12 Things Millennials Were Taught In School That Turned Out To Be Completely Useless In Real Life
melissamn | Shutterstock Born between 1981 and 1996, Millennials were named as such because they came of age during the new millennium. Although most were born into a world without Internet access, they saw a sharp uptick in technology use that shaped their identities and how they relate to others.
Millennials stood at a unique point in history, growing up alongside the World Wide Web and before social media rose. Their education blended old and new technologies, and those technologies have evolved so quickly that many things Millennials were taught in school now seem completely useless.
Millennials were taught a few things at school that turned out to be totally pointless:
1. How to use an encyclopedia
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Millennials were taught to rely on physical encyclopedias for information. Whenever they had a research paper, Millennials went to the library and stood in front of rows of heavy, leather-bound books that always seemed just out of reach. Once they found the right edition, they spent hours poring over the pages, handwriting notes and gathering citation information for their bibliographies.
Millennials were taught the extensive process of using physical encyclopedias for research, but it turned out to be useless, since the rise of the Internet made all the world’s information accessible with a few keystrokes. Encyclopedias are now fairly obsolete, and the information in them is outdated, making them relics of Millennial classrooms that are no longer useful.
2. How to write in cursive
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Millennials learned cursive handwriting in school, which turned out to be useless as digital communication overtook the written word. The hours Millennials spent tracing cursive letters are time they can never get back. Outside of signing their names, cursive doesn’t hold the modern workplace the way Millennial-era teachers said it would.
While many teachers believe the lack of cursive lessons in today’s classrooms harms students’ education, cursive was removed from the “Common Core” standards in 2010 as the focus shifted to keyboarding lessons. Twenty-one states still require cursive instruction, as many researchers believe the skill improves retention and comprehension while engaging the brain more deeply.
In 2022, the National Education Association asked educators across the U.S. whether they thought cursive was necessary or entirely outdated. “Kids can barely print,” one teacher said. “I love cursive, but we need to get the basic concepts of writing down first, such as capitals, punctuation, and writing in a straight line. I'm seeing poor writing skills in fourth through eighth grade.”
“It's not about what will be ‘useful’ for us in later life,” another teacher replied. “Writing in cursive aids in brain development and primes the brain for increased learning.” The usefulness of cursive ultimately depends on the profession someone chooses. A scientist might not use it much, but a historian absolutely needs to know cursive, since many historical documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, are written in cursive. While the debate over cursive rages on in schools, Millennials know that writing in cursive didn’t end up being the vital workplace skill they were told it would be.
3. How to do long division by hand
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Another thing Millennials learned in school that turned out to be completely useless was long division by hand. Picture a math class, circa 1999: heads adorned with butterfly clips and frosted tips bent over the week’s pop quiz, which demanded that everyone show their work, or else. This meant working through math problems step by step, including long division, which Millennials spent countless hours learning.
Well-meaning teachers told Millennials that learning long division mattered in the long run because they wouldn’t always have a calculator in their pockets. Fast forward 25 years, and as it turns out, we do all have calculators in our pockets, thanks to Steve Jobs’ visionary invention. While Millennials spent their sweet childhood years agonizing over doing complex math problems by hand, that skill turned out to be completely useless.
4. The concept that college is the only path to success
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Millennials were taught that college was the only path to success, an idea that proved completely useless. Millennials were a highly educated generation, which also meant they were saddled with serious student loan debt. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey, 34% of Millennials have bachelor’s degrees, yet they have also faced more intense economic hardships than Gen X and Boomers before them.
The Pew Research Center reported that Millennials face higher student debt, unemployment, and poverty, and lower wealth and personal income than the preceding generations at the same point in their lives. Because they were told college was the only way to be professionally successful, most Millennials swallowed that pill. They took on major debt instead of pursuing vocational training or less traditional career paths.
While college has benefits, it’s a lie to say it’s the only way to be successful. Young people’s outlook on college has changed significantly: 47% of US adults now say college is worthwhile only without taking out loans, 29% say it’s not worth it at all, and only 22% say it’s worth it, even with loans. Only 25% believe they need a degree to guarantee a job, while 35% think a degree is somewhat important. The 40% who believe a college degree isn’t necessary to get a well-paying job might be absolutely right.
More and more Gen-Zers are choosing trade school and blue-collar jobs over a traditional college education, suggesting they’re preparing for their economic future in a way Millennials never did.
5. Using a card catalog
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Another thing Millennials were taught in school that turned out to be completely useless was how to find books in a library using a card catalog. In the U.S., Ezra Abbott, the assistant librarian at Harvard College, is credited with inventing the physical card catalog in 1861. By 1877, the American Library Association announced a standardized card catalog. This system held strong until 2015, when libraries printed their last catalog card.
Millennials spent hours learning this classification system, only for it to disappear from schools as the Internet rose. Book information at libraries and beyond is now stored online, making it unnecessary to know how to interpret the Dewey Decimal System or look up books in a card catalog.
