I have earned my living. I went from school to university, where I studied economics and that is how I made my living.

I would say that probably half the population have working lives that are not dependent on subjects they studied at school.

Shop assistants, care workers, lawyers of all kinds, and that is just to start. My DD left school to go to drama school, but ended working in the media, and now in banking (not as a banker). My son is an archaeologist. Neither of them dependent on one specific subject, beyond a good broad education.

Domestic Science

Depends what you want to do in adult life. People who go into engineering would say maths, physics and design technology, someone who became a musician would say music and maybe a foreign language like German if they wanted to be an opera singer. It all depends.

English language and the reading of it for meaning, comprehension and precis. I wasn't aware at the time of how much I was being taught to extract from a passage of text and condense accurately into a couple of sentences, but the more I read these days of internet users' conceptions of scientific articles or "official" diktats, the more it sems most people completely misunderstand what a writer is saying.

I don't think it was a subject, rather one of the teachers who taught me to think logically.

No one lesson. I think it gave me an all round grounding and knowledge, silly things that I get right in quizzes and stuff and I realise I learnt at school I was neither a high flyer nor a dunce I was well and truly in the middle, just average

Disliked the scientific brain parts ie maths, science, and languages brain wired up wrongly for them but can get by
Loved the arts English literature/ language history and my favourite geography
However it taught me social skills as a very shy only child who was a bit invisible I found a voice by the sixth form Strangely it was in a discussion group about racism I can’t remember what exactly but I do remember standing up and giving the teacher two guns much to the amazement and shock of my class mates
As a white girl from a white area in the country I ve no idea where my feelings had come from but I have never ever been able to tolerate unfairness and I remember my anger and disappointment when aged about 5 my paternal grandad joked to me that my precious black doll needed a good wash
Maybe it all stemmed from that

History.

Maths - just for the pure joy of solving quadratic equations, or geometric problems.
Biology and chemistry for satisfying native curiosity.
School in general for taking me out of difficult home situations.

English, housecraft, shorthand and typing.

French Latin and music. The year of technical drawing has been useful too.

Learning to read without a doubt. It gave me access to everything else so thank you Miss Blackband.

Maths

Geography A level. DH came into our form in the Upper 6th and we went on a geography field trip. Married for 55 years. He is still good at map reading!

DGD was selected for the local Gifted and Talented programme. One of the opportunities she was given was an out of school latin class organised by a local private school. through that she was able to take, and pass GCSE Latin.

She is going on to university to study English and considers that it will be a helpful background GCSE to have.

English Language, and although I hated Latin and was useless at it, I have retained a surprising amount, and it has been helpful for quizzes on TV.

In Scotland, English Language and spelling were drummed into me.

It’s interesting that so many (including me) mention the importance of Latin, and yet it isn’t taught much now, at least not in state schools. Why not?

Definitely English lit. History was pretty good,too. If for no other reason than to see that it repeats itself - over and over and over again.

Music .... not so much the lessons as the opportunities to share music making.

Imarocker

English, history and music. I have never found a use for calculus

I think there are many subjects where one seems to get no direct benefit, especially in the maths and sciences, but I think we get many hidden benefits in having a mind that is accustomed to dealing with mathematical and cientific concepts and we use this information without realising it when reading news items and the like on technical and scientific developments because we have some comprehension of the basic scientific method behind them.

English, history and music. I have never found a use for calculus

Languages, starting with my native one as that gave me a good insight into how a language works on various levels, not only grammatically.
And that only because we had a young, not long qualified teacher who was really enthusiastic about his subject.
Then german, as i had an austrian gran i tried to persuade to talk german with me. Not very successful as she spent years perfecting her dutch and trying her damnest not to talk with an accent so people could accuse her of being one of them...this was during the war when holland was an occupied country. That attitude lasted all her life and didn't make life easy for her.