Mama Kat Thursday: 6 Things

The Mama Kat Challenge Topic for this week is:
"6 Things I Didn't Learn In School."

 (And wished I did.)

 

#1)  Sentence structure, punctuation and other composition-type topics.
We had to buy a composition book every year from 7th to 9th grade, but rarely cracked it open.
It was early 70's. My English teachers were young, just-out-of-college hippies, who cared more about expressive freedom and creative writing. What's a predicate anyway? 

#2)  American History beyond the Civil War
The Pilgrims, the Revolution and the Civil War seemed to get the biggest emphasis, then it sort of petered out after that. Rarely did we even discuss WW1 and WW2 and certainly not the Korean War. Presidents after Abe Lincoln seemed of little importance.

#3)  Algebra

My high school teacher wasn't any good at communicating this subject in a manner I could understand, so I didn't get it.
I scraped by with a "D".
Later in college, however, I passed it with flying colors---because I had a teacher who taught in such a way I got it.
 

#4)  Chemistry

I really wanted to take chemistry. I had my class schedule all planned out for my whole high school career---but that algebra class really ruined it, since it was a prerequisite for chemistry---because a slide-rule and math was required.
I was deeply disappointed.
I had really wanted to mix up that stinky rotten egg smell that haunted the hallways once a year.
 

#5)  Physics
Algebra was a prerequisite for this course, too, so I couldn't take that as planned either. I would've liked learning why the Laws of Mass make time travel an impossible.
(Someone who did take physics explained that to me.)

 

#6)  The History of Vietnam War
This was a course I was very interested in taking in college in the 80's, but not enough people signed up, so it was canceled.
 I was interested because the whys and hows of the Vietnam War are a blank for me, even though I grew up during that era.
I was in school from 1963 to 1975--yet not a word was spoken about the war. Current events was not a topic back then---particularly not that current event.
To this day I don't know if that was by design on the part of the school staff or incidental.
Though rated as the "first televised war," I don't remember seeing a thing about it on TV---but neither did I watch news programs or read anything besides the comics in the Sunday paper.  
I remained relatively unaware of it until my latter high school years, when I started listening to the radio. Then I started hearing a little about the draft protests and Watergate, though they were concepts too far away from my daily life to be of much relevance. 
  
Still none of that was discussed at school.
We were far too busy writing papers about the meaning behind various Beatles songs and studying the Civil War.

*******
Zazzle is working the fixing the flash panel functionality.
In the meantime, if you'd like to look around my store, go here:
Bevstuff
I have a pretty new spring stamp design and card with an original haiku I wrote.