Pffft, I'll *never* need to use that, why should I learn it?.....

[mrbadger]

Whether in school, at college or Uni, have you ever thought/said this?

I didn’t at school, but my school experience was kinda shit, I didn’t really start my education till I left school.

At uni though I did say it couple of times that I recall. Notably about Amdahl's law (used to predict optimization speedup). Something I have never actually stopped using since that module finished, which shows how dumb I was to think it really.

The other time was about the Business Management (IT) side of Computing, and guess what I need to know now with my new course redesign role…..

So I’m 2 for 2 on fails with the I don’t need to know this, although at least with the second I’m on a team, so my lack of explicit knowledge probably isn’t a big deal.

[Alan Phipps]

I have always thought that the educational institutions wanted you to learn some esoteric or niche things as much to demonstrate your ability to understand and maybe apply such topics as for any assumption of their future practical use to you - along with their possible necessity as building blocks for keeping ongoing progressive learning options open to you, of course.

In my college/uni/MSc years, I was lucky enough to be able to tailor my supporting modules to fit what I thought I would probably need. Looking back on my career now, I would say that I got it about 80% correct with few subsequently unused engineering, maths or materials topics chosen and only the odd 'I wish I'd covered that' moments since.

[pjknibbs]

During the stages of my general education there were lots of things I didn't want to learn because I wasn't interested in them, which is why I failed my English Literature class. (I'm actually interested in most books, just not the ones that were set as coursework in those classes!). That got less prevalent as I went up the learning ladder, though--by the time you get to sixth form and University you really ought to be learning stuff that you *chose* to learn, so saying "This is useless, why are we learning it?" is odd when you get to that level.

[Morkonan]

Whether in school, at college or Uni, have you ever thought/said this?....

No.

In fact, I never understood why people would say that or why it became a commonly used phrase... Well, at least until I encountered a particular class taught by a wonderful, true, teacher.

Bear with me, this is important stuffs... But, if you can't, then there's a TLDR at the bottom.



It was a sort of new experiment, really. It was a series of classes in various disciplines that delved into their history. The first that I took, since it was my major, was titled something along the lines of "History of Psychology."

It was taught by a History professor, fittingly so. This particular professor was one of those that students sometimes loved, sometimes made fun of, and sometimes ridiculed. In short - He was certainly a "character." As I got to know him, I realized he was a troubled man, but a good man, very driven by his desire to actually teach students the importance of understanding history. (Long story not illuminated here)

This was going to be a "crip course", an easy A, something I could sleep through, read the "book" and be done with, right? NO! First, there was no "book" - Nobody had written it, yet. OK, fine, been there, done that, right? No... This wasn't a class full of professor-pamphlets and checking out their collected notes from the library. (Something we did back in those days.)

Instead, we talked. We used pieces of books from other courses, articles, copious lecture notes and intense scribblings jotted down from class discussions. The shocking thing - There were no courses specifically like this. The professor was creating the class, himself, using his skills as a true historian to provide a path for us to follow.

For Psych majors, all this was accepted knowledge. The impact that famous eggheads had, the foibles and mistakes, the weird experiments, the effects those had on ethics, development of technique, yadda yadda yadda. Simple stuff, easy class, no problem. In fact, some students wondered why anyone would think such a class would be meaningful or necessary.

I think everyone's notion of this class was eventually proved wrong, simply because of this professor and his genius application of his craft. We didn't learn a "history" of psychology, we learned a "why" and a "how" of the history of our chosen discipline. We watched as our discipline was taken apart, piece by piece, and reconstructed from a historian's point of view. We watched it develop in front of our eyes. We didn't learn timelines, we learned "evolution of thought" within our discipline. We learned what contemporaries influenced each other, who got into fights with who, what the impact was of the zeitgeist of the day, how social movements effected study, etc..

