School didn't prepare me for adulthood at all.

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I'm 26. In the past, I have had a few jobs. I worked at a supermarket for a while. I worked at a farm for a while. I worked at a consulting company for a while.

When am I going to use what I learned in school? I can honestly say that nothing that I learned in school has helped me work at all. When I worked at a consulting company, all I did was copy and paste text using simple instructions.

The real world is an odd place. As a kid, you go to school and learn about beautiful wonders from around the universe. You learn about the great minds of the past. You learn about far-off lands. You learn that curiosity, critical thinking and optimism are virtues. You are taught that everyone is special and important in their own way.

When you become an adult, the real world teaches you the exact opposite of what school taught you. Nowadays, my curiosity is just a useless distraction. Nobody cares about my ability to think critically. People only care about my ability to sit down, shut up, and preform simplistic, repetitive tasks. The real world teaches me that most people are expendable. Only the job creators have value.

If we really want to teach kids about the real world, we should just send kids to coal mines, insult them, and force them to work until they cry. That certainly would have prepared me for the real world. That may sound like child abuse, but adulthood is constant abuse. That's what maturity (apparently) is - the ability to put up with abuse and act like it's no big deal.

Perhaps the government should offer free brain surgery to people who are too intelligent. Being smart is apparently a disability because I'm constantly distracted by all the cool things that I can imagine and think about.

I honestly find it odd how our society glorifies intelligence in children ... only to demonize intelligence in adults.

The masses would probably be happier if they were lobotomized. We obviously aren't going to change society to make human existence more tolerable, so the elites should step in and liberate us from the caustic burden of sapience.

We are all pawns of Big Brother. Why doesn't he step in and make us all happy little lambs already?

This is how things worked out for me:

School (7-18 yrs old) - always isolated, no friends, teachers kept pulling me out classes and put me in some sort of inclusion unit because I wasn't doing what they asked, so therefore I didn't learn the necessary life skills and dreaded going home to abusive parents so couldn't focus on work at home either, didn't get help with anxiety either, parents were very dismissive even though they pushed for the diagnosis in the first place. They also told me I would learn in time how to manage my finances, how to take responsibility for ones actions, gain independence but I still to this day can't manage by myself.

College/university (19-24 yrs) - I got my first bank account, my first real shot at independence away from family which i've always wanted but that's all I got. They didn't tell me how to use my bank account, only said make the most of it, not what charges applied if I had gone over the limit or the future implications if I would go in debt for too long.

In the end I didn't really learn anything, I get told by relatives that school was easier than what they do now, I can't see how you can compare the 2, you weren't in control in school (at least I wasn't), and in work, the roles are reversed, you have to do it all yourself without help, you have to know how to look in the right places, something school might have taught me if I was given the chance.

I struggled in skewl aLOT due to dyslexia & other related learning disabilities. I had NO desire at all to go to college because of how difficult skewl was for me so I never went & I never regretted that decision. I had a couple jobs in the past; dishwasher, floor cleaning, & custodial & I feel like most of the stuff I learned in skewl is not relevant to me in the real-world. I would of dropped out of high-skewl but my parents insisted that I needed a high-skewl diploma for employment. None of the many job apps I put in ever asked about high-skewl but there was a spot for college so I'm in the same employment situation on a job app as someone without a high-skewl diploma or GED. I feel my parents lied to me or at least misunderstood the job market. About the only high-skewl coarses that I feel prepared me for the real-world after high-skewl were a couple of the elective 1s. Business Math & General Business & I took them because they seemed easier than most of the classes I could of took & I did really well in them.

Well, that can vary depending on the school. There were a few teachers that heavily encouraged optimism, but I often found them to be overly fake and as I saw several teachers go on to have mental breakdowns whilst proclaiming that everything was fine even though it clearly wasn't fine, I started to connect overt optimism with mental instability and actually felt fearful of anyone who was just a bit too optimistic in fear of them losing it and yelling at people. That probably says a lot about my childhood...

Hence why I found shows and songs that were overly cheery to be slightly creepy. I always wondered what exactly optimistic people were hiding, because my experiences had taught me that they often were hiding something. You could say that I was something of an overly cautious child who tended to fear the worst.

It took me perhaps longer than it should have done to realise that not every optimistic person out there was on the verge of having a breakdown. So, although my teachers may have attempted to teach me optimism, their actions ended up teaching me the opposite and I actually ended up being quite cynical and distrusting as a result.

