Itâs sad how much of what is taught in school is useless to over 99% of the population.
There are literally math concepts taught in high school and middle school that are only used in extremely specialized fields or that are even so outdated they arenât used anymore!
I took calculus my senior year of high school, and I really liked the way our teacher framed this on the first day of class.
He asked somebody to raise their hand and ask him when we would use calculus in our everyday life. So one student rose their hand and asked, âWhen are we going to use this in our everyday life?â
âNEVER!!â the teacher exclaimed. âYou will never use calculus in your normal, everyday life. In fact, very few of you will use it in your professional careers either.â Then he paused. âSo would you like to know why should care?â
Several us nodded.
He picked out one of the varsity football players in the class. âYou practice football a lot during the week, right Tim?â asked the teacher.
âYeah,â replied Tim. âAlmost every day.â
âDo you and your teammates ever lift weights during practice?â
âYeah. Tuesdays and Thursdays we spend a lot of practice in the weight room.â
âBut why?â asked the teacher. âIs there ever going to be a play your coach tells you use during a game that requires you to bench press the other team?â
âNo, of course not.â
âThen why lift weights?â
âBecause it makes us stronger,â said Tim.
âBingo!!â said the teacher. âItâs the same thing with calculus. Youâre not here because youâre going to use calculus in your everyday life. Youâre here because calculus is weightlifting for your brain.â
And Iâve never forgotten that.
THIS.
When itâs taught right, learning math teaches you logic and how to organize your brain, how to take a problem one step at a time and make sure every step can bear weight before you move to the next one. Â Most adults donât need to know integrals, but goddamn if I donât wish everyone making arguments on the internet understood geometric proofs.
Scientific concepts broaden our understanding of how the world is put together, which does not mean that most adults ever really understand how light is refracted through a lens or why spinning copper wire creates electricityâand they donât need to. Â But science classes in general are meant to teach the scientific method: how to make observations and use them to draw conclusions, how to test those conclusions, how to be wrong and grow stronger from it.
History isnât about dates and names of battles, itâs about people, patterns, things weâve tried before and ought to learn from. Â Itâs about how everything is linked, how changing one circumstance can lead to changes in fifty others, cascading infinitely. Â Literature is about critical thinking, pattern recognition, learning to listen to what somebody is saying and decide what it means to you, how you feel about it, and what you want to do with it.
Some facts matter: every adult should know how to read a graph, how global warming works, some of the basic themes and symbols that crop up in every piece of fiction. Â But ultimately, content is less important later in life than context.
The good thing is, students who learn the content are likely to pick up at least some of the context, some of the patterns of thinking, even if they donât realize it.  (The unfortunate thing is how the current educational system prioritizes content so much that a lot of students, and a lot of adults, donât see the point in learning either, and teachers are overworked and held to standardize test grading scales such that itâs hard for them to emphasize patterns of thinking over rote memorization, etc etc etc, but that is a whole different discussion.)
thank u <3
All education is brain exercise. Some of it, like general reading, is general strengthening, like aerobics. Some of it, like quantum physics, is very targeted, like bicep curls. Some of it (in part, medical residency is this) is endurance training, like a treadmill or long-distance running. And some of it (like logic puzzles) is coordination training, like flip-cup. ALL OF IT HAS VALUE.