Every major professional discipline had a class like this. "Had." Unfortunately, this wonderful idea of teaching students how their discipline evolved over time and "why" it developed the way it did ended one day. The professor's wife had been caught up in a military coup in a far-off land. Trapped in a poor country, she became ill and, unable to leave due to being an "American" and worthy of being part of a group of political hostages, she died. This wonderful and brilliant professor became a truly broken man and died soon after.

This was a class that was going to rehash "junk" that was in every other class. It was stuff that I wouldn't need to know, since everything that had gone on before in psychology, all the funny little ideas and movements, all the crap about "ids" and hypnotism, all the superstitious nonsense - I really didn't need to know any of that, right?

I was so wrong. All of these things, taken very seriously at the time, were significant. Everyone was standing on the shoulders of giants, even if they weren't giants.

I took a couple of other classes in this theme, until the professor passed away. It was his mastery, truly, that made these classes work. Without him, even department heads couldn't teach the class - They didn't understand it, themselves.

They didn't understand it.

Any student that ever asks themselves "I'll never use it, so why should I learn it" has not been taught properly. This makes me angry... More than that, it hurts. It makes me remember a tragedy of a man who's passion for history led to the creation of a line of courses that demonstrated, up-front and in-their-faces, the impact that seemingly innocuous, useless, even false knowledge, had on their contemporary disciplines. That one man knew how to teach students that knowledge of any sort always has a formative impact on a related discipline. Even little known bits of truly esoteric knowledge come into play, somewhere, in the mainstream thought of a discipline. He could, with a historian's eye, weave a complex tapestry of esoteric and complex thoughts in disciplines he didn't even specialize in to yield a full pattern.

I took courses in all levels, across disciplines I didn't even major in, until I could not take any more and was forced to graduate and move on. In all that time, I never encountered a professor in any discipline that was as thorough and as dedicated to actually, physically, with presence and gravitas, committed to teaching.

By the end of that debut course, I can truly say that there wasn't one single student who was not enthusiastic about their discipline. There were none left that viewed their own field of study as some "dead thing" that simply "was." Instead, ideas of "foolish history stuff" were transformed into a new appreciation for a living, breathing, evolving discipline.

When advanced students hit "the wall" of "this is boring" and "why do I need to know this junk", this is the sort of class they need. They have to be taught that their discipline isn't a static set of formulae or theory or principles but is, instead, a living, breathing, thing. What they "know" today is far different from what their chosen discipline will "know" tomorrow. Yet, what that discipline knows tomorrow is intrinsically linked to the paths it followed before. Today's knowledge, even proven obsolete, will create the acknowledged facts of tomorrow.



TLDR: If a student says "I'll never need to use that, why should I learn it" then they haven't been taught by a professor qualified to teach them.

[Usenko]

I hear that question a lot. Usually from students who want to try to wound - the subtext is "I don't recognise you as a valid authority for me."

However, I have developed an answer for the question:

-- Usenko's Answer Begins --

What are you going to be doing in 10 years time?

Wait, I don't mean "What do you WANT to be doing," or "What do you think you'll be doing" . . . I mean, WHAT WILL YOU BE DOING?

The only correct answer is "I don't know". You have no knowledge of the future. You can make guesses based on your current trajectory, but if I may be blunt [1], you do not yet have sufficient experience to even be able to make realistic predictions (if you still think 5 years is a long time, it demonstrates this!).

So . . given that you don't know what you'll be doing, why are you so certain you know what information you'll be needing?

I can tell you that when I was in High School, I had no concept that I'd be a teacher. In fact, teacher was one of the jobs I'd crossed off my list. Crossed off, scribbled out and burned a hole in the page where it had been written! So if I'd have not learned stuff just because I didn't need to know it, I'd not have been prepared for what not only became my career, it became my vocation (in that once I'd ended up in a classroom, I realised this was what I'd been made for!).

So deciding what information we need and learning only that is a failing strategy. It doesn't work.

Instead, we should take the approach humans have always taken - since we don't know what we need to know in the future, we greedily stockpile every piece of information and every skill we can lay our hands on. As we get older, we'll find some (most!) of that information isn't actually needed for the work or hobbies we do, but you'd be surprised where it comes out. And since you never know what bits and bobs you'll needed, none of it is ever wasted. It's not a waste learning something just because you don't have an immediate use for it.