6. Square dancing
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Millennials were taught square dancing in gym class, a skill that turned out to be completely useless for their future success. The roots of learning to swing your partner round and round in school go all the way back to the 1920s. Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company believed jazz music and dancing caused all moral decay in America. Ford’s belief that jazz was corrupting young minds combined with his deeply antisemitic and historically inaccurate belief that jazz was part of a Jewish plot to take over the world.
In 1926, Ford published an instruction manual for aspiring square dance instructors and required his employees to attend square dancing events. He poured his money and influence into lobbying to make square dancing part of America’s physical education curriculum to teach kids “social training, courtesy, good citizenship, along with rhythm.” By 1928, almost half of schools across the country did just that.
Despite Ford’s attempts at indoctrinating kids into white supremacist culture through partner dancing, he overlooked the fact that the American square dancing tradition was built alongside Black people. Ford held tight to his whitewashed version of culture and history, and 70 years later, Millennial kids played out his vision of Americana in their sweaty school gyms.
7. How to clean a chalkboard
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Millennials learned all the skills needed to expertly clean a chalkboard and its various accouterments, only for chalkboards to be phased out, first replaced by whiteboards, then by digital screens. Millennial kids dutifully wiped yellow streaks of chalk off the blackboard, struggling not to wince at the horrible screech that inevitably sounded whenever anyone touched it. They learned to step into the hallway and clap erasers together, stifling their cough as clouds of chalk dust rose.
If part of being seen as a good student meant following the teacher’s directions, Millennials had their chalkboard-cleaning techniques on lock. Yet chalkboards became a thing of the past, and so did their replacement, whiteboards, and now, Millennials’ chalk management skills are completely useless.
8. How to play the recorder
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Another thing Millennials were taught in school that turned out to be completely useless is how to play the recorder. There’s no denying that a musical education is crucial to shaping young minds. Learning to play an instrument teaches kids a different, broader way to use their brains while fostering creativity and an appreciation for the arts. While the recorder may have been the simplest entry point to playing music for Millennial kids, those kids became adults whose recorder skills start and stop with “Hot Cross Buns.
While some Millennials took their recorder concerts seriously and showed up with their A-game, others remain haunted by the syncopated screeching sounds to this day. At its best, learning the recorder gave Millennials a jumping-off point for learning other instruments; at worst, it was a skill that turned out to be totally useless.
9. How to read paper maps
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Millennials were taught in school to read paper maps, only to find out it was totally useless. Geography teachers across the nation watched as their students struggled to unfold and refold paper maps, while they emphasized the importance of cardinal directions and navigation skills. Millennials learned that some squiggly lines meant rivers, others meant canyons, and some were just plain roads. When Millennials got their driver's licenses, many left the DMV with paper maps their dad insisted they keep in the glove compartment, just in case.
By the time Millennials hit adulthood, the use of paper maps had decreased significantly, making their map-reading skills completely useless. The rise of GPS navigation systems and apps like Google Maps, which basically hold your hand and walk you from one location to the next, meant Millennials didn’t have to pull out paper maps, making that particular geography lesson useless.
10. How to follow the original food pyramid
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The nutrition Millennials were taught in school turned out to be useless and largely lacking real nutritional value. In 1992, the USDA formalized a version of the food pyramid that’s seared into Millennials’ collective consciousness: bread, pasta, and cereal at the base; fruits and vegetables next; protein and dairy after that; and fats, oils, and sweets at the top, to be “used sparingly.”
The food pyramid was steeped in a high-carb, low-fat diet mindset, which, as it turns out, isn’t that great for people. The '90s-era food pyramid neglected to point out that there is such a thing as good fats, and that eating highly processed food can lead to negative health outcomes.
As Millennials were born around 1981, the Reagan administration declared ketchup a vegetable to cut $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding. The requirements for school lunch programs were eroded in a way that let ketchup be designated as a vegetable, allowing the USDA to eliminate one of the two required vegetables to meet minimum food and nutrition standards. At the time, Millennials were young enough to celebrate stuffing their faces with Fruit Loops and ketchup, but the food pyramid they learned was completely useless.
11. The importance of neat penmanship
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Millennials were taught that the neatness of their handwriting could make or break them in the professional world, but that turned out to be untrue. Millennials were graded not only on how well they presented the information they’d learned in their assignments, but also on the quality of their handwriting.
Fear struck the heart of every student who handed in a scrawled, sloppily lettered paper, as teachers proclaimed they’d never be successful because their penmanship was so deplorable. By the time Millennials got to college and entered the workforce, most communication had shifted to digital, meaning their handwriting had no importance for professional advancement.
While handwriting matters in some jobs, like teaching, Millennials were taught in school that neat handwriting was important, but it turned out to be completely useless now that pretty much everyone works on a computer.
12. Standardized testing tricks
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Millennials were taught standardized testing techniques that proved completely useless outside the tests themselves. Having a high IQ and being a good test taker are two very different things. Some highly intelligent people are terrible at taking tests, while some people with low IQs seem to have magical test-taking abilities.
A major part of Millennials’ education was learning how to take standardized tests, which doesn’t actually help them move ahead in life after school ends. Test-taking skills don’t automatically translate into critical thinking skills. All they teach is how to take a very specific test, which turned out to be completely useless over Millennials’ lifetimes.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer covering psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human-interest stories.
