What subjects do you feel you were taught badly in school?

[Notthesameasitwas]

I had a reasonably well-rounded education for its time (1970s) but I feel I really missed out on learning about and enjoying history. I remember copying from the board every lesson all through secondary school and not understanding a word of it. There was no explanation from the teacher and most of it was political history with no attempt to make it relevant or interesting. In the school I used to work in, the history curriculum and teaching of it was fantastic and always engaged the pupils.

Anyway I was thinking of this today when I had to google something which I probably should have known but there are big gaps in my knowledge compared to other subjects. Does anyone else feel the same about some aspects of their education?

Home Economics

No actual teaching on how to cook! One week we had to bring pizza toppings in to place on top of shop bought pizza circles! Like it's not totally offensive- but it's not teaching anyone how to actually cook!!

Very little life lessons taught about credit cards/financing/mortgages/ even though "finances" was a topic in this subject.

My teacher didn't know the first thing about cooking or baking.

English, looking at the standard of writing on different forums.

My DC are in French schools and from Primary school they are taught an overview of the large periods of history (starting with prehistoric times and including the major dates and events that marked each change of period) and then tackle the periods in more detail. Each year they progress through history, but always with a reminder of where that period stands in general. And in secondary school they start again at the beginning.

That's really interesting as I've always been told it's too big an area to cover like that and I'd have benefited from that order.

Primary was American Indians, 1066, Roman, French revolution though no mention of UK time period and more because there was some multi school production happening then English civil war with a day out at Edge hill and a large house where we dressed up - then secondary Tudors, WWII then GCSE Industrial revolution.

I'd have happily done less country dancing and singing - which there seem to be a lot of in my 80s primary school.

PE - letting teenagers in a sink comprehensive school pick teams is just Lord of the fucking Flies with shell-suits. Plus I don't remember having any of the rules, scoring, techniques etc demonstrated or explained; the cool kids seemed mysteriously to just know how to do it, and the likes of me, who didn't, were ridiculed, bullied and shunned for it.
Home Ec: a bit like a pp, no idea was conveyed of principles, quantities, or the actual economics of it. We had to bring in pre-weighed/measured ingredients and just followed instructions to combine and cook them. I wish I'd been taught some basic principles of how food actually works e.g. flavours, techniques, nutrition, and how to budget food, stock a store cupboard and fridge, use left-overs or less desirable food items etc.

The English school system seems to be obsessed with the Tudors. That's the one era in history that never seems to get missed and sometimes is covering 2 or 3 times!!!

MATHs!!!!

I am mid 30’s and just now learning all the shit my failure teachers failed to teach 😡

Same! I had zero maths teaching beyond age 5 and a tin with 10 spotty dogs to count in. I went to a prestigious secondary school but the teaching was shockingly complacent. The teachers got a carry out of wine, beer every lunch time and the smoke belched out staffroom! 1980s.

Maths. The teachers could not explain the concepts in a way I could understand.

I’m now doing a maths-heavy degree, with decent materials and tutors, and getting better marks than I did in school despite 8t being objectively more difficult maths.

Maths - awful, dull, teacher had no control. No one was interested in you in the 80s in a state school, not unless you were clever. If you were middle set or below you might as well not have been there. No one expected to you to do anything other than be a secretary (for the posher girls) or a factor worker, then leave to have babies.

Maybe I was lucky? I don't feel failed by any teachers. All the failings were on my part, and because I was bullied.

I could probably say the higher ups, because they didn't sort the bullying.

But my teachers were on the whole great, just frustrated with me 😆

History , 1980's atrocious teacher ,she 'taught' the same thing on a loop through out my entire time in secondary .
Maths.
I don't think schools would get away with these kinds of things nowadays , well i hope not !

Maths.
My teachers in primary taught "little tricks" that produced the right answers instead of explaining the reasoning behind such 'tricks' as carrying over, converting fractions to decimals, and lots more. Technical terminology was never used - quotient, exponent, dividend, product, variable, function, etc - were all completely news to me when I got to secondary school.

