The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You In School
By the time you're 30, you'll be hit with the crushing truth of just how much the grownups didn't teach you when you were in school. And, while liberals and conservatives haggle over whether public schools need more funding or more lessons on the Ten Commandments, we think all can agree there are some very basic, useful things that our children really, really should know.
Therefore when Cracked starts its line of private schools, know that your kids won't graduate without having passed...
#10.
Sex Ed (for Girls): How to Spot a Douchebag
Young ladies, you're in your teens now and already you have no doubt run into some guys who are being suspiciously nice to you. Likely you have figured out that in many cases, this has nothing to do with them being nice guys and everything to do with them desperately wanting you to touch their boner.
What you may not realize is that over the next few years, a string of rejections will cause many of these men to start hating you. Some of them hate you already, because they grew up hating their mothers and it kind of carries over. Boys are like that.
Now, some of these men will then become members of the Pick Up Artist Community, also known as the Seduction Community. This is a loose club of guys who see females as a collection of walking masturbation aids. They have websites and seminars and chat rooms where they trade tips on how to manipulate you into having sex with them.
They believe the male/female relationship is adversarial in nature, and that sex is a way of conquering you. Thus many of their techniques work by playing on your insecurities, like "the Neg," where they first engage you in conversation, then drop subtle criticisms that will undermine your self-esteem and subconsciously make you want to gain their approval (by letting them touch your boobs). Believe it or not, it works--if you're not ready for it.
This is just one type of douchebag; this class will cover several varieties. And, while we're not telling you not to sleep with these men, the lesson you will learn from this course is that they will put the same effort into making you happy as they do the semen-encrusted sock under their bed.
Chapters Include:
I. Types of Douchebag;
II. How to Tell When He's Lying;
III. Why Your Male Friends Almost Certainly Want to Have Sex With You;
IV. Why There is Nothing to be Gained by Showing Your Boobs to a Camera.
#9.
Sex Ed (for Boys): Why Porn is Not a Good Way to Learn About Sex
Young men, you're in your teens now and that means already you've seen several thousand hours of Internet porn. Many of you will soon engage in your first sexual encounter, having no practical instruction to guide you beyond those videos.
Unfortunately, what you see on PornTube represents only what certain men wish sex was like. We're not saying that you'll never meet a woman who enjoys, say, having semen squirted into her eyes, or having sex on camera with five strangers in the back of a decorated van. What we're saying is that just about everything you see in those videos--including the ones that claim to be hidden camera or "reality" porn--is there specifically because real women are not like that. These videos fill a gap between fantasy and reality.
So how do you figure out what to do when you're finally alone with a lady? Well, we can give you the basics, but the rest will be up to you.
Chapters Include:
I. It's a Vagina, Not a Slab of Meat You're Trying to Tenderize;
II. Your Penis Size is Probably Perfectly Fine;
III. Why Your First Time is Going to be a Humiliating Disaster, No Matter What You Do;
IV. Most Women Are Not Sexually Stimulated by Spanking;
V. Every Woman is Different and You Will Only Learn What She Likes Via Practice;
VI. That's OK, Because the Practice is Awesome.
#8.
Phys. Ed: Practical Self-Defense
We're calling this course "Practical Self-Defense" but a more accurate title would be, "How To Get Away From Somebody Who is Trying to Mug or Rape You." Yes, "Get Away." Some of you guys who grew up on The Matrix still fantasize about beating the shit out of a street full of thugs in a fight that looks like a choreographed dance. This class will not teach you how to do that. No class will teach you how to do that.
Will not happen.
Oh, there are guys out there capable of kicking ass. They're called criminals. They're good at fighting because they have poor impulse control and anger management, and thus are constantly getting into fights. If you, on the other hand, are going to be civilized and successful parents and homeowners and taxpayers, the odds are overwhelming you will not ever be good at fighting. This fact is thus reflected in our curriculum.
