Writer's Block: United Nations World Teachers Day
Instead, I'd rather just comment on the two subjects I hated most in school that I still think were totally worthless.
Geometry:
This was probably my most hated class. I actually enjoyed Algebra. I didn't mind finding 'x,' though I would have liked it if someone would have explained why 'x' always seemed to go missing. We never had any problems with 'm' or 'q so what was the deal with 'x'? ' But I sort of liked Algebra and I have found practical uses for it.
Geometry, on the other hand, taught me nothing. I remember the teacher telling us that there is no such thing as a perfect circle or a perfectly straight line. They why are we wasting time studying them? Why don't we just study leprechauns instead?
And we had to do all these proofs. But we were proving things that had already been proven so what's the point? Their reasoning was that it was to get us to think logically. To which I'd answer, wouldn't it be more logical to try to prove something that hasn't been proven yet. I never got a logical answer to that one.
Latin:
Even though I didn't attend Catholic school, I was still required to take three years of Latin from 7th to 9th grades. One of the reasons for this, I was told, was because Latin is the root of English and most other languages. So if we understand Latin, we will have a better understanding of all languages.
This excuse is even shakier than the reason we had to prove proven proofs in Geometry. All Latin did was make me get Spanish and Latin words mixed up when I got to10th grade and was finally able to study a language that people actually spoke.
And I don't really remember any Latin. The only full sentence I can say is "Puella est agricola." This means "the girl is a farmer." Since I've never had any reason to use this sentence in English, I don't see the point of having to learn how to say it in Latin.
The high point of my Latin studies was in 9th grade when we were reading Caesar's Gallic Wars. Our teacher told us that, for laughs, the Roman soldiers used to put their prisoners in catapults and shoot them against cliffs. To illustrate this, he crumpled up a ball of paper, put it in a toy catapult and shot it against the podium.
Now I don't know if this story is true or not but there have been many people over the years that have pissed me off. Rather than get mad, I just picture myself splattering my enemies against a cliff using my own personal catapult.
This always brings a smile to my face and proves that, even in the most worthless of subjects, there are important life lessons to be learned.
Geometry:
This was probably my most hated class. I actually enjoyed Algebra. I didn't mind finding 'x,' though I would have liked it if someone would have explained why 'x' always seemed to go missing. We never had any problems with 'm' or 'q so what was the deal with 'x'? ' But I sort of liked Algebra and I have found practical uses for it.
Geometry, on the other hand, taught me nothing. I remember the teacher telling us that there is no such thing as a perfect circle or a perfectly straight line. They why are we wasting time studying them? Why don't we just study leprechauns instead?
And we had to do all these proofs. But we were proving things that had already been proven so what's the point? Their reasoning was that it was to get us to think logically. To which I'd answer, wouldn't it be more logical to try to prove something that hasn't been proven yet. I never got a logical answer to that one.
Latin:
Even though I didn't attend Catholic school, I was still required to take three years of Latin from 7th to 9th grades. One of the reasons for this, I was told, was because Latin is the root of English and most other languages. So if we understand Latin, we will have a better understanding of all languages.
This excuse is even shakier than the reason we had to prove proven proofs in Geometry. All Latin did was make me get Spanish and Latin words mixed up when I got to10th grade and was finally able to study a language that people actually spoke.
And I don't really remember any Latin. The only full sentence I can say is "Puella est agricola." This means "the girl is a farmer." Since I've never had any reason to use this sentence in English, I don't see the point of having to learn how to say it in Latin.
The high point of my Latin studies was in 9th grade when we were reading Caesar's Gallic Wars. Our teacher told us that, for laughs, the Roman soldiers used to put their prisoners in catapults and shoot them against cliffs. To illustrate this, he crumpled up a ball of paper, put it in a toy catapult and shot it against the podium.
Now I don't know if this story is true or not but there have been many people over the years that have pissed me off. Rather than get mad, I just picture myself splattering my enemies against a cliff using my own personal catapult.
This always brings a smile to my face and proves that, even in the most worthless of subjects, there are important life lessons to be learned.