“Why do I have to learn this? When am I ever going to use this in the real world?” Such is the refrain of most, if not all, high school students as they come up against novel and unknown content (or as their energy drains out in the waning minutes of seventh period). And not without merit! The siloed and content-based nature of high school -- and really, all of education -- makes it difficult to see the similarities between disciplines and their instructional methods, and graduation requirements passed down from city and state governing school boards eliminates most of the agency students have in choosing their courses and directing their education.
Much of the educational research done in the last twenty years points to the need and benefit of student choice and voice in their academic pursuits. Such research echoes the calls for educational freedom and change made by radical teacher and educational theorist Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970) fifty years ago, who argued that “pedagogy...must be forged with, not for, the...individuals or peoples in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.” In short, in the eyes of both students and progressive educators alike, school as it is constructed is not designed with a student’s experience in mind. It most certainly needs to be for education to be meaningful and to have the transformative power your teachers, parents, and society argue it has.
Lost in this conversation, though, are two points which we do not seem to discuss frequently enough. “Why do you need to learn this?” we retort indignantly. “Because we get all of our information by reading,” says the English teacher. “Because you need to pay taxes and manage your budget for the rest of your life,” says the math teacher. And we aren’t wrong, per se, but such answers are self-serving and act as self-defense for lessons that we know how to deliver, but perhaps don’t always know why we’re delivering them; that is, they are answers for us, when really, our answers need to be more reflective of the students’ goals, understandings, and mindsets. Because the reality is that there might not be a time when a student uses calculus in the future or when they need to know what an appositive is by name. We can’t tell the future, and so such answers, though sounding logical, are based in hopeful fiction -- we hope that students will need what it is we’re teaching them SO THAT our jobs as teachers have meaning.
This reality, though, is a double-edged sword. Just as teachers who defend our disciplines now for their value later do not know the future, students who justify their ignorance or apathy with “Why do we need to learn this?” forget that they, too, are completely unaware of what the future holds. I began my time at The Ohio State University as a fencer and genetics major. Although I planned to go to school to become a teacher, in my heart, I was going to college to train for the Olympics. Clearly, only one of those two things came true, and I didn’t even graduate with a science degree! I’m also married to the girl I had a crush on in high school, who left for Europe after our sophomore year and who I never imagined to see again. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and it is short-sighted, though perhaps understandable, to think that who and how we are today is who and how we will be forever.
Much of the educational research done in the last twenty years points to the need and benefit of student choice and voice in their academic pursuits. Such research echoes the calls for educational freedom and change made by radical teacher and educational theorist Paolo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970) fifty years ago, who argued that “pedagogy...must be forged with, not for, the...individuals or peoples in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity.” In short, in the eyes of both students and progressive educators alike, school as it is constructed is not designed with a student’s experience in mind. It most certainly needs to be for education to be meaningful and to have the transformative power your teachers, parents, and society argue it has.
Lost in this conversation, though, are two points which we do not seem to discuss frequently enough. “Why do you need to learn this?” we retort indignantly. “Because we get all of our information by reading,” says the English teacher. “Because you need to pay taxes and manage your budget for the rest of your life,” says the math teacher. And we aren’t wrong, per se, but such answers are self-serving and act as self-defense for lessons that we know how to deliver, but perhaps don’t always know why we’re delivering them; that is, they are answers for us, when really, our answers need to be more reflective of the students’ goals, understandings, and mindsets. Because the reality is that there might not be a time when a student uses calculus in the future or when they need to know what an appositive is by name. We can’t tell the future, and so such answers, though sounding logical, are based in hopeful fiction -- we hope that students will need what it is we’re teaching them SO THAT our jobs as teachers have meaning.
This reality, though, is a double-edged sword. Just as teachers who defend our disciplines now for their value later do not know the future, students who justify their ignorance or apathy with “Why do we need to learn this?” forget that they, too, are completely unaware of what the future holds. I began my time at The Ohio State University as a fencer and genetics major. Although I planned to go to school to become a teacher, in my heart, I was going to college to train for the Olympics. Clearly, only one of those two things came true, and I didn’t even graduate with a science degree! I’m also married to the girl I had a crush on in high school, who left for Europe after our sophomore year and who I never imagined to see again. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and it is short-sighted, though perhaps understandable, to think that who and how we are today is who and how we will be forever.
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, we have to remember that as students and teachers currently operating within the bounds of public school systems, we are prone to seeing the educational system as it is, and not, perhaps, as what it can (and should, in my opinion) be. In English, we teach the theory of critical lenses, which argues that the perspective through which we read a text conveys a particular meaning, one which we might not have gotten without asking ourselves particular and probing questions. Reading through an authorial lens focuses us on how the life and times of the author influenced the text they produced, and reading through a gendered lens allows us to draw conclusions about how an author or society valued people of different genders as seen through the characters and their interactions.
It is in this way that I think both teachers and students need to start viewing education. Not as a set of facts or content that students need to learn, but as a lens through which to view and understand the world. We learn through English how people use words to convey or obfuscate meaning. We learn through math how to find unknown quantities and describe the nature of the universe empirically. We learn through science how to probe and understand the natural world, and we learn through history (hopefully) the consequences of our actions and how not to repeat them going forward. Each of these lenses, these disciplines, teaches us HOW to view the world, not WHAT the world is, and knowing which of those ways you're most suited to is invaluable. If we accept that we do not know what the future holds and that the world is always changing, does it not make more sense to learn about how the world works rather than what it is now? Because it will only be the way it is now right now.
So when, inevitably, students ask or teachers are asked, “Why do I need to learn this? How will this help me in the real world?” I hope it will get easier for all of us to remember that we don’t know the future and things are going to change. I don’t know how this class today will help you in your nebulous future, but neither do you. And why would one want to limit what one might be able to easily do tomorrow because it's hard today? What I do know is that learning how to learn will always be useful--and also, be careful, because the person you’re sitting next to today could be your life partner tomorrow.
It is in this way that I think both teachers and students need to start viewing education. Not as a set of facts or content that students need to learn, but as a lens through which to view and understand the world. We learn through English how people use words to convey or obfuscate meaning. We learn through math how to find unknown quantities and describe the nature of the universe empirically. We learn through science how to probe and understand the natural world, and we learn through history (hopefully) the consequences of our actions and how not to repeat them going forward. Each of these lenses, these disciplines, teaches us HOW to view the world, not WHAT the world is, and knowing which of those ways you're most suited to is invaluable. If we accept that we do not know what the future holds and that the world is always changing, does it not make more sense to learn about how the world works rather than what it is now? Because it will only be the way it is now right now.
So when, inevitably, students ask or teachers are asked, “Why do I need to learn this? How will this help me in the real world?” I hope it will get easier for all of us to remember that we don’t know the future and things are going to change. I don’t know how this class today will help you in your nebulous future, but neither do you. And why would one want to limit what one might be able to easily do tomorrow because it's hard today? What I do know is that learning how to learn will always be useful--and also, be careful, because the person you’re sitting next to today could be your life partner tomorrow.