-- END --

[1] Note: I'm almost always talking to teenagers, hence this bit.

[pjknibbs]

In fact, teacher was one of the jobs I'd crossed off my list. Crossed off, scribbled out and burned a hole in the page where it had been written!

Well, there's your problem--if you burned the entire word away it would have been easy to forget it was there and crossed out!

[mrbadger]

Whenever I was justifying a major life change, be it job or education based, I would always start by asking myself the question 'where do you want to be in three years time'.

Now I pose that question to my students, and advise them to use that method when making major career choices.

Ten years is too long for a young person to comprehend, it was too far for me when I was a teenager or in my twenties, but three years? that wasn't.

[Morkonan]

...[1], you do not yet have sufficient experience to even be able to make realistic predictions (if you still think 5 years is a long time, it demonstrates this!)...

I bought some car wax and a bunch of stuff to spruce up my car. I'll get around to waxing it and giving it a good detail job... sometime. That was five years ago. I still have all the stuff, though! Uh... I also have a new car. And, uh... I still have the old one, too. It's still in my garage and I don't really drive it much. When my neighbors come over to visit, they write funny stuff on the dust on the windshield. They're joking, of course... probably.

I should go ahead and get rid of it, I guess.

But, I still have that cool car wax and all the detail stuff I was going to use.


PS - Does car wax "expire?"

[mrbadger]

I should point out that the whole 'look ahead three years thing' was from a retired social worker running a course I took in my teen years. I didn't come up with it.

Good advice though, always worked for me.

[Grim Lock]

I just explained to my 12 years old nephew that all the bits of knowledge he gathers at school are like storing lego blocks in a big box, once hes mature and finished school, the more legos he's got the easier it is to build something beautiful for himself. It seemed to really resonate with him.

[Morkonan]

I just explained to my 12 years old nephew that all the bits of knowledge he gathers at school are like storing lego blocks in a big box, once hes mature and finished school, the more legos he's got the easier it is to build something beautiful for himself. It seemed to really resonate with him.

Yeah, I stepped on the Psych Degree LEGO while fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what I should do with my academic career... I think it's a knockoff though, since it really doesn't fit into much that's useful, these days, and there are bunch of other pieces that are much more in demand...

[Grim Lock]

I just explained to my 12 years old nephew that all the bits of knowledge he gathers at school are like storing lego blocks in a big box, once hes mature and finished school, the more legos he's got the easier it is to build something beautiful for himself. It seemed to really resonate with him.

Yeah, I stepped on the Psych Degree LEGO while fumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out what I should do with my academic career... I think it's a knockoff though, since it really doesn't fit into much that's useful, these days, and there are bunch of other pieces that are much more in demand...

Lol shhh don;t let my young nephew hear that, he's exactly like i was at his age so it won't take him too long to figurre that out for himself, until that time we are just happy he's aplying himself a little for a change Ofcourse by that time ill have to try and see if my later state of mind also translates to his and see if i can help him prevent making a mess of things like i did...

It's a bit scary though, i might have mentioned in this forum that my teens and early adolescent years were pretty rough as was i, my brother and i ar as different as day and night, he's got serious trouble communicating with him and is leaning on me to help out, wich is having a definite positive effect, i just really hope i can help him prevent the same mistakes i made.

It's weird though, even after i pieced my life together, i always avoided reponsabilities and commitment as much as i could..... Now ive got several at work and a kid to worry about(sortof), if im not carefull people might start calling me mature, lol, K NOW OF TO THE BAR ON A MONDAY!!

[philip_hughes]

I don't recall saying the exact phrase- but I have found that practically every science lesson I have learned has a real world application as does maths. Learning the stuff makes your life easier, from understanding compound interest to the best way to clean your house. So whenever someone says "when will I ever use this?" I typically respond with "You are not trying hard enough".