Do you think teachers should have a class to take in college where they learn to tell their students when they

Question

need to know something?

You know how students always ask, "When will we need to use/know this?"

I constantly asked, out of pure curiosity, but toward the end of 8th grade, I really lost my motivation to work hard and none of my teachers answered any of my questions.

I told my mom for once, because I really needed some motivation, but she just yelled at me saying that I didn't need motivation, that it's your responsibility to study, and that just discouraged me more.

I asked my math teacher, and she said you can apply these things to everyday situations. So then I asked, "So we're learning this just so we can see how they relate?" and she didn't respond.

My big issues are with math and science. People tell me that you need to know math for many things (Taxes, shopping, etc), but don't you need just basic math, like from 1st grade to 7th grade education? UNLESS your occupation requires a lot of math education.

And also, with science. Why did we do a unit on astronomy? I wasn't interested in it at all, and you don't need to know it for anything unless you're gonna be in a space related field. It's like they're just teaching us this stuff just to teach it. My mom said it's just for backround knowledge, but why would I need that in something I'll never talk about?

Sorry if I sound bratty...I had a weird day, and I'm pretty off as it's pretty late. And I apologize if I had typos or grammar mistakes...because, again, it's pretty late.

Answer 1

I'm a high school teacher. We do tend to sometimes bristle at this question, because it's usually asked in a tone that makes it sound more like "I don't want to do this and you can't make me." Here are several different answers in no particular order.

1) You have no idea what you'll "need" to know. For someone in their teens (heck for someone who isn't a terminal patient in a nursing home) to suggest that they know the whole list of everything they'll ever need to know is just silly. The standard statistics suggest that folks in your generation will change careers (not jobs-- careers) five timesin. Because of that...

2) One of the most important skills you can acquire in schopol is learning how you best learn stuff. Because you will need to learn new stuff most of your life, and most of your life the only person their to teach you will be you.

3) Knowledge = options. The more you know, the more choices you have. Which means that...

4) Your whole life you are going to be competing with people who know more and can learn faster than you can.

5) Exercise for your brain. Why do football players lift weights? Is there some point in a football game where thy have to get on a machine and do bench presses? Of course not, but the exercising, which in and of itself is pointless (you can "lift" weights all day, but at the end, they're exactly where they were when you started) builds muscles that can then be used for other things. Some of how this works out is unpredictable-- years ago, when colleges didn't put out many computer majors, some employers learned to hire people with music degrees instead-- somehow the discipline involved in music transfered well to computer programming.

6) There is no down side. Nobody was ever hurt in life by having learned too much.

One more point.Your mom is not wrong, in this sense. Sooner or later (and sooner is better), you need to learn to take care of your own motivation and not approach things with an attitude of "So, is someone going to give me a cookie if I do this?" Nobody has a higher stake in your life than you. Nobody has more reason to look out for your interests than you. Highly successful people are not highly successful because someone else motivates them.

Answer 2

i am in college right now taking classes to become a high school math teacher. Yea thats right, i want to teach the one subject that your question comes up in the most. Here is how i look at it. If you want to go to college, you HAVE to do well on the SAT/ACT. Unfortunatly, as with almost all standardized testing, its a test about a bunch of rediculous facts that you will probably forget after you graduate high school, but unless you do well on the test, you cant get into the good college. So everything you learn is important, because sometimes in life you gjust have to pay your dues.

Answer 3

First of all, usually when this question is asked, it is asked to try to upset the teacher or to get the teacher off task. I usually don't fall for it and they don't usually ask that question in 2nd grade. However, my son didn't really ask but I knew he wanted to, so I answered. There are basic things that people feel that a generally knowledgeable person should know. Once this is done, then you can take more electives which are more the things that students want to learn. I am very grateful for all of the classes that I took as I would consider myself an intelligent person (and great at Trivial Pursuit). I never asked that question though. And, to answer your question, no I don't think teachers should take a class in this because it is a stupid question.

