<story><title>“When are we going to use this in our everyday life?” (2017)</title><url>https://flavoracle.tumblr.com/post/167150535757/its-sad-how-much-of-what-is-taught-in-school-is</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>I have had to answer this question to my kids (one of whom abhors math). The explanation I gave is this:&lt;p&gt;For many subjects, most kids will end up never using them. But, we have no way to &lt;i&gt;predict&lt;/i&gt; which subjects will be useful for which kids. Without the ability to do that, our priority is maximize each child&amp;#x27;s opportunity. We never want a kid to be in the situation where they &lt;i&gt;would&lt;/i&gt; have been interested in a subject and a career path but never ended up discovering that and using it because we didn&amp;#x27;t expose it to them.&lt;p&gt;So we teach some of every subject to every kid. That way no matter which path they end up following, they are as prepared for it as we can make them.&lt;p&gt;(Also, yes, I agree that math is good general training for cognitive rigor. Also, numeric literacy is vital for all adults since we live in an ecomonic world and participate in a democracy where statistics are necessary to understand policies.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>striking</author><text>I think a lot of the time it is just too abstract to grasp. I think the first time in my life where I was really happy to have learned calculus for my own intrinsic benefit was a few weeks ago, when I set up Home Assistant in an effort to automatically minimize heat in my apartment. It wasn&amp;#x27;t enough to tell the shade to come down at a certain temperature, because the apartment would already be too hot. So instead I could take the &lt;i&gt;derivative&lt;/i&gt; of the temperature of my apartment, allowing me to get out ahead of the worst part of the blast of sun. After all, if the temperature is increasing very quickly, we should act to stop it.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve used a decent amount of calculus in my life, but that was the first time I had been actually happy to have learned it.</text></comment>
<story><title>“When are we going to use this in our everyday life?” (2017)</title><url>https://flavoracle.tumblr.com/post/167150535757/its-sad-how-much-of-what-is-taught-in-school-is</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>munificent</author><text>I have had to answer this question to my kids (one of whom abhors math). The explanation I gave is this:&lt;p&gt;For many subjects, most kids will end up never using them. But, we have no way to &lt;i&gt;predict&lt;/i&gt; which subjects will be useful for which kids. Without the ability to do that, our priority is maximize each child&amp;#x27;s opportunity. We never want a kid to be in the situation where they &lt;i&gt;would&lt;/i&gt; have been interested in a subject and a career path but never ended up discovering that and using it because we didn&amp;#x27;t expose it to them.&lt;p&gt;So we teach some of every subject to every kid. That way no matter which path they end up following, they are as prepared for it as we can make them.&lt;p&gt;(Also, yes, I agree that math is good general training for cognitive rigor. Also, numeric literacy is vital for all adults since we live in an ecomonic world and participate in a democracy where statistics are necessary to understand policies.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nickff</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;So we teach some of every subject to every kid. That way no matter which path they end up following, they are as prepared for it as we can make them.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;We tend to waste a lot of time teaching subjects which they&amp;#x27;re unlikely to use, and fail to teach them about the ones that they would really benefit from. A basic understanding of criminal and civil law, along with accounting and statistics would be extremely useful to almost everyone as individuals and as citizens. Music, history, and calculus are useful to some people, but not nearly as many.</text></comment>