Chapters Include:
I. Why Your Wallet is Not Worth Dying For;
II. Why Guns and Knives Are Not Awesome (Includes Visual Aids Depicting Wounds of Gnarled Strips of Exposed Fat, Tendons and Skin, Plus Graphic Descriptions of Life in a Wheelchair);
III. How to Break Off an Argument With a Hobo Before He Stabs You;
IV. Why You Can't Reason With a Screaming Drunk;
V. Why Believing Action Movies Are Real Will Get You Killed;
VI. How to Tell When That Guy Walking Toward You is Concealing a Weapon.
With visual aids supplied by the NYPD.
#7.
Industrial Arts: Emergency Repairs
This does not require a great deal of elaboration. Quite simply, there are certain things a person who is about to be living on their own needs to know how to do.
Building a goddamned birdhouse is not one of them.
Chapters Include:
I. How to Patch and Paint a Wall So You Can Get Your Deposit Back From Your Landlord;
II. Identifying Which Wires in Your House Will Kill You if You Touch Them;
III. What to do When You Wake Up to Find Your Toilet/Refrigerator/Hot Water Heater/Air Conditioner/Sink is Puking Water Onto Your Floor;
IV. When to Call the Repair Guy;
V. How to Figure Out if the Repair Guy is Screwing You;
VI. Foreign Objects You're Going to Try to Put in the Microwave at Some Point so Let's Just Get it Out of Your System Now.
#6.
Business: Success = Meeting the Right People
All of those successful people you see around town, with their convertibles and huge televisions? Approximately 100 percent of them got where they are because they had three things. All three are absolutely essential, but one of them is almost never mentioned. They are:
* Talent
* Hard Work
* Randomly Meeting the Right People and Not Pissing Them Off
The autobiographies of famous people will do everything they can to downplay that third part, because it has the element of sheer luck. People get offended when you mention it, because they think it somehow undermines the first two. But remember, we said you need all three.
For instance, let's take maybe the most successful movie actor of all time, Harrison Ford. He farted around Hollywood for nine years, taking bit parts without anything major ever coming his way. Clearly talented, very hard-working. Yet not once did anybody look at him and say, "This guy will sell several billion dollars' worth of tickets and action figures some day!" He was just another ambitious, pretty face, in a city full of them. He got so fed up, he quit acting and became a carpenter.
There's a parallel world without this man as Han Solo, and we don't want to live there.
Then one day he got hired to install cabinets in the home of a guy named George Lucas. They became friends. That got him the role of Han Solo a few years later. Click the link; that's a true story.
Decades earlier another Ford, Henry, was just one of many engineers screwing around with early car engine designs until he became friends with a wealthy businessman named Alexander Malcomson who forked over the money to get Ford Motor Company started. This also works for guys not named Ford; Justin Bieber was one of several hundred thousand teenagers singing on YouTube videos before a former record exec named Scooter Braun clicked on one of his videos by accident and got him a record deal.
But everyone already knew he was an accident.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have guys like Edgar Allan Poe, whose legendary poem "The Raven" earned him... nine dollars. He burned so many bridges he wound up basically begging the public for money before dying at 40.
At some point Poe probably met his George Lucas, but made such a horrible impression on him the guy wouldn't return his calls.
"Oh, shit, honey, he's at the door! Pretend we're not home! Did he see me?"
Chapters include:
I. First Impressions are Really Important;
II. Subsequent Impressions Are Also Important;
III. No, You're Not Terrell Owens (aka Why Acting Like a Douchebag is a Bad Investment).
Classes continued on the following page...
In France, doctor Dukan (the guy who invented the Dukan diet) proposed that highschoolers receive a grade for their high school diploma based on how much overweight you are (people with an average BMI gets A, obeses and anorexics gets F). He was torn apart by politicians, teachers and nutritionists because a) it's 100% subjective and discriminative ; b) kids are already assholes to eachother, no need to give them another reason ; c) "Dude, you're a doctor, not a teacher."
