Bloggers' Favorite Classes at School

The question at LongAndShortReviews this week was "What was your favorite subject in school, and why?"

You might guess we'd all say English. I wouldn't guess that. People who enjoy words and writing don't necessarily enjoy being stuck in English classes with people who hate those things. In grade four my teacher (the same Mr. Ed who taught every one of us all the arithmetic we'd ever need in life) detested the Language Arts so much he used to threaten grammar lessons as a punishment. Nobody ever rated his English classes among their favorites.

I did reading and writing for fun, at home. I read English language and literature books for fun. There was a year when school was closed for a month and I spent much of that month reading a college English book my teacher had left lying on a shelf. I would rather have had more of a selection but I liked the English textbook and was glad it was the "library book" I had at home that month.

At school my favorite subject was music. 

So what did other bloggers say? Supporting my theory that it depends on the teachers and the way the classes are organized...only two bloggers said English, unequivocally. Several said "English or..."--depending on the year in school.

One blogger had the option of counting "Yearbook" production work as a class, which sounds as if it would have been anybody's favorite.

Two novelists picked Drama. I always thought a drama group would be a good way to prepare to write fiction, but always wanted to take music classes instead of drama--most of us were allowed only one "fine art" a year.

Two bloggers picked Art.

Four bloggers picked History. One of them grew up to write historical fiction.

One blogger, who mentioned not liking any classes during the compulsory-pre-choice-public-school years, said college level Anthropology

Two bloggers picked Science. 

Meh. I have vivid memories of days when I enjoyed what we were doing in almost every class, and days when I was bored to the point of pain and hated school. As an adult, though, looking back, I find myself feeling more empathy for the poor souls who had to teach my classmates and me. The basic problem was the idea of education on an assembly-line plan. Each of these luckless people who had just wanted to go to college, because it was cool, and qualified for a scholarship that required them to teach in a remote rural school like ours, was plunked down in front of twenty-some units of childish rebellion, all of us trying to impress one another with how contemptuous of school, teachers, and lessons we could be. They were supposed to stand up and spray knowledge at us with a sort of fire hose technique, and three-quarters of it was supposed to sink in. What really sunk in was a deep hostility toward humankind that some of us never have outgrown. I do have to feel sorry for those teachers.