On the plus side, my experiences taught me how to tell real optimism apart from people whom are faking it. There are often slight cues in how they act that set them apart.



Yet again, it really varies. Personally, I had a mixture of teachers, some told me that I was worthless and would never amount to anything in life, and others encouraged me.

When asked to write what our future aspirations were whilst in English class, I simply wrote “I aspire to not be a disappointment” and my teacher called me to his desk the next lesson to talk about my answer, and he told me that I was far from a disappointment, and how I was making great progress in his lessons.

It can be a difficult task to not rely on others for a sense of self-worth, and although I mainly put that answer as a joke, there was some truth to it as it was a concern of mine.

I remember feeling quite annoyed when I was at school because the same teachers who had acted condescending to me and had put very little effort into writing my reports (switching names, giving me the wrong feedback, and general typos which gave me the impression they just didn’t care, although yes I understand that teachers are busy individuals and can't dedicate complete care to every single report) also wrote “I loved all my students!” and stuff of that ilk in the yearbook. No, you didn’t. I remember when I left school and I wrote a post on another forum saying “Do you ever just feel like you are just on a conveyor belt being beaten to fit a mould so that you can fit into society and that you don’t actually matter?”.

Which actually sounds similar to what you are saying in this thread, so in a way you remind me of 16-year-old me. I ended up accidentally enraging a bunch of people because they read it as me insulting them, which wasn’t my intention, rather I was just projecting some personal teenage angst and frustration. Granted, perhaps I should’ve thought through my post a bit more before I sent it. Oh well.

Sometimes it can be strange going back and reading some of my old posts there, since it really shows how much my view of the world has changed and how I am a great deal happier now.



My time at school often left me wondering what my teachers wanted of me, I didn’t always intend to be a difficult student, but the answers that I gave tended to annoy them.

This was because sometimes my answers were technically correct, but the teacher’s manual didn’t have anything to say about the solutions I gave to problems because they hadn’t thought of that particular approach. This left my teachers in a rather awkward position because they didn’t know whether to say if my answer was wrong or correct.

I found it difficult to tell whether my solution was too unconventional since answers that seemed like obvious connections to me were apparently a bit too abstract, sometimes when I took the time to explain my answer thoroughly they agreed with me, but they still didn’t know what to do because the book didn’t cover it.

Overtime I found that my sense of curiosity slowly withered and died. I got to a point where I simply just didn’t care about anything, rather I’d switch off my brain during lessons and mindlessly copy from textbooks, eagerly waiting for the end of the school day.

I got so used to just memorising information without caring about any of it, and then forgetting all of it later once the test was over. So, in my experience, I don’t believe that school taught me the value of curiosity. In fact, I only started to care about certain topics after I left school.




It is often debated what we should be teaching students, and personally I find these conversations to be interesting. Unfortunately there is only so much time to teach pupils, and there is a lot to learn so it can be difficult.



Some food for thought. ^

I would have to agree with you pertaining to "cheerleader" teachers.

I've had a few; I found all of them insincere and phony. Rather superficial, too. Not much depth to them.

I liked it better when a teacher was able to discuss the work with me in an impartial manner---emphasizing the faults as well as the virtues. I might not like it when a fault was pointed out---but I found it instructive, nevertheless.

Saying this, until maybe the last year of high school, I really didn't have a teacher with whom I could converse with. I had a crush on one English teacher in 8th grade--which inspired me to do "show what I can do." Most of the time, they were trying to get me to shut up and not disrupt the class. It wasn't all their fault; I did disrupt the class LOL. I wasn't exactly one who would seek advice from teachers; I had too much pride in my own abilities.

I had a few teachers in high school with whom I developed somewhat of a rapport. One of them was an English teacher who hated me at first--then grew to like me. I had a crush on her. Another was a male teacher who was history-inclined--as I was. We had some nice discussions (about simple concepts, in retrospect---but nevertheless of an intellectually pleasurable nature).

I think that the main purpose of school (elementary-, junior high- and high school at least) is to teach three things: the very basics of math, reading/writing and a bit general knowledge. The second thing is teaching kids to follow rules (and when it's acceptable to break them) and how to fit in to society (but this one isn't actually taught, kids are expected to learn it by just being there with others.) Third, the ability to learn. To absorb and look for information.

