Why Do I Need To Know This?

R.L. Morgan

Jan 7 · 4 min read

The ever-present question on education

Why do I need to know this?

It’s a question that math teachers hear frequently. Some of us use set responses.

We might go with pragmatic “Because it’s on the test”, or “You’ll need it for the next section”. Both are probably true, but not meaningfully helpful.

We might try to be a little more philosophical “It’s important to understand how this theory works”.

Important? I’m not sure even we believe that all the time, but it’s an easy standard answer that we can throw out while watching wandering eyes check to see if the inquisitor is going to gain any momentum that will derail the entire lesson into a discussion of anything that isn’t quadratic factoring.

We might even go with vague truth “because problem solving skills are important”. Come on… so is drinking enough water every day and keeping the oil changed in your car. We all can agree that “problem solving skills” are important, but is being able to remember and apply the quadratic formula really one of those skills?

The truth of the matter is that we don’t know for certain why or even if you need to know this and we don’t want to say that.

It’s not that we are afraid to admit that we don’t know something (at least most of us). It’s that we don’t have time for the discussion right now, and we know that you are just asking the question in order to distract yourself or the class from that difficult alphabet-soup looking problem in front of you.

But, when it’s time to have the discussion, here’s what I do and don’t know about it.

I don’t know who you will be once you leave my class. I don’t know if you will go on to be a doctor, philosopher, retail manager, engineer, social worker, plumber, writer, singer, or if you’re going to invent the next world-altering widget. I don’t know if you’re going to go to college, go to trade school, go to work, or go to sleep on your mom’s sofa until you figure it all out.

My job is not to know your future. My job is to prepare you for every possibility in that undecided future.

I don’t know which pieces of this information will stick in your brain. I’m giving you all of it in the hopes that you’ll find something important or useful in there to hold on to. I have no illusions that you’ll remember all of it, or even most of it. But maybe someday you will remember that there was a person who taught you how to calculate the area of a triangle when you’re trying to tile that odd section of floor in your kitchen. Maybe you’ll smile and remember that he also cared about you and your education. It’s my attempt at immortality.

I do know that being able to reason through complex ideas, make informed decisions, think for yourself, and communicate coherently are skills that you will need even if your career path involves sleeping on your mom’s couch for a while. My colleagues and I are teaching you quadratic equations, sentence structure, Egyptian history, Spanish verbs, poetry, art, and Avogadro’s number because they are ways of getting your mind ready for the increasingly complex world in which you are about to launch yourself.

It’s not my job to know whether or not you need this information, but it is my job to tell you that it’s important long enough for you to understand on your own that any education has value and will help you in the future.

I want you to be happy. I want you to be safe. I want you to be educated. I want you to understand complex ideas. I want you to be a good person with an understanding of history, math, chemistry, physics, world events, language, and art.

I want you to stop bringing this question up right in the middle of my lesson.

Thank you, good luck, and no I am not going to give you the answer to that problem.