LogFAQs > #977034290

faramir77 posted...

Bingo. I'm a high school math teacher.

When students ask "when am I going to use this", I typically have a possible career connection to share but I mostly just say something along the lines of "we learn math in high school to train your brain to logically tackle problems that you didn't even know existed yesterday using both information you've previously obtained and brand new information. In that sense, you'll use the skills you learn here almost every day of your life".

Students generally are happy with that answer. Math gets a lot of scrutiny from students because of how abstract it can be, without understanding that it being abstract is the entire point.

I think it was actually a post you made a while ago that clued me into that value. It seems kind of obvious once you actually think about it, but so much of how math is taught and experienced fixates on memorizing minutiae and specific procedures that everyone knows won't be useful for the vast majority of people, and it's no wonder people lose interest in that.