Oh, one more hand drawing. My son cannot draw. It was torture to him. In APUSH they assigned a project where over one weekend the kids had to draw 26 pictures of battles and they were graded on how good the pictures were. The rest of the project was to write a children’s book about history (26 pages covering 26 battles). They could use two pictures from the internet. The rest had to be hand drawn and colored. It was a total nightmare. I will not forget that weekend for the rest of my life. Son was in a huge out of town tournament for his sport and had to give up all the fun associated with it to work on the project. So, I think learning when you are little is one thing but pushing it in high school - no!
Changing oil … a skill you don’t need UNTIL you don’t have extra money for things you could easily do yourself. I don’t mean to pick on this particular skill, because there are so many others that can be named along with this one … but this one jumped out at me. Changing a tire is in that category, as is cooking. All can be avoided if you have money, but knowing how to do them would come in very handy if money is tight. Of course, I suppose all can be learned on the worldwide inner webs, if necessary. 
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How to change a tire. NEVER want them to do this. Personally know 2 people killed or gravely injured doing this. Leave it to the pros with emergency lights on their vehicles. That’s why we got them AAA memberships.
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How to do household repairs. Ditto on the pros.
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How to do laundry or cook BEFORE they went to college. Stay out of my kitchen and my laundry room! My kids both cook and do laundry better ( my younger daughter is the “stain expert” and she and her sister both cook rather elaborately ) than most their age having learned easily on their own mostly through YouTube type videos.
I’m sorry, but even as the parent of a design student, I find this wrong. There’s only so much you can do with art if you don’t have at least a little natural talent for it. Even in my college journalism classes they let us cut-and-paste or trace in the design classes.
I would have flunked if I’d had to draw 26 anything. How can people not know that some people can draw and some people can’t? It’s not a matter of will power.
Coding. So over-pushed these days. It’s a niche skill, not one many of us will use in day to day life.
None of our cars have spare tires…just a can of something to inflate the tire.
How many newer cars have spare tires?
@thumper1 Those cans of Fix-A-Flat ruin the balance of the tire forever.
I think everyone should know how to do basic household repairs and little things like hang pictures, curtains, fix a dripping faucet or a clogged drain etc.
My one kid has no idea how to write cursive and I’m ok with it.
Being able to speak Albanian. Soooo overrated.
If the car has a spare tire, knowing how to change it or follow the instructions in the manual can mean getting on your way faster than roadside assistance may show up.
I’m skeptical about academic competitions, especially like spelling bee and academic trivia hat seem to rely heavily on memorization.
Re cursive, my eldest was probably the last class of her school to learn cursive. It’s the best way to take notes and write in general. She has a distinctive signature. My son attended private school for the first three years of his education. In 2nd grade, he began learning cursive. His writing was beautiful and perfect. In third grade, he went to public school and that was the end of cursive…but…
For a few summers, I made the kids practice cursive over the summer. Bought the blank penmanship books with the dotted lines and gave them exercises. For my daughter, this was useful. For my son, it was frustrating and he rebelled, so I stopped.
My son has had terrible writing since third grade, but it’s been interesting to watch him trying to develop a signature. He almost has it nailed now, but he has instinctively returned to cursive, for that at least.
Here’s a short article on the benefits of cursive.https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/top-10-reasons-to-learn-cursive/ I predict we are going to see a comeback of this skill.
Calculus can be useful to learn statistics that social studies and business people use, and knowing at least the concepts of calculus can help in understanding concepts where it is relevant (e.g. relationship between speed an acceleration).
Colleges often do offer easier calculus for business majors courses for these purposes.
Crafts. All of them, including making dioramas or whatever. If you enjoy them, great, but if not, I saw no need to work with beads, glue, fabric, etc, and so informed the teachers.
Since most students are forced to take a foreign language I guess that would be the useless knowledge I care least about.
My perspective would be quite the opposite if students voluntarily took a language with the specific intent to become fluent and functional. More often than not it seems students work towards good grades, the language requirement finish line and a life of speaking nothing but English.
Ironically, my older son would be an uber-recruit in his intended field if he was fluent in specific high value languages.
I honestly see value in taking Latin though.
With electric vehicles, no need to know how to change the oil
You’ve obviously never seen Taken…
DS20 learned cursive in his elementary school and could write them beautifully, but slowly. So he abandoned it the moment no one forced him to do it. Now his penmanship is horrid to say the least, but legible, and he can still read cursive.
Calculus might not be used daily, but having the math skills open so many doors in selection of college majors and future career choices.
I didn’t learn many House-keeping skills (such as cooking, laundry, simple repairs, budgeting, gardening, filling out tax returns) but I learned many of them in adulthood or outsourced the others, so I think the kids will be alright too.
I hated cursive in school, and dropped it as soon as I was allowed to. Because of that, printing is much faster for me.