Ross

Divot repair tool.

On a more serious note, jumper cables.
Korinthian

Breath mints.
Dave Spencer

Interesting correlation, I like it. The most obvious one I can think of is CPR.

Another car one would be jumper cables.
Rex

Critical Thinking Skills.

The time we might have otherwise spent in church. … But, if you had critical thinking skills you would not have wasted your time in church, would you?
Ric

Those wall-mount emergency defibrillators

Parking brakes (proper use and when)

Car jump-start emergency power thingies. 🙂

Critical Thinking
Ric

Wow, Rex! Jinx!
Adrian Hayter

Our brains…hehehe.

Seriously though:

Road map (I’m amazed at how many people fail at basic navigation)
CPR (unless you wanted actual physical items)
Margy

I like to grill over charcoal, and so do a number of my neighbors, so I was very surprised to learn that nobody knew how to use a chimney starter to light charcoal. Using a chimney starter is much more environmentally friendly than using lighter fluid, and easier, too. You just stuff newspaper in the bottom part of the chimney, pile charcoal inside the top, and then light the newspaper. The coals are good to go in about 20-25 minutes, and the grilled food has no chemical aftertaste.
Ordinary Girl

Instead of CPR you could mention a defibrillator and also jumper cables.
Reed Braden

An automated external defibrillator Your school may have one of these hanging on a wall somewhere. It’s mandatory in a few states.

Kitchen appliances. The next generation will survive solely on Hot Pockets and Hardee’s.

A life jacket

Any variety of IRS forms
Ghost of Minnesota

Car jack? You mean very few people know how to put the jack under the car and turn the damn crank? I weep for humanity.

(Fire extinguishers are pretty easy to use too, but are slightly more complicated than car jacks. So I still weep for humanity, but not quite as hard.)
DisComforting Ignorance

My other ones were taken, so:

Morse code
pen_devil

Democracy?
LogicRules

How to make a budget.
Ghost of Minnesota

Ah yes, the automated external defibrillator is a great suggestion. That’s something that everyone should know how to use, but very few people even know what it is.

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but here in Minnesota, there are AEDs all over the damn place. It’s hard to find a publically-accessible building that doesn’t have at least one. One of our local Native American tribes started a big push a few years ago to donate AEDs to… well, just about everybody. I believe their current goal is to put one in every police car in the state.
Michael

Compass

Needle & thread

Flint & steel

Computers?

Rope
llewelly

Freedom of speech.
Dan Klarmann

Speaking of a jack, the lever is a device that most people just don’t “get”. Once I had the revelation (years after my engineering degree), I find that I now use leverage effectively for any lifting or prying task. If I have a helper, I almost always have to explain it. Thus I consider it a tool most people never learn.

I also find a lock pick occasionally useful. Or rather, usually an improvised pick when someone has lost the key. But that is probably a skill that parents wouldn’t appreciate.

A hammer is another tool that many people think they know how to use. Once you really know the hammer, any dense mass with sufficient cohesion will impel, bend, break, or deform whatever is needed. But given the hundreds of hammer designs, there are distinct optimum uses for each.

Citing Douglas Adams: A Towel. This tool is a blanket, a drying aid, a fire extinguisher, a fire starter, padding, a short rope, dust mask, sun shade, or note-taking material, as needed.
Korinthian

Self defense and how to make popcorn without a microwave oven.
Cale

Reason.
On a more serious note:

-Jumper Cables
-CPR
-Conflict Resolution
-Table Manners
-Everything else high school kids are known for neglecting
ubi dubius

Firearms.
A living will.
A slide rule (hey, EMP could knock out computers and calculators).
Cryogenics.
Stephen

Statistics. Many use them, few use them well.
AgnosticOracle

CPR is already listed, but I might add Heimlich maneuver or more generally first aid (how to treat frost bite, serious cuts, etc). One of the useful things I learned in BoyScouts. Thinking of which, add starting a fire.
Alice

Math!
David

Never mind kitchen appliances, how about plain old pots & pans?
David

Hand tools
Jason

Irons, that is, how to iron. Seriously.
Ubi Dubium

Landing an airplane
Rayven Alandria

How about CPR, first aid, Heimlich maneuver, morse code, sign language, how to shoot a gun, basic car repair, knots, a compass and/or telling direction by the stars, and survival techniques?

