“When Will I Ever Use This?”
A student can't understand the point of learning the assigned subject
March 24, 2010 • written by Kayla Elston
Filed under Breaking News, Student Life, featured, top story
The school year is coming to its final stretch, and as the last nine week period rolls around, teens are liable to give up on their studies. High schoolers are infamous for dozing off, staring into space, and raising the age old question, “When will I ever use this?” What is used as a hopeful escape to keep the teacher off subject, or an attempt to drop the subject completely, the question is finally answered.
By the time students reach the age of thirteen or fourteen, they realize they will never need to calculate how fast they are going on the southbound train. They will never really need to know the inns and outs of the Peloponnesian war, that is if they appear on an episode of Jeopardy. Unless the subject being taught directly relates to a students’ future career choices, why must it be learned?
“I guarantee that 99.9% of the time you will use neither this topic nor many others in your lives. Most of what you have learned here in this class will sooner or later evaporate unless you become a math teacher like me, which is very much fun, by the way. However, you still have to learn these concepts, but why? We teach you [these things] because we want to improve your analytical abilities; in other words, we want to make you smarter so that you will earn the capacity to handle harder situations in the future whether you choose to go to college or not.” a math teacher on ed-tech-4-math.com said.
Subjects in school are taught to keep wit and memorization skills sharpened. History is learned for the basic knowledge of the past, to learn from past mistakes, and more simply, to keep a memory skill. Arts are used to find potential and talent. Sciences are used to learn skills with chemicals that may save someone’s life some day. Languages are taught to become more successful and can be used in the globalization of businesses and homes. After all, what students are learning will be used, every day of their lives.
The next time the kid in the back of class brings up the question “when will I ever use this?”, you can aptly reply, “Everyday.”
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