The absolute, most valuable class I ever took in school was . . . (uniform, computers)

[lvmensch]

My mother had clear requirements which she inflected upon me and my four siblings. In our preteen years we were all forced to learn to type and ball room dance. The typing was a practical skill she believed would be required of all who went to college where she knew we were all bound.

Mother was interesting. She paid her way through law school by recording and typing virtually verbatim notes of the classes she attended which she sold by subscription to other students. So she not only could type but could do a short hand that was real time.

My most important class was a Senior elective course in EE on digital systems. We were in about the last class to learn tubes rather than semiconductors. Got both but emphasis still on tubes. Once however I saw the digital bit I was hooked. Got a B+ instead of an A because the prof claimed my solution to the end problem was too complex. Ten years later I realized he simply did not understand the stuff as well as his student.

[Nov3]

Originally Posted by gizmo980

Well, of course... but I think most people consider that a given, although it sadly isn't something EVERY high school graduate possesses.



Uh, not quite. Pretty hard to gauge accuracy if you can't read what you've typed - right?

Try typing on a foreign (like Chinese or Hebrew) keyboard, and then tell us it's just about position and tapping. LOL

Glad we agree since the original question didn't specify ' just High school courses,or junior high'. So what is so often overlooked and thereby taken for granted is reading. Comprehension,spelling,and yes phonetics.

And yes typing is a skill of tapping and position of fingers on the keyboard.
I do marvel at certain languages as having to write it is almost an art in itself..

[Bette]

I have to agree with so many others - typing.

I have vision problems but a great memory and I was fast. It helped when I had to get jobs (3 of them) when I was 15 to support the family. I still am fast on the computer and I don't have to look at the keys.

The fingers just know where to go.

I took a computer course in high school though and loved it. It was pretty basic but a couple of years later went to work for a computer company that became pretty big in our area and it was a lot of fun back in those days.

My husband also is good on the keyboard and as a CPA, he has to be. He also had to take typing.

I don't think he loved it but he got hooked on Accounting from a class he took.

[Q44]

Cobol programming in HS in '76. Even though I was a liberal arts major in college, I decided to take more programming and math classes and that led to my first job. Saw an opportunity when networking and PC's were getting started and took classes to get my certifications. Been there ever since.


BTW, I wish I could type . . .

[Happy in Wyoming]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

Every kid in 7th grade was required to take typing, both boys and girls. They told us (rightly so) that high school teachers would not accept hand written term papers AND in college your mother wouldn't be there to type them for you! ALL of us had to type and it serves me well to this day.

But the class that was more important to me was Latin. Through Latin, I finally learned the mechanics of language. Finally I understood how the English language worked. Grammar had always been fun for me but now I really understood the basis of it, what it all meant, and it all made sense.

Latin helped a lot with English vocabulary and spelling too--it bailed me out many times. If I didn't know the answer, I would just ask myself what the Latin would have been. Abbreviations? I knew the meanings of them if they were in Latin and I understood how to write such things as "et al." (Period at the end because it's an abbreviation. No period for "et" because it's a complete word, that sort of minor dilemma that can crop up from time to time.)

(Not that it matters so much these days, but Latin was a huge help back in college and in my early working days. Now no one seems to care about grammar, spelling, or much else about language. I enjoy language and my favorite was Latin--and it still comes in handy from time to time.)

I took four years of Latin and two years of Greek in high school. Latin was my favorite class and it has paid me back a hundredfold. I can cite all the reasons that in_newengland has cited as well as the fact that it gave me then, and has continued to give me, an extraordinary vocabulary. I scored 800 on the SAT Verbal which was critical for my winning a General Motors scholarship, the best of all of the academic scholarships.

I didn't pursue Latin in college; my major was Economics, but the critical thinking I'd learned from Cicero and the other great Roman writers helped me through that discipline. Twenty years later I renewed my acquaintance with Latin; I've read numerous other authors since and become a fair hand in Latin Composition. Following in the footsteps of educated Romans, I've renewed my study of Greek as well. I recently began to learn the niceties of Greek Composition, something I'd put off for decades.

I've read thousands, nay more, ten thousands of posts on this message board, but this is the first time that I felt a true thrill. Thank you so much, in_newengland, for your exemplary post.

Lingua Graeca est maxima sed Lingua Latina est omnium linguarum optima ac utilissima.

[chiluvr1228]

Typing and Home Ec.

[MinivanDriver]

Public speaking. Without a doubt.

When I entered ninth grade, I needed an elective. I thought, "Oh, this looks easy." Boy, was I ever wrong. My teacher in that class was demanding. But, by the end of the year, a shy kid like me could get up and deliver a speech and think on the fly.

Today, I'm in a business where I am always having to speak. Present ideas. Lead sessions. You name it. And the thing I've learned? You can have the best idea in the world, but if you can't present it well, you don't get the biz. There have been more than one occasion where I walked into a meeting and thought, "If I don't make this sale, I can't pay my mortgage." And, thanks to my speech teacher, I could.

I encountered her last year at a funeral of a mutual friend. She had recently retired, but I took the opportunity to thank her personally. I told her how her lessons affected my life and how they came into play every day.

[Katarina Witt]

I like how all these people are saying "typing", with a little shop and home ec thrown in. This is supposed to make us think that what is really needed is more "life skills" type courses.

Now I did take "typing". My mom got this idea from a friend of hers that everyone should know how to type in high school, so she sent me, and then the next year my brother, to typing class the summer before 10th grade (our HS was grades 10-12). Back then, it really was not necessary to be able to type, even for college. And frankly, with those old manual typewriters, it was very hard to correct mistakes, edit, etc. I did type a few college papers. As our world became more computerized, I often said she did the right thing for the wrong reason.

Most people my age have learned to "type" whether they took a course in HS or not because they had to use computers in some form for work. I can't pick one course that I thought was most valuable, but if I could narrow it down, it wouldn't be typing. I could be an RN without having taken typing. Until the most recent years, we entered chart notes by hand.

[TheTimidBlueBars]

AP Psychology in junior year of high school. Never took another psych class again, was never even particularly into the humanities, but it taught me so much about mental disorders, intelligence, personality, and brain anatomy that's definitely helped inform my worldview - by contrast, I couldn't tell you much that I learned in AP Physics.

[SportyandMisty]

The Calculus of Stochastic Processes.