Answer 4

I always wondered where I would need the information I learned in high school too.  Teachers never had a good answer but I have an answer now.  You are learning a lot of that stuff just as a base for general education.  That means they are teaching you a broad range information.  The government believes everyone should have a general education so that's what you get.  Think about high school.  You and your peers are all going to go off in different directions, some may be doctors, lawyers, teachers, ect.  Most of this info will be needed for college if you go.  Honestly you never now when you'll need this knowledge.  Maybe in higher education, maybe at your job, maybe when you're older and helping your kid with homework.  Who knows.

Anyway I think your mom is right.  It's basically background knowledge so you have some clue about the world around you.

Answer 5

The problem is that teachers are taught to teach concepts like math at the theoretical level.

It has been proven that if you learn at the theoretical level first and NOT with practical examples then you will learn it better and be able to use the information in ALL aspects of practical problems.  The problem is that kids get bored and when they ask why they need this they are told they just do.  You don’t learn until college how to apply things in practical engineering and then it gets a whole lot harder to do the work.

Algebra is a perfect example who cares that 2X-5y=200?  But when 2x = two months of pay and 5y = the bills you have to pay in those two months and the $200 is what you need to buy the concert tickets for you and your girlfriend it starts to become a practical problem and one that is necessary for life.

All the math problems I encounter in life are algebra word problems.  When I was in high school I thought physics was next to useless then in college I found out every single engineering problem was a physics problem and that I had to understand calculus to figure out that all those problems were based on the simple equation F=ma.  Then you find out that the velocity and acceleration equations are good only for on instant of time.  To figure out the acceleration over the entire period you need to use calculus.  When the earth revolves around the sun it accelerates as it closes on the sun moving at a faster and faster speed.  Then as it leaves the sun it slows down more and more until it reaches the farthest point and starts to fall back.  If it was not in a stable orbit then it would escape the sun or fall into the sun.  So when they call it “rocket science” they really mean a hard subject.

Why does a glass jar of liquid connected to wires makes a dead frogs leg move?  You have to understand that muscles only contract and they do that because of electricity.  You have a zinc bar inside the glass jar of battery acid to create electricity and you are running a wire to the frog’s muscle, and back to the jar for a complete circuit.  All of this has to be known first before you can explain that a living frog uses electricity conducted by his nerve cells to move his muscles and that is how a human’s muscles work.

This is a simplistic explanation so you can understand things better, otherwise it just seems like magic and the universe doesn’t operate by magic.  You know an electrical nerve impulse powers your muscles, but someone had to figure all of that out without your information base.  You need to build up your understanding of math to understand the higher math and then you need that to actually do the problems in the real world.

To calculate the twisting forces on a column you need to know the stresses on it and make a stress diagram and use other formulas to figure it out.  But to figure out the stress diagram you need to plot the stresses; the weight of the beam and what sits on it.  The distance from one end is 2 feet to x pounds + another weight at 5 feet of y pounds giving you at total of 200 foot lbs.  This is what force is on the far beam, but you need to calculate the weight on the other end, then you need to calculate the stress, diagram and finally calculate the twisting diagram.  I didn’t learn this until my sophomore year in college.  The formulas that I didn’t give to you, because they are too complex are from physics.  This is a real world example of algebra used in construction of the simplest building.  Trust me it gets harder because the weight of x can vary with how big your AC unit is and that varies with the size of the air ducts, you also need to calculate the weight of the exhaust fan at y distance to determine the cooling ability for the building which determines the power needed for the AC unit.  Then from there you can calculate the size of the air ducts and how many you need, which determines how many people can fit into the building. Those formulas are even more complex and are again from physics.  I didn’t learn those formulas until another year later and then I had a brilliant idea in class.  Each formulas was related to the other by calculus and all of them related to F= ma.

