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?

The way some of you describe how history is taught in order and in context is exactly what I need now!

As for PE I didn’t enjoy it either but I can’t say it was badly taught as such as we did all the basics but I don’t remember a lot of encouragement.

Languages - wtf did they decide not to teach them until year 7?
Maths was variable - fine until year 9 when I got a crap teacher and then nothing seemed logical or made sense (it had done until then) and became a case of rote learning of formulae.
Art - no attempt to show you how to do anything just told to "draw x" and I couldn't (still can't)

But PE was a disgrace - frankly loathed it and it was years before I began to take any exercise ever again.

The way some of you describe how history is taught in order and in context is exactly what I need now!

You could try https://www.amazon.co.uk/Timeline-World-History-Matt-Baker/dp/1645174174 - timeline books.

What I got one of mine when being asked how Victorians managed with the Blitz.

I slowly built up a mental map post school - using post 1066 English monarchs as anchor points/timelines then out to details and also out to Wales, Scotland then rest of world then working back to Saxon kingdoms - then roman leaders - then out and back again.

Another PE vote here. We weren’t taught a single thing (90s & 2000s) it was a case of ‘play a hockey game while I stand and scream at you when you get it wrong.’ Absolutely no technique or rules taught to us beforehand! On freezing days being forced to do ‘cross country’ which was a horrible run around a field usually in shorts and tshirt. Absolutely vile. On cold rainy days what is wrong with doing indoor exercise?
Also being made to do football, rugby or rounders with boys. Never mind the safety aspect but they would always take over, avoid passing to girls etc.

Other things weren’t as bad but still not great.

English and PE. I got great grades for English, but the grammar content was poor.

PE was awful and I was dreadful at it. Teams sports aren't my thing and it put me off for years. I only started exercising again in my 40s.

History for me too (1990s) - just a mass of dictation, copying from the board and answering questions in the textbook. And some very dull bits of history too.

Maths - well, most specifically Algebra, but a lot of it, all 'just because it is, you don't have to understand it, just do it'. Lots of words and squiggles and no explanation other than 'it just is'. Which really knocked me together with the constant judgement from home telling me I was rubbish at Maths compared to English.

A new teacher started (a qualified engineer) and spotted that I was avoidant in a Maths cover lesson he took, despite being very engaged in the usual DT/Woodwork/Metalwork/Technical Drawing classes - after he's commented on one lesson that I'd make a great engineer and I'd replied 'Nah, I'm crap at Maths', he started putting an element of Maths into those lessons as extension work, combined with physical 'things'/representations and images to relate the words to and it was like a curtain lifting. All of the concepts made perfect sense when they were explained that way, as then the squiggles and words meant something.

So it was Applied Maths that I needed, not theoretical mathematics. Just such a pain that applying concepts is seen as secondary to going through the motions without understanding them.

Chemistry o level. I was one of 6 girls in a class of 30 or so. The girls were told to sit at the back and the teacher ignored us concentrating on the boys as "girls don't do chemistry."

Needless to say I failed it miserably. What's more annoying is that when I was choosing my options in the third year (yr 9) the head of year told my parents I had to do chemistry instead of Drama which I really wanted to do, because I had done well on one test and was too " clever" to do drama.

My Computer studies teacher was also just awful, ( This was in the days where we did programming by way of punch cards which were laboriously fed into a mainframe in a nearby council office!) The teacher was a lazy sod- always late to class ( and we are talking half an hour late.) Never marked any course work and just put stuff on the board for us to copy.

Pe now dc has alternating week lessons - which is more interesting but she got
1 lesson football, 4 swimming, 1 rounders, 1 netball,4 keep fit
Its very uneven and other sets will have had completely diff numbers of lessons at end of year

I agree at no point are people taught how to do sport. Except swimming and from that you can see how long it takes.
Tactics etc. The kids who are good at spoet it is not from school lessons.
Maybe it is subjects with no tests/standard etc.
So probably at state school pe, d&t and home ec etc.

Overall improvements would be setting children by the sounds even for music.

Art and performing the bad behaviour is affecting any children doing anything.

History for me too. I realised as an adult that History is the prequel to now, showing how everything got how it is today. As a child there was no context to apply it to in my brain. It was just “Memorise these boring battles and members of royalty and look at these brown pictures.”

