My favorite answer to this was from my rotund, thick-glasses-wearing calculus teacher in high school. If someone asked him why they should learn differential equations or whatever, he’d throw his arms wide, beam at them, and shout, “Because it’s GLORIOUS!”
Then he’d go on with the lesson as if they’d said nothing.
I have to respectfully disagree with Miller and everyone who agrees with him.
I think most teachers would have included “up” after “grow”
Not everyone needs to be able to use a foreign language, but the process of learning things like foreign languages, algebra, geometric proofs, and a lot if other things make your brain flexible in a way that we do want all people to be.
The whole point of mandatory education for non-adults is to create a society with a certain amount of aggregate brain power. It’s a bad idea to let children and teens exercise choice in a manner that hurts us all down the road. And we want to ensure that each new generation is prepared in a way such that they have choices to make when they are adults and are well equipped to make decisions.
Here’s the thing I don’t get about math in particular.
For someone to say they don’t need algebra, they also have to insist that they will never:
In other words: the only people who don’t need to know algebra are trophy wives. Maybe not quadratic equations, but if you can’t solve for X and calculate compound interest, you’re screwed. You might as well pack it up and go be a hermit because you’ll never master modern life. You will always live life at the mercy of people who know what they’re doing.
I was much more cynical when I was a teacher. If a student ever pulled that on me, I said “Because The State says you have to learn it, and I get paid to teach it to you. That’s why.”
To tell you the truth, there really isn’t much more to it than that. It is fairly arbitrary what the required subjects are, and what content is within each subject.
I think most people, if they’re doubling a recipe (and don’t use the recipe website’s feature to change the servings), put in 1/2 a tsp of paprika twice. Drives me batshit to watch, but I’ve seen it a lot.
and let’s grab
Truth. Lots of people can’t do this. Doesn’t stop them from getting loans or opening savings accounts, though. They just can’t tell you how much they’re repaying or earning in interest.
“Hi, H&R Block? I’d like to make an appointment.”
“6 bags look about right?”
“Sure. We can bring it back if we have extra…”
In other words: lots of people can get along just fine without real math, although they are probably spending more money than they need to. But you never know if you’re going to end up one of those who can’t.
Including the grammar centers … (“its” not “it’s” … d&rs). 
Also not a teacher but a parent … “I don’t care if you later remember how to FOIL, use the quadratic equation, or the formulas in trig, (Lawd knows I have to relearn 'em each time one of you kids take those classes and ask me for help) or the differences between China’s introduction to the West and Japan’s … I do care that you have learned how to learn those things and how to do the critical thinking to make that sort of comparison. Those are skills you will need and these classes develop those skills.”
So yeah, what Sr Siete said.
I’m pretty good at math and I do the “6 bags” for mulch. Because while I could do the square footage math - my beds are curved, so I’m going to go approximate anyway. And I’m not really sure how deep I’ll want it- how much is there from last year, how much do I need to replace, am I going deeper than what the garden site says. Ten bags fit in my car pretty well, and I usually use between 20 and 30, so I get ten, spread it, get another ten, spread it, and then know how many more I’ll need.
Although I am currently a trophy wife…so maybe there is something there. I also do my own taxes, am an accountant so I can do a compound interest calculation, and they pretty much throw money at me at the bank - is it hard to take out a loan?
Honestly, there is a lot of high school that my daughter loves - because its information, and will use, because she’s the sort of person who will. And that my son will memorize for the test and then not be able to figure out which continent Cameroon is on or need to be able to properly use the word macabre in a sentence properly. But his chances of needing to know are pretty slim since he is far more likely to be the guy fixing your car - and wondering why you don’t know how to change your own oil, than needing to know where Cameroon is. But he has to learn it because its part of the hoops we require him to jump through to graduate.
Because some day you may actually need to know what frog intestines look like.
Or do something you find disgusting. Like change a diaper.
Never got around to posting this when I first read the thread. Found a half-finished post in my notes folder:
People who haven’t learned anything outside of their narrow specialty are terribly boring. They might be successful, but they are very limited.
Case in point: my uncle by marriage has never done anything but sales, and nothing but real-estate sales for something like 40 years. He only knows how to talk about sales. He once proudly told me that he never reads fiction. The only books he has at home consist of a half-bookcase of motivational business-oriented how-to-achieve-success pap. This was fine for about 30 years. He made good money.
He also alienated nearly everyone who ever worked with him or in opposition to him, because he’s an asshole as well as being fundamentally ignorant about anything outside of his “thing”. When the last bubble popped in 2007—2008, he was fucked. He was over-leveraged and under-diversified (because he only knows real-estate, and only a narrow band of that) and basically lost everything. He’s got nothing left. He’s got no career. He’s got no fallback.
As long as you never make a mistake, you’re ok being X and never dealing with Y.
I got little pocket explanations for a bunch of different topics:
Math: Math is not about numbers. You have to memorize a bunch of steps, do them in the correct order, check your work, and make sure you have the right answer. Virtually anything you do in life requires you to know how to do this. Math isn’t about math, math teaches you how to think. I should credit this to my high school math teacher though, she first told me this.
History: Teachers need you to have some background knowledge so they can explain things to you. If you have no idea who Mohammad, Jesus or Buddha are, then a teacher can’t explain any of them. Learning something new often requires you to remember what you learned before to build on.
Numbers over 1 billion, e.g. trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, etc.: The US deficit is already in the trillions. In yen, that’s 100 trillion. In won, that’s 10 quadrillion. You’re going to need them, and soon.
I like Miller’s answer, phouka’s answer, and Lefty’s teacher’s answer. Besides, it costs nothing to know it, an knowing something worthless has no real downside.
And for history specifically, Santayana.
That’s a good answer right there: ignorance about this will potentially cost you money regardless of what field you go into.
“Well, if you know you’re heading into school administration, you can work on getting it taken off the curriculum. Until then, do your homework. And good lord, pick a different major.”
or
“Skills are the flowers you get when you water your talent bush. If you have no talent, you won’t get much in the way of skills, but you’ll never know until you try.”
“You’re not learning X because you’ll need it to do Y someday. You’re learning X as a part of the greater lesson we’re teaching you, which is that life is about doing a whole lot of shit you don’t want to do. Now shut up and do your algebra.”
One of the things a sixteen year old is still learning is decision making. They’re far enough along that they can be trusted with some decisions. But they have not reached the point where they should be trusted to make the best decisions about things which will have lifelong consequences.
Not a teacher, however, as I tell people;
School is where you get exposed to a large amount of stuff, most of which you need at least that small exposure to in order to get through life. However, the real point is that you get exposed to a lot of different things and have the opportunity to learn what you’re good at, what you suck at, what you really love and what you hate. If no one ever showed you this stuff, you’d never know you were good at it and that it was an option in life.
I used to tell the overgrown adolescent whiners to ask their department head or the dean of the school of arts & sciences. Those were the people who decided that communications/education/sociology/history majors needed to cry and complain their way through one whole semester of one physical science. I was just the unlucky grad student paid to teach intro geology lab to a room full of (legally speaking) adults who couldn’t use a calculator or write in complete sentences.
On a couple of bad days, I may have told someone that I’d be perfectly happy if they all chose to take intro physics instead.
Why do football players go to the gym and lift weights? There are no weights on the football field.
This is perhaps the perfect answer
This is good, too.