Meanwhile years before the equation 2x + 5y = 200 was a mystery for me to solve.  You can’t solve it except in terms of x of y unless you have more information.  This then becomes a simultaneous equation.  If you don’t know the size and weight of the AC unit at 2 feet or the size and weight of the fan at 5 feet because those are related to the needs for cooling the problems start to get more complex.  All you do know is you are building an office building for 50 people and how big the land is.

Math is just like a ladder, so is science.  You need to climb that ladder one rung at a time to reach the top and you can’t just jump up there from the ground.  So we start with the abstract formulas and don’t use practical examples until we get nearer the top of the ladder.  Meanwhile it seems useless until you see the distance you had to climb up the ladder.

To do calculus you need to know how to add and subtract, but between that are the multiplication tables, several years of algebra, geometry, trig and analytical geometry.  I can’t explain one without you understanding the other.

Yes you need math to do your taxes, but to be an astronomer you need a whole lot more; you need that for any science field and all of them are related by physics and advanced math.

Do you know what you want to do yet?  Every field requires math of some sort.  History requires probability and understanding of how carbon-14 dating works, which takes even more complex math.  In sociology you need to understand probability and in all the hard sciences you need to understand calculus.

When you put a puzzle together and don’t have a complete picture before hand it is hard to do and it doesn’t make sense until you put the pieces together.  That is what you are trying to in school; each block of instruction you learn is a puzzle piece and until you finish the puzzle you don’t know what it means so you start with edge pieces (simple math) and move inward (more complex math).  By the time things become clear you are in college and even then it can be difficult to understand.

Why does Iran hate the US?  The answer is WW1 and that is why the price of oil is high.

- The problems in WW1 where caused by entanglements in earlier history and entangling alliances caused WW1.  WW1 ended in a near stalemate and none of the problems that caused it were solved.

- So WW2 happened.

- In WW2 Russia became communists.

- After WW2 the battle grounds were divided to be controlled by the victors until new governments could be put into place.  Russia didn’t let new governments come into power and took over the land.

-  This is why North Korea and North Vietnam where communist controlled.  To stop communist aggression the US got involved in both wars when the Northern countries invaded the Southern ones (backed by the Communists).  We stopped them in North Korea and lost in Vietnam.

- Because of the fear on the borders the Middle East was divided.  Iraq and Egypt got Russian support to stop that we supported the Shaw of Iran; who was as bad a dictator as Sadam Hussein.  He had to be tough to prevent the civil war that we saw in Iraq.

-  The Shaw got sick and fled the country leaving it in chaos.  The religious leaders took over and the Ayatollahs came into power because they were Shiite and there were more Shiites in Iran.  Because the Shiites were repressed by the Shaw they hated him and because the Shaw was supported by the US they hated us and we did that to stop the Communists.

-  Iran founded the terrorist group Hezbollah and their first action was to blow up a truck bomb in the Marine Barracks in Lebanon.  The Marines were there to stop the civil war in Lebanon and prevent Israel from invading.  Israel wanted to invade because Islamic terrorists were shooting rockets into Israel.  Iran hated the US and Israel so they attacked the US and then the peace mission failed and Israel invaded Lebanon starting a 10 year civil war.

-  Israel was founded after WW2 with land taken from the Arabs who had taken that land 1,000s of years ago.  They hated Israel and the American allies for stealing their land and giving it to their enemies the Israelis.

-  The price of oil is high because fear that Iraq will cut off its oil supply to the world; this is because of problems not settled in WW1 and created in WW2.  I can’t explain why the price of gas is high until you know all the history that came before it.

Every subject is part of a chain and you need one link to join with another.  Only when the total chain is joined do you see the importance of it.  Teachers are stuck making their own link in the chain and don’t deal with the others just like the students.  Some of them don’t even know where the chain will eventually go.  You math teacher probably can’t calculate the stresses in a building because they never had those classes or needed them.  Only college students in building engineering, structures, architecture, and construction get that training.