ReplyI WISH these were classes we could take in high school...I am not sure when I will ever need the formula for finding a volume of a sphere in my everyday life, but these 'classes' all seem 100% more useful
ReplySome other suggestions :
Reply- Nice guys (the hypocrite kind, not the genuine nice male people) : how to spot one and how to stop if you're one.
- Dating : how to find and get close to a girl who shares your hobbies.
- Social skills : they're not your friends if you know them only via Facebook.
- Internet usage 101 : how to browse the Net without calling for help every 2 minutes.
How big of a mistake it is to drop out of high school right before you graduate.
ReplyMy uncle once said that only two things should be required in school: Medicine and the Law. Medicine because we need to be active participants in our own healthcare, need to understand the things we're popping into our bodies, need to understand invasive procedure recommendations, need to understand things like the deleterious effects of antibiotic overuse, and because healthcare is unaffordable now and is required to actually live.
ReplyThe Law because, as they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse. So, if our society is going to tell us you can break the law without even knowing it, and not knowing it is no defense, and it takes years of education to know and understand the law, then it really should be on society's shoulders to educate its citizens. And to his point, I would add that I have seen far too many hard-working low-income adults who don't understand their rights under the law, who are continually victimized by apartment managers, credit companies and employers.
I don't think these should be the *only* required subjects, but I think it is a good point.
Still an awesome article, especially #7, section VI.
ReplyIn my high school I got shuffled into a class called Differential Math because they just needed somewhere to stick me for the last hour. It was considered an easy class for people who were barely able to graduate. The first class we went over simple addition and through out the year we went back over simple math. My worksheet regularly got stolen and passed around the class.
ReplyI was also taking AP Statistics that year which got some odd looks when my math homework consisted of a 7 page paper on double blind surveys and a one page worksheet filled with long division but we all know which one helped me more later in life. Differential Math also taught us how to fill out tax forms and write checks and gave us basic knowledge on the use of credit cards. Despite going in to college and getting thrown in a math class way WAY over my head I can honestly say that Differential Math helped me in life a LOT more than Statistics or Calculus did.
It also turns out that the old guy who taught Differential Math by handing out worksheets and then kicking back to read Louis L'amour books was the smartest damn math teacher we had and the one the others went to when they had a problem in the back of the book they couldn't solve. He was close to retirement and didn't give a damn but gods did he chuckle when I asked for help with parabola equations.
I took a statistics course once. The only thing I really took away from it is that statistics are always accurate, except when the biases are built into the study, which is always.
My friends and I did a lot of "Foreign Objects You're Going to Try to Put in the Microwave at Some Point so Let's Just Get it Out of Your System Now." in the high school senior lounge and nearly set the building on fire.
ReplyErr, last comment, I swear - I'd also add "here's how to write a resume, here's how to write a cover letter, here's why just looking for jobs online isn't the best option, here's how you should act at a job interview, etc."
ReplyA lot of high schools prepare kids for college, but the skills don't always transfer. In the academic world you're generally filling out applications, so kids who are used to that find the prospect of writing a cover letter kind of scary. A lot of my friends are fairly savvy about most things, but would never dream of sending their application to a company that isn't officially hiring - even though this method has a pretty high success record. (You know, comparatively.)
My dad gave me What Color Is Your Parachute which I found pretty helpful (and not nearly as dumb as the title suggested). It has a lot of practical advice on finding a job that I never heard anywhere else.
Err, I promise I'm not a spambot. Carry on.
Ugh, just moved into a new apartment with a pretty neglectful landlord - damn I wish I had Industrial Arts instead of spending wood working making a toy airplane. (Still have the airplane though.)
ReplyIt's been kind of fun trying to figure out how to fix some of this stuff (emphasis on some - the toilet, not so fun), but damn if I didn't nearly electrocute myself on a lighting fixture.