...But yeah, maybe they should teach more basic adult life stuff... or maybe not. Parents should be the ones to handle that as a part of raising their children. Parenting isn't just about providing a roof over a kid's head and food to it's plate after all.

I think that school is mainly about being able to learn stuff, and work towards a goal (a degree). The stuff you learn is often not really at all important. At the same time ideas that seem to be unrelated are often quite useful.

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For high school I just showed up, and collected a degree. I was operating on the pretense that I needed to blend in. The teachers were more than happy to have a wall-flower. I did not really learn to learn. I thought I was bad at math because it did not come automatically. Later in college I learned that I was not bad at math, but that I just needed to study. My education suffered as a result of not learning how to study and learn.

School is teaching you how to learn, and how to complete projects. They test to see if you can learn and complete projects. Most people do not use most of what they learned in school. Most people do not get a job in the field that their degree is in. At the same time learning one thing can help something else seemingly unrelated.

The very top schools are really good at picking successful people. Many of these people drop out, and do wonders on their own. Their success is detached from gaining a university degree. It is a chicken and an egg thing . . . the schools pick good students, and look good. The schools also teach students things, and then the students make the schools look good.

Many people who score very high in school become professionals like doctors and lawyers. However they do not tend to change the world in earth shattering ways.

I wonder if it's about different society or just the optimism I inherited from my father – but my expirience is totally different. In the society of science and engineering people being intelligent is actually valued positive. Work is more interesting than school. Broader interests are sometimes a problem because of distracting you but they also make the life fun.
None of us will shake the world but we can contribute our little vectors to push it the right direction. Not to be successful. To make our lifes valuable.
But it's only my naive philosophy. It helps me carrying on and be happy so I stick to it.

I hope you will sort out your feelings and your place in the world. I guess it's your high time. To sort out your past so it doesn't burden your present. If you need some antidepressants and/or consuelling, go for it. They may smooth the process.

I've been a teacher for 29 years and have worked as both an elementary teacher as well as a high school teacher. For the past 12 years, I have been the chef instructor of a rural high school's Culinary Arts program in Nevada. I have also previously taught grades 3-5 in rural, suburban, and inner-city public schools as well as private American schools in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

When are you going to use what you learned in school? I couldn't help but notice that you wrote an articulate question and used appropriate spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Learning how to write was something you learned in school.

When you go to the supermarket and buy (fill in the blank) and the cashier asks for (dollar value of fill in the blank) and you pull out your wallet and begin counting out some bills ... you're using basic math skills. If you drove yourself to the supermarket, you may have learned how to drive through driver's ed.

When you're at work and you're wondering what time it is and how much longer it will be until your day will end, you're using more math skills.

At home if you cook a meal whether it's from scratch or from a boxed mix, you're reading and following sequential directions. If the directions call for you to measure, you're using teaspoons, tablespoons, and liquid or solid volume measurements. These are all skills that you learned in basic math.

Schools serve a multitude of functions. They provide K-12 students with a basic level of general education. Even if you didn't care for a specific subject, you were still exposed to it. When I was a student, I didn't care for trigonometry or physics and knowing this, when I went to college I didn't major in science or math. I stuck to things that interested me and since I liked tutoring others and since I really enjoyed history, I became an elementary teacher. There's a saying about elementary teachers that I've found to be quite true. Elementary teachers generalize in everything but specialize in nothing.

For 17 years I was a generalist. I taught reading, writing, spelling, cursive handwriting, math, science, social studies, and health. I enjoyed what I did but after the Feds implemented NCLB legislation (No Child Left Behind) which tied Federal funding to statewide standardized testing, too many districts adopted a teach to the test mentality that I just found repugnant. I opted out, pursued a degree in Culinary Arts and after graduating with honors, I worked in the food service industry for a few years.

There are many other unwritten lessons to be learned at school. In PE and presumably on the playground, you may have played games. Kickball, soccer, softball, dodge ball, and other games teach kids how to take turns and how to play fairly with one another. Games and for that matter, science lab work and collaborative assignments in social studies teach students how to work as part of a cooperative group. Playing with others during recess and sitting with your friends during lunch gave you practice in developing social skills.

