alt Hacker NewsThe scouts require a bunch of utterly terrible knots. They include the Granny Knot which you never actually want to tie, only to avoid tying by accident. They include the Sheepshank, which is quite possibly the worst way to shorten a line ever invented. Etc.
And, in my time in scouts, they did a poor job of demonstrating the actual use cases for the knots in a practical manner. If I had seen how many situations knots come in handy for, I'd have memorized them much more intently.