That’s all that come to mind off the top of my head but I’m sure there are many more.
Tim Van Haitsma

Lock picking.
Jumper cables
map and compass
Basic understanding of Stats.
Colin M

Probably controversial, but:

Guns.
Derek

Birth control.
moresc0de

My other ones were taken, so:

Morse code

What do you need to use me for?
Becksi

Fireman’s carry.
Undo

Turn signals

map was said before and agree
the Shaggy

The Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

A VCR.
Dave

A parachute
Kevin

– how to read a manual
– how to swim well
– how to detect logical fallacies
Shane

Roundhouse kick FTW.
J Myers

Shane, that’s a spinning hook kick. Does look handy, though.

My additions:

– Turn signal
– The passing lane
– Home maintenance
Darwin’s Dagger

I wonder how many people could tell time using a non-digital watch/clock. Or, if things got really bad, a sundial.
David D.G.

* The “transfer call” function on my phone at work (or, for that matter, any of its myriad functions besides dialing out or answering the blasted thing).

* French (or any other foreign language).

* A parachute.

~David D.G.
brian t

I second basic statistics e.g. use salary or house price stats to illustrate the difference between Mean and Median.

Refrigeration (incl. air conditioning, freezers)

Solar cells.
stephanie

CPR and the Heimlich maneuver.
Robin

Simple machines, like pulleys and levers

Pumps, this is a real problem with the up-and-coming heart surgeons

Vegetables
Lysistrata

I would add
The Dewey Decimal system
and a basic library catalog.
Steve

A utili-knife, a wire stripper and a pipe cutter

And to quote Monty Python:
Simpsons individual stringettes. The NOW string
eric perkins

The Dewey Decimal System =)
hoverFrog

A first aid kit.

Rope. Seriously who knows how to tie more than a couple of knots?

A steel. As in flint and steel.

A steel. As in a metal thing to sharpen knives.

The wheel.
Gabriel

In no particular order:

Table manners

knife and fork

napkin

corkscrew

dictionary

the kitchen

broom and dustpan

mop and bucket

vacume cleaner

soap

tooth brush and tooth paste

how to wash your clothes in the bathtub because you are too broke to use the laundry mat

conversation skills
Gullwatcher

a tide table
Joey

HTML

Zing! I bet you saw that one coming.
Gullwatcher

It may not be the done thing to assign reading in math class, but “The Mysterious Island” by Jules Verne is about five men cast away on an uninhabited island with only one match, one grain of wheat, a broken dog collar, and two watches. With those items and various skills, they produce fire, pottery, bricks, iron, a telegraph, and a small ship. Maybe not a simple example, but a fun read and an example of how useful it can be to know things.
Gullwatcher

Not a thing, but an example straight from the headlines – how to figure out what a loan will really cost you, so you don’t lose your house and everything else you own.
Polly

Spanish – the real kind, not the crap they teach in school.

guns – big, powerful guns

condoms – big, powerf…no wait.

alternative energy
loom
CPR/first aid / defibrillator

well-regulated financial markets complete with segregation of services to avoid conflicts of interest

Universal or near-universal health care with special emphasis on preventive care

Retirement planning

A viable space program not laden down by inefficiency

A functioning government might come in handy someday. Perhaps we should keep the constitution around just in case one day the occupant of the White House decides to use it.
Jess

I second sign language, reading a map and a dictionary.

Also, using a thesaurus and telling directions using the sun/star position.

And for the record, of course Algebra (insert Trig, Calc, or Geometry) can be thought of in the same way!

My students start Monday, too. 🙂 Good luck!
pen_devil

Hahaha! “Birth control”!
Andrew C.

Record player.
MathMike

Well most of the best have been taken, but how about:

How to drive stick.