Graphic Design, which I did a GCSE in. We spent the entire two years doing our coursework (mostly pissing about and listening to the radio). The teacher occasionally spent half an hour teaching a specific thing we needed to include in the coursework project. For the GCSE exam, which included everything else and was worth 60 per cent of the marks if I remember correctly, she attempted to teach the whole subject in one double lesson. I had a pretty photographic memory at 16, so I just memorised it all and got an A. Almost everyone else, whose coursework was much better, bombed on the exam and came out with much lower marks. Shocking. She was a popular teacher but I was never a fan.

It's really sad to hear people say they had poor history teaching, because we had some amazing teachers and I personally loved and have always loved the subject. That being said, many more people in my year picked geography over history, which I loathed and found incredibly dull for the most part, so perhaps my peers wouldn't agree with me.

I was put off History by a lovely, but very boring older lady teacher who just talked at us for an hour every week. I’d just switch off. She wouldn’t even ask questions to check people were listening, so you could literally daydream the lesson away and she didn’t notice. Me and my friend used to pass notes back and forward to each other.
Sometimes she would dictate for half of the lesson and you just wrote what she said in your book.

I loved history in primary school but ended up hating it.

I'm another SMP Maths victim - seems like I have huge gaps in my knowledge and understanding compared to DH who was taught in a more traditional way.

@Itsnotmypartybutiwannacry

Its slightly worse now, if you concentrate on practical things in the home, and the drive towards Technology and the general lack of skills required to make objects (no joining methods, all screws and glue) at GCSE level.
But it will get worse as the government are driving towards a design only curriculum and clean rooms.

@winniethepooped

There are two possible excuses for you Home Ec lessons. one would be the length of time to make a pizza base (it does take 20 kids approximately 1 hr to make a pizza base) and if the ingredients brought in were to be used as a cutting lesson. Unfortunately a lot of the time its will all be cut (and weighed) at home.

everything!
not really, but surely history could have been made more interesting, it is interesting now
maths- struggled, as with science and dont even begin to talk about geography

PE here too. The games teachers were ex professional players and had no idea how to teach - only interested in the few who were naturally good at “their” sport. Put me off for decades. So sad to see so many the same.

Geography - hill sheep farming and oxbow lakes taught by the most depressed and depressing woman in the world.

Our history teachers were fabulous though! I still remember one of them with admiration. And we had a few good maths teachers.

i remember history the homework was copying out the tudor family tree
i did the stuart

my downfall

Physics: the teachers style and mine just didn’t mesh. She tended towards descriptions of very imprecise scenarios and my ASD brain just kept focusing on the loopholes.

p.e.: the universal problem. This subject should inspire a love of fitness and health, not a hatred for sport. If you are uncoordinated, the teachers just don’t know what to do with you and that is a problem. This class isn’t really for teaching people to play badminton, it’s about improving public health, and it fails on that account.

Maths! Honestly my maths skills are appalling! I just cannot deal with numbers - if I try and work out in my head all the numbers keep jumbling themselves up and even on paper I'm hopeless. Somehow I scraped a C.

A lot of the subjects I struggled in I was able to drop at GCSE.

Oh, the ritual humiliation of PE. No one wanted the visually impaired kid who couldn't throw, catch, or run fast on their teams. It wasn't until I was 23 I discovered ice skating as a sport and now I'm a competitive adult skater and learning about anatomy, physiology, how to look after my body before, during and after training, bits of psychology from competing and dealing with mental blocks on certain skills, and also how to teach as I'm training to be a coach.

1970s here too. Had a fabulous and dedicated set of history teachers, and I continue to love the subject today. In fact most of my teachers were great, the only subject I could NOT get to grips with was maths. And I'm not entirely sure that was the teachers' fault as much as mine, they did try. But they couldn't make it relevant and none of it made any sense to me.

To this day I don't have any kind of qualification, not even a CSE, in maths. I think I got O Level grade D three times (kept resitting, still crap).

i did cse maths
then more recently took an adult nvq class which was excellent

Sport. And physics wasn't great either.

The rest were pretty good.

Music. They were only interested in the kids who could actually already play an instrument.

History! Endless worksheets about the industrial revolution, and then in year 9 we got to watch Roots while the teacher slept at the back of the classroom

PE awful teachers who diidn't encourage you just bullied. I was held back from leaving class once for not being to master a backwards head over heels, I just couldn't do it and I was beginner to hurt like hell. I found out years later that I was born with some bones in my spine fused together making me less flexible then everyone else so was just not physically able to do what that awful PE wanted and shouted at me for