What's really frustrating is how many of my classes really COULD have been useful (as opposed to necessitating an entire new class like making chilli 101). I'm currently taking a really excellent writing class in college that focuses on what your reader is going to get out of your writing - will they keep reading, will they understand, will they think they understand and then use your document to justify Nazism once you're dead. Most of this stuff isn't that difficult, and totally could be taught in high school English. Instead we spent all our time on a bunch of bullshit rules that don't even matter half the time.
Dealing with Assholes 101
ReplyEconomics: Why you are going to be a poor m**********r for a while
ReplyHow about how to balance a check book, how to write a check, how your credit cards aren't magic, why you need good credit, why you shouldn't always trust people selling you a house.
It's clear that a lot of people could have used this. And even people who haven't messed up are kind of nervous about this stuff in the beginning.
Bannef: I took that class. It was called "Life Planning". Most useful class I've ever completed. (Sorry if this double posts, it went crazy last time I tried to post.)
The following is a class that REALLY needs to be taught:
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesPolitical Science: Why All Politicians--Regardless Of Party Affiliation--Are Full Of s**t And You Are An Idiot For Voting For Any Of Them
Political Science: Why Most Politicians-- Regardless of Party Affiliatoin But More Republicans- Are Full Of s**t But You Should Vote Anyway
More like
Political Science: Why anyone willing to be in politics is a bad person.
All of my research into American politics (this being the first year where I can vote) has pretty much ended up with a single conclusion for both the Democratic and Republican parties: The only thing to do is hate both of them and pray that Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi give each other AIDS and/or get hit by a bus. Hopefully a single bus to save on gas and traffic accidents.
Psychology 203: Why Most People Look For Someone To Blame When Faced With A Complex Problem
Or you could just vote based on the issues and leave the personalities out of it.
I coulda sworn this list also had at some point "How Much the Bills You Will Be Paying for the Rest of your Life will Cost", with the general idea of financial planning and how adults actually live and pay their everyday lives.
ReplyI thought of several more but I can think of two actual classes, often only taught in college, that if we bothered to teach it starting in elementary school with yearly refreshers would solve a lot of the problems the article addresses and that I and others can think of.
Reply1) Introduction to World Religions Teach kids the major tenants of Christianity, Judaism, Islam (and teach these three as the distinct beliefs they are rather then simplisticly lumping them into a single mish mash), Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, Hinduism, Neo Paganism, and so on. Note I mean in the sense that a good secular college course on the subject would do so not as in trying to indoctrinate people into a specific belief system. With chapters to include:
I Why not every Muslim is looking to crash a plane into a building
II Not every Christian believes the exact same thing, or is a child molesting monster ready to murder you for not worshiping Jesus
III The Jews are not actually running a super secret conspiracy that controls Holywood, all news agencies, the US government and secretly orchastrated 9/11.
IV Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs or lack their of and while you are entitlted to tell other people what you believe if you can't learn to do it respectfully this will piss people off instead of converting them.
V No non Christian religions don't worship the devil with an examination of actual historical and current Satanism and demon worship (yes it exists) and the difference between them, each other and everything else.
2) Logic, Criitical thinkin and the scientific method and how everyone should use these in their daily life whether they believe in Jesus, Buddha, Flying Spaghetti Monster or are Atheists or agnostics. How many of the things here come from trusting in logical fallacies (the quackery of alternative "medicine' being a prime example with its bad science and appeals to false authority) or from ignorance of what science actually does. Chapters to include:
I How to spot a logical fallacy both when you commit it and when someone else does
II What small pox is (with photos of the scars), how the last naturally occuring case struck in 1977, and the part vaccination played in the whole thing
III Vaccines and how they've saved millions of lives and how the Autism delusion started with a dishonest scientist paid to get those results.