As we progress into the 21st century, the world has admittedly changed since I was a boy. Whereas it used to be possible for high school students to graduate and to get a manufacturing job that paid quite well, recent events over the past 2-3 decades have seen our industrial capacity erode as more and more jobs have been shipped overseas. These days many jobs require additional education beyond high school diplomas and GEDs.

This is not to say that all high school graduates need to go to college. As a Career and Technical Education teacher, I can assure you that there are still many skilled jobs out there. I'm formally trained as a chef and although much of what I learned, I learned in culinary school, MOST of what I've learned has been through on the job experience. Culinary school cannot adequately prepare you for running a kitchen during the height of the dinner rush when you're "in the weeds" with 50 tickets in the window and servers are clamoring for their orders. Culinary school like public education, taught me the basics, but hands-on experience, first as a line cook and then as a chef de partie (station chef) taught me how to apply what I learned while multi-tasking, delegating, inspiring, and leading my crew to meet and plate our production requirements.


Ah yes ... they used to call this "character education" and it was around this time that some schools began giving everyone ribbons at the science fair because everyone was a "winner." This was around the time when I gave up being an elementary teacher. Not only were we required to dumb down education to teach minimal standards because the state tests generally only tested to minimum levels of performance ... but now we had to celebrate how "special" each and every child was ... whether they really were special or not.

I will agree with you on this. The morons who implemented this "everyone is special" philosophy were naive and shortsighted because the sad reality is that we live in a highly competitive society. Sports fans will celebrate the Philadelphia Eagles who won the last Super Bowl. No one is celebrating the performance of the Cleveland Browns who arguably may have one of the worst records in recent NFL history.



Yep. Reality has a way of biting the unwary.

Kids who grew up being told that they were smart and special and gifted got a heavy dose of reality when they entered the work force and learned that no, no, and no, they were not particularly smart or special or gifted.

Le Cordon Bleu's (North America) chain of culinary schools learned this the hard way. In the interest of cranking out chef wannabes, the school ignored its own code of student conduct. Students showed up late to class and were improperly attired. Instead of being locked out of class, they were admitted! When the time for their student externships came around, these slovenly skills were often carried over into the food service industry and surprise-surprise, no chef or kitchen manager was willing to deal with interns who couldn't be bothered to show up on time. Student interns who were improperly attired or who came to work without their hand tools were quickly shown the proverbial door and it didn't take long for Le Cordon Bleu to get a really bad reputation ... so much so that they eventually went bankrupt and had to close all 16 campuses.

If it makes you feel any better, teacher education training wasn't much different.

My classroom management class painted a rosy and idealistic image of elementary education. If Johnny was "acting up", all the teacher had to do was to "redirect" Johnny's attention to the fact that he was off task and Johnny would then thank the teacher for his/her observation and resolve to do much better in the future.

Righhhhhhhhttttt. In reality if Johnny was off task and if I asked him to stop talking because he was distracting his classmates, Johnny was more apt to tell me to "F**K OFF." This actually got worse because when I told him to come with me to the office on a disciplinary referral, he told me that his Pa was going to get me ... and sure enough, his father rang me up and told me that a "real man don't take nothing off of no one." He then told me that he was going to come to school and shoot me. I immediately told my principal who was a grizzled Vietnam vet and the principal called the cops and then got a baseball bat and went out to sit by the front gate until the police arrived. The father never showed up. What's sad was that a few years later, to celebrate a wedding this same student got a gun and began firing it into the air. When the father of the bride objected, Mr. "A real man don't take nothing off of no one" grabbed the weapon out of his son's hand. He then shot and killed the father of the bride. (sigh)

My class management training did a rotten job of preparing me to teach in an inner-city school environment. As with my later career in the food service industry, much of what I learned had to be learned through on the job training.

In terms of your situation, if you're not happy, why don't you take a step back and do some self assessment.

Think about what your interests are and think about what sort of jobs might align with those interests. Once you have an idea about what you want to do, do some research to find out what sort of skills or education you'll need to pursue this goal.

You're still quite young. Your future is yet to be determined. If you're not happy with the way things are now, you have the opportunity to make some changes.

Heck ... I was 40 when I went to culinary school. I went through a major career change, shifting from having been an elementary teacher to working in the food service industry. I was 47 when I returned to education as a Culinary Arts instructor and I haven't looked back.

This is why I love vocational schools so much. I can say without a doubt it helped tremendously with being prepared for the real world.