Anyone else ever bothered by how much useless knowledge you have? Or how that space you'll never get back could have been used for more productive or profitable information?
I constantly think about this, and it goes beyond just having meaningless trivia knowledge. I'm talking about stuff that has been ingrained since my elementary school days. Stupid stuff that we have no real need for and never will, even the trivial stuff comes in handy when watching Jeopardy with friends, trivia night at bars, or filling out crossword puzzles. The stuff I'm talking about is truly useless.
Two examples taught to everyone in my generation (and presumably still being taught); hand writing and Roman numerals. I can think of no point in time in my life beyond the point where I was being graded for my knowledge and expertise of each subject that I have needed either of these arcane literary tools.
Hand writing- The generation prior to mine was probably the last to need this, and even then it was for a small window in time. Why are we still wasting time on this? If I never needed it, kids today certainly won't. Ever since about the 5th grade the only time I've used cursive is signing checks and/or legal documents. That's it. Teach these kids how to create a rock star signature (I personally spent hours perfecting mine on Little League baseball photos made to look like actual baseball cards), and just leave it at that. An awesome signature will take you places in life, much more-so than perfecting the lower case z. Start teaching kids to type, give them a skill that might actually get them a job, assuming there are still jobs in this country when they get older. If I see one more co-worker pecking away with just their index fingers I'm going to snap. You're an adult, type like an adult.
Roman Numerals - Of all the subject matter I've retained in life this is by far the biggest waste of space. Aside from Super Bowls (which needs to stop, I'm sure the average country bumpkin NFL fan has no clue what these mean anyway) I've never needed this. For that matter I'm pretty certain the majority of my ancestors have never needed this either, yet we keep teaching it to children. Roman numerals were replaced sometime during the 14th century! Kids aren't taught Latin anymore because its a dead language (even though its far more relevant and useful than Roman Numerals), yet we keep pushing this system that was deemed replaceable 700 years ago (for obvious reasons, think about how confusing multiplication would be, trying being eight years old and wrapping you're mind around X x X = C). Do you think the Japanese are wasting time with this foolish system? I don't. They dropped the abacus a long time ago, its time for us to drop this. You want to teach the kids a neat form of code? Teach them computer/internet code. Unless the kids are aspiring to careers that involve cave drawings, I'm pretty sure learning a few basic lines of code a year will benefit the them and our future society much more.
The American job market is evolving, our education system needs to do the same. It's too late for my generation, at least give the next one a chance, and besides, someone needs to support my social security checks when I retire.