IV A brief history of scientific blunders as examples of science's willing to admit it wrong and move on
LOL, you can't even mention religion in elementary school, you'd be out of a job faster than OJ Simpson in a white bronco.
So depressing, yet so right.
ReplyThis sounds like the best school ever!!!!!XD When can I enroll? :D Or is it another fake school like the sex academy they promised us?
ReplyAmerican public schools, inflicting children with a false sense of maturity and bravado rivaling the breadth of the galaxy, since 1635.
ReplyIt's only slightly ironic that graduations are held at or around Towel Day.
Commonly said of the Valedictorian: "There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
Alas, if only this school had been around when I was a child! Much more useful information than "Basketball Skills" and taking Driver's Ed from Captain Obvious (the key needs to be in the ignition to start the car, it's kinda hard to see the road when you're eating chinese food and checking your texts, etc.), which oddly enough both the basketball and driving instruction came from the same Captain Obvious, who also worked as the football/basketball/baseball coach for the school teams..... Needless to say, the curriculum ideas you present would have been ten times more useful than real schools
ReplyI had the same issue. My Driver's Ed teacher was also my Football, Track, and Powerlifting coach, Art teacher, and taught Health.
Okay, I'm going to say something that you will rarely hear someone say on the internet...
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI was wrong.
I'm referring to my comments below attempting to defend the seduction community. To be fair, my comments were almost damning it with faint praise anyway, but to be even trying to defend it at all was wrong of me. Self help for guys who aren't confident? Sure, it may encourage you to work out and dress better and do various things that women will find more attractive, but the core of what it does is manipulative, and that isn't okay. It also turns what should be enjoyable encounters with women into joyless repetitive motions that don't mean anything for you or her. Some of the terminology of the community is also sickening and objectifying.
It goes without saying that not everyone involved in PUA is a bad person, but even if they're not, enough exposure to it will make them exactly that, because it is motivated by wrong intentions and attitudes, particularly egotism and greed and a good measure of disdain for women.
I don't know if it would be possible to have my previous comments removed, but I would rather leave them there as they show that even someone who should know better (and I would say I should) can be seduced by the seduction community. A man is capable of rationalising anything to be okay if he thinks it just might possibly get him more sex, and that's exactly what I was doing. I was wrong, and I apologise. Not that I was heavily involved with the community, but I'm steering clear of it from now on, and I will take my chances like a man should. If a girl doesn't like me, that's that. Her loss, but there will be no manipulation or trying to "conquer" her. I don't want to be that guy and I don't think I have any right to behave in that way.
I'm just gonna thumbs up that on principle.
I do think your point comparing it to how women behave is interesting. You didn't mention this outright, but I do think the way some magazines talk about men and how women should act around them is pretty similar to some stuff I've heard from PUA, and pretty manipulative and crappy.
It's not fair to compare the two because of context - objectifying women is scary because in the not so distant past women were kept away from legal rights because of those attitudes, and while women do rape men, most are perpetrated by men against women, so talking about manipulating and preying on women is kind of a scary thing.
However, that doesn't change the fact that it's a s****y way to treat people on both sides. What's sad is that I think a lot of men turn to PUA and women turn to these magazines not because they're terrible people, but because they're unconfident and confused, and think that knowing the "rules" will help them. Reading stuff that makes it sound like a game with one objective probably only makes this worst for them in the long run.
I can honestly say that, in all my time wandering the vast realm of the internet, I have never seen anyone so eloquently admit that their previous arguments were wrong. You, sir, are a classy person. I don't even know who you are, but you have my respect (not that it counts for much, but still). Thank you for restoring some of my faith in humanity.
It warmed my black little heart to read this, and honestly, there are a lot of men in my life who were drawn to that sort of attitude - guys who didn't get any for a long time, and as a result, developed this intense bitterness about their relationships with women. That's hard to admit, and it's hard to get out of. But I can say with certainty that when you abandon these "pick up" principles, you have way better and more fulfilling relationships.