How to sharpen a pencil with a knife.

How to sharpen a knife.

My students showed up this past Monday. Good thing I was already there.
Heidi

how to swim.

how to conserve warmth when stranded.
Father Shaggy

I’m going to say verb conjugations, particularly the very complicated ones like past perfect.

I am only kidding. Sort of.

I kept seeing defibrillators and jumper cables together. Any way you could interchange them?
Father Shaggy

I used to teach English.
Anne

How to use a fishing line to catch a fish.
Jay

psi, how to check tire pressure and how often

how often to change the oil in your car and what kind of oil to use

bring in your car owners manual and read it to them.

using a spreadsheet application like Excel to determine compound interest, house payments, and all around money management!!!!!
Susan B.

This isn’t exactly an example of things that are really useful but nobody knows how to use, but I really like Polymathematics’ way of discussing rate problems:

So anyway, I was telling my algebra students my well-rehearsed opinion about classic rate problems (like “a train leaves Chicago going 60 miles per hour…”). These are the kinds of problems that so many adults cite as evidence of how stupid high school math is, because they’re so useless. To the surprise of my students, I actually agree with that. So I tell them that I’ll give them a real problem that’s not stupid: “Design a new kind of airplane that won’t crash and kill everyone on board.” They become silent. “Too hard a problem?” They nod. “Well let’s start with something easier…a train leaves Chicago going 60 miles per hour….” That usually gets a laugh and a recognition that you have to start with easy mathematical modeling problems before you try the hard ones. And I proceed with an example. And about halfway through the example, one of my quieter and more talented students starts folding up a piece of paper. I let it go for a minute, but it soon becomes clear he’s folding a paper airplane. I get a little bit annoyed. “Are you folding a paper airplane?” And he comes back with “I’m designing a new kind of plane that won’t crash and kill people.”
Jared

I’m sure these have all been listed, but:

– Jumper Cables
– Dewey Decimal, or card catalog system (my favorite to use)
– Microfiche/Microreels
– How to start a fire without matches (it’s a pain in the ass!)
– Just about any “old” technology, like typewriters, etc – I find it’s amazingly important to know how to use these things, as you never know when you may need to – plus, sometimes it’s fun to do it the “old fashioned” way.
Mark N

A chainsaw.

Come the zombie revolution and all that…
Steven

I’ll try to add some math examples since I’ve often heard (and made) the complaint “I’ll never use that in real life”:
– How to figure out what change is due to you (hint: use addition to reach the next dollar amount)
– Geometry (my Dad uses it all the time for carpentry projects)
– Metric system (the standard system of measurement for the world outside of the U.S.)
As far as tools go, you can’t go too far wrong learning how to use:
– an iron
– a washer/dryer
– hand tools (hammer, drill, screwdriver, etc.)
– a needle and thread
– a paintbrush
– a level
– flint and tinder (just kidding, what is this, the 12th century? )
Matt Feath

A lot of good suggestions so I won’t repeat any of them (but, CPR, AED and Basic First Aid are SO IMPORTANT!!!).

Teach the girls (I know, SEXIST) to say “NO” … or just teach them BIRTH CONTROL … in my area I see way too many “kids” pushing kids in strollers.

And … that it’s OK to wait until you’re over 30 to get married … go out and have fun with your life when you’re in your 20’s … so many of my high school classmates went out and got married right after they graduated and had children right away … they’d look at me with envy at our reunions because they became “adults” too quickly.
LeAnn

Jumper Cables
A Compass (ha! in this age of GPS!)
A map (again…in this age of GPS!)
Faryshta

–Linux!
-Foreign Languages.
Awesomesauce

I’m going to have to third swimming.

Though, the ability to think in the water would suffice. I always found it interesting that those who struggle the most to avoid drowning often are the ones who end up doing so.

If you want to survive in the water, simply floating and breathing when you need to can keep you alive well beyond the amount of time it takes for something else to kill you (dehydration, hypothermia, Poseidon, etc.).

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