So, instead of answering “when will I use this” should we instead be answering, “what can happen if you don’t learn this?” Or, “how will your choices lessen if you don’t learn this?”

Not that our future would exactly emulate this, but in the most recent Star Trek movie, every Cadet learned Calculus at or before high school because much of the operations, programming, and other duties required a high level of technical and mathematical understanding in order to function in their society, particularly on their ship.

Our society is becoming more technological and the need to know math is ever increasing as more careers open up into the technological realm. If our students don’t understand abstract or higher level math, what will their choices in employment be? Even our cars are requiring more knowledge of technology and mathematics where auto mechanic used to be a career that someone who struggles with Algebra or high school math could fall back on. What would such students do in the future?

In my Algebra II class once I had this complain pop up when I was teaching logarithms. I asked one of the students point blank what they wanted to do.

“Psychology.”

“Ok, next time I will show you where in psychology you might want logarithms.”

I came up with an in-class experiment using Stevens’ Power Law. Working out the exponent a requires a logarithm.

Back to original student: “I’m so excited. This is what I get to be doing!”

Why do we make students read Macbeth? Why do we make them study the Civil War? These questions aren’t any different than why we make them learn algebra.

You could try to tell me that we do these things so that everyone can catch the literary allusions in Buffy or Family Guy, but that’s as hollow as saying we teach algebra so that they can calculate how long it takes bean counters to count beans. An answer that is closer to the truth is that we have cultural expectations of what an educated person should know.

I teach at the university level. And every semester that I teach a freshman-level course (which is most semesters), I have a conversation about why we learn this stuff if we’re never going to explicitly use it in “real-life”. (I will freely admit that I’ve likely got a much easier time of it with this conversation than anyone in K12 whose students are legally compelled to be there.) I usually let it come up semi-naturally (and it usually does), but I make sure that it comes up.

Context can be a great hook and a tool to get students engaged in a lesson. But it’s not the *why* of what we do.

You make a great point, one my wife and I have discussed many times. It’s not only math. Many students in various high school subjects struggle to find ways to relate what they are learning to anything they may be doing later in life.

I’m 35. Much of the content I learned in high school is in no way applicable to my daily life. Is there any reason for us to think that much of what we teach in high school now is going to be applicable to the lives of our students when they’re 35?

The elementary grades, however, are (in my opinion) a time when kids are a) curious, and b) more apt to feel pride at having learned something, anything. I don’t think it crosses their mind to ask, “When will I need to know this?” They don’t care about that, they’re just happy to know it. The high school grades are a time when kids are a) developing independence, and along with it interests, b) going through puberty, and c) dealing with the distractions that causes. Their minds are elsewhere. WAY elsewhere.

Where we as educators struggle is in underestimating them. Although much of the content I learned in high school was irrelevant, I was still a very curious, very “intriguable” kid. I had opinions and passions and it felt at times that school was depressing those. I’d imagine that many of our students would agree that it’s the same for them today. While we can’t cater every lesson to something that interests them, why can’t we ask them more what they are interested in and allow them to learn more about that?

I’ve got a blog post coming out shortly that uses that question as a jumping-off point, exploring the broader question: What happens between lower elementary grades and the rest of school mathematics (emphasis on “school”) that leads them to ask of a particular piece of mathematical content, “When will I need to use this in the real world?”

If I’m learning math so I can perform a specific task at some future date — next year’s class, some specific career — then yeah, why AM I doing this?