PE wasn't great - I don't think we were really taught any techniques to improve our skills, it was just "run and see how fast you can go" or "here's a hockey stick, these are the rules, off you go". In saying that, we were in a massive group, so it was probably impossible to coach everyone.

Art was another one I don't remember being "taught" as such some years. A couple of teachers were good and showed us different styles, and then things like perspective and using colours etc, but we had one in particular who would just set up a pile of stuff and tell us to draw it, as far as I remember.

Same!

Religious education - most of my GCSE (because it had no coursework) was spent reading the textbook and answering questions. History was mostly spent actually discussing history.

Geography. Every lesson, make notes from a textbook. Every homework, finish your notes.

Secondary school music was pretty bad, once a fortnight a class of 35 of us lining up at 2 keyboards and one glockenspiel to play 'Eleanor Rigby' very slowly.
Occasionally we did a percussion session where we sat in a circle with upside down buckets to tap out the tune to 'buffalo solider'
They were pretty much the only two songs, for three years.
I think the only things I took from that class was how to play Eleanor Rigby on the DJ sounds setting and how to roll a cigarette.

My mum taught maths in the 1980s using SMP (we had a different scheme at my own school) and she went on and on about how awful they were (the reading level was way beyond the maths level) so much so that I now remember them!

PE
Run! Run harder! (pant, pant, wheeze) Come on, you're not even trying!

It was my mobile phone with apps/ podcasts that taught me how to run, and it was all about going slow and gentle, walk breaks,recovering, and encouragement, not spittle showers and being belittled. PE teachers literally did the opposite of everything that got me through C25k and on to run a marathon.

They never actually taught how to throw, catch or swim, or understood that some people aren't born knowing how to do that kind of stuff. I do have better luck at flapping my arms into the right place to catch/ throw something since leaving school and not having a hostile audience.

Chemistry - teacher was odd, only seemed interested in teaching the boys, very strong regional accent that wasn’t local and not easy to understand.

PE - shockingly nasty teachers who just about bothered with those who were good at it and really seemed like the couldn’t care less about anyone else.

I grew up in Ireland , where we did history beginning with the prehistoric settlements in the dim and distant Iron age, and worked our way through to more modern Irish and European history in chronological order, with a context of British history serving as the backdrop for Irish history.

My DCs in the US did a similar overview, though in primary the started with the stone age and advanced through early civilisations to Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Mayans and Incas, then a big gap to the Black Death, the Renaissance, followed by the age of exploration, history of modern science, the Reformation and wider religious developments (Islam, eastern religions), then pre-Columbian North America, followed by more North American history and the modern world as context. In high school they did World History, which was a very broad survey course, and then AP US history, another survey, then AP European history. A lot of kids only did World History, but it was a good course.

I think it's really important to present an orderly chronology in history.

I also found history a bit crap. Just remember doing a series of topics and there was no sense of continuity or how anything was significant or influenced by another period in history.

I was in secondary school in the 80s. PE and Art were not, in my opinion, actually taught at all. In PE we were simply told to play a particular sport or go for a run (no skills training, teaching the rules of the game or teaching about how to build up exercise to improve fitness etc). In Art we were just given materials and told to draw/paint X. My DC nowadays are taught about different artists, create their own work in their style and are show how to use materials and techniques.

History was also badly taught and I thought it was so dull that I didn't take it at GCSE. For the most part it involved copying huge paragraphs from the board or reading a page of a text book and answering a few questions, then writing key dates and names in a small exercise book to learn. No discussions, consideration of alternative theories etc. Somehow they took what should be one of the most fascinating subjects and turned it in to something dry and uninteresting

PE was also that old cliche where the teachers favoured the good ones and behaved really poorly to the bad ones. Couldn't have done a better job of putting me off playing sports than if they'd been actively trying.

I was going to say exactly the same as you OP - history was taught in exactly that way in my school. And same for geography, as described in your next post, right down to the field trip in Dorset which I really enjoyed. Same era too. Could have been the same school! Was it a girls’ school in the south?

PE. Aggressive teaching style and made to wear skimpy gym knickers or tennis skirts. Not great for young girls with body confidence issues.
History, the teacher was about 8 years older than me and seemed to have some kind of personal vendetta.