That listicle in the link includes as 2 of the 13 items using a protractor and knowing the pythagorean theorem.
I have needed both of those things just this summer, and just as part of a hobby! When building things even just knowing the 3-4-5 shortcut for the pythagorean theorem is incredibly handy.
Yeah this seems generally opposed to the concept of a general education. I get that many people don’t like that they had to learn all these things in an environment that generally sucked to be in, but also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess.
Like several of these things will be tangentially encountered at various points in your life. Yeah I’ve never had to write in cursive, but I’ve had to read it. I haven’t done much chemistry since college, but carbon sure comes into the news a whole lot. I don’t use a protractor much, but I’ve had to imagine them for various uses of space. I don’t diagram sentences often, but it’s really useful when learning a foreign language, and also way too much of the country thinks pronouns were invented in the 21st century. Communal making of music is something that used to be normal as a fun way to pass an evening and recorders are cheap and easy for children to learn.
also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess
Hear, hear!
You know, it also kind of sucks to live among a bunch of ignoramuses that don’t know how anything works, who fear and hate people who look and act different, and who fall for the most low-effort lies and propaganda out there.
And yeah, since my experience is that I enjoy and appreciate life more as I learn more about the universe, and I would like others to enjoy existence, it IS a nice thing for everyone to possess!
THE MITOCHONDRIA-
Advanced calculus is mandatory, eg. for your income statement.
Some people can absently smoke a cigarette by the river, fully unaware of the fact that the volume of their tits has changed by .17% in the last 24 hours.
Good luck on your next painting project. If you make things, areas become very important.
Like the old country song says, “If you’re gonna play in Texas, you gotta have a parallelogram!”
I guess if you’re an ape-man living alone in the woods, a broad education is pretty useless. ;)
Honestly, i’ve had the need to use half of these things in my work. Of course, if you have a bs job, you dont require to know anything.
I regularly use 1 or 2 of them in my job and already used at least half of them.
Not everyone is a complete retard.
Taking the high road and slandering someone with a defamatory label. You pretty much explained yourself.
I’m pissed off by all the whiner complaining ScHoOl doEsn’t tEaCh aNytHiNg uSeFuL.
You want to build a small hut in your garden, what dimension should be the carpentry ? How much concrete do you need ? How many tiles ? You are in top of your leader and need to put the roof at 17°, how do you do without protractor ?
You have to put chemical in your pool, how to compute It’s volume ?
You have to write a letter by hand for whatever administrative reason, how do you do ? Some administration do require hand written statement.
You’re in a hotel where floors are numbered in roman, how do you go to your room ?
You read a book, how do you know in which chapter your stoped ?
You are in a real estate agency to buy a land. The land is trapezoidal and you notice the surface doesn’t correspond to what is written because those retard don’t know how to compute area of trapezoid (true story).
And for god sake, life is not about just doing things that are useful ! Just watching the stars with your kid, and tell him “that is Mars and that is Jupiter”, doing quiz with friends and win a free beer, growing its own sodium Cristal in a glass, writing poesie, all of those are completely useless but are the best parts of life !!!
Useless to you. I extremely need to know the Pythagorean Theorem for my work. Actually, absolutely everything I have ever been taught in math class ever, literally all of it and so much more, I have used. But I’m starting a PhD in electrical engineering in the fall, so I’m a bit biased 😆.
For me personally, dissecting frogs (well actually I dissected a clam) was probably a waste of time, but for at least some of my classmates it was probably helpful. Long division is important because it stimulates algorithmic thinking, which is important for living in a computerized world. Area of a trapezoid is important because… sometimes trapezoids show up, or you can approximate a more complicated shape with a trapezoid whose properties are well understood.
It’s also important for people who will never use it again. Learning algebra and geometry teaches you how to think critically and logically. So yeah, the gas station attendant over here may never use the cone area formula ever again, but at least it’s not magic to them.
Another important thing is that there’s no such thing as knowledge that you won’t need or won’t use.
Everything is like… connected, man.
I am telling you the importance of learning and you call me a pothead.
i know several things that are actively detrimental to my own wellbeing
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems. As an engineer myself, I find there’s a lot of inspiration to be gained by looking at life and understanding how it works. My primary work is controls and learning that biological muscle operates as bang bang control was mindblowing. Like look at the agility and complexity achieved by essentially a fuck load of on off actuators. It shows how far you can go with extremely simple methods and honestly helped me chill the fuck out about making everything perfect.
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems.
Agreed. My point was more that I didn’t really learn much from actually dissecting a real animal. Like I probably would have learned more from reading a book or watching someone else do the dissection.
A = pi*r2*h/3
That’s not the area
Shit you right, that’s volume.
Critical thinking is important, y’all.
The contempt for education is mind-boggling even on Lemmy.
The literal Science Memes community was mocking higher education and the thread was full of people trying to convince others to never go to college. It’s bizarre how strong the anti-education sentiment is around here.
There’s a weird anti-intellectual contingent on Lemmy. I saw a dude the other day who was going on about how debt was the ultimate evil and then when questioned on it said that the entire study of economics was a conspiracy to make people want debt. Now there are kooky people on all platforms but this guy was getting upvoted a decent amount. I have also been downvoted a few times for pointing out flat out inaccuracies people have said about various religions and their beliefs because “religion bad” outweighs all logic.
All of these things were useful to be taught. Just because you never needed to dissect a frog again in your life doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an understanding of biology that these types of exercises provide.
‘useful,’ I doubt it for most people. Informative, like watching how to build a turbine engine, which you would probably never do in your lifetime unless you were an Aerospace engineer.
IMO all people should receive a broad general education. It’s good for the individual and for society. Even a poet should have at least a basic understanding of how an engine works and have some exposure to mathematics or whatever.
No where in the meme did it suggest removing it from the education system. It still doesn’t mean it is useful for most people, outside of niche fields. The two things can both be true.
I’ll disagree. It is useful. You benefit from going through learning this stuff regardless.
You forget most of what you learn if your memory muscle is not flexed regularly, especially on complex math equations and the like, so I would say it is useless for those that fall into this category.
You’ll forget “exactly” how you did it. Sure.
But you’ll remember that you solved something “similar” before and know that you can trace back or use some keywords in google/bing/ddg/etc to find a blog or something that goes over it in detail. Helping you solve the issue.
If you never learn it in the first place. You’ll never know it’s there.
Even a poet should have at least a basic understanding of how an engine works
On the other hand, writers/artists trying to incorporate science and technology into their art while not actually understanding how the science/technology works is hilarious to the people that do.
(And I say this both as someone who somewhat knows technology and as an amateur sci-fi writer who definitely gets a ton of stuff wrong.)
People thinking knowledge outside their career is useless is how we ended up with flat earthers, climate change deniers, anti vaxxers, anti maskers, and 5G conspiracy theorists. Most of those people are not objectively stupid, but they work in industries not closely related to science and instead of trying to learn how science actually works, they just blindly go with their assumptions and post their own opinions online thinking they’re just as much an authority on it as the actual experts. And then more people ignorant of science end up thinking their intuition makes more sense than the published knowledge so they start denying science too.
So i agree that learning things like this is important but feel the need to point out the reason we have flat earthers and other nonsense is because the capitalist ruling classes benefit from an uneducated populace and purposefully push nonsense conspiracies in the media to divide and confuse the working class. Yes education can help with these things, but plenty of highly educated people believe in this stuff too.
Non science guy. More interested in an original source of that picture: Harry Henderson smoking a cig.
Though, I wish I had at least a broad comprehension of the maths involved. Would be neat while watching the new age of rockets flying into the abyss.
