A student in the back of the classroom raises their hand with a confused face. Looking at the quadratic equation on the whiteboard, he asks “When am I ever going to use this in my life?”
It's a tough question, and if the teacher doesn't give a satisfactory answer, it could lead to the student straying away from math in their education, no matter how old they are. I believe not being able to answer questions like these actually contributes a lot to disengagement with mathematics across the nation, especially at primary school levels.
While math is useful for specific career paths such as finance, engineering, or science, I believe a strong education in math is still extremely vital to those who won't pursue these paths, so let's tackle the question without a career in mind.
Teachers often answer the question in two ways: with a vague answer about problem-solving, which isn’t very appealing to the student since almost every subject at school teaches that to an extent, or with specific examples of use cases for the equation, theorem, or whatever piece of math is on the whiteboard. However, it can be argued that in these extremely specific scenarios, one might as well end up googling what to do, a more efficient practice.
Clearly, this is a difficult question to answer, but asking the same exact question to other subjects can give us insight into how to approach the issue. One will quickly realize that every other subject is also guilty of the question. For example, when is a student ever going to write an essay in their life after college? There are tons of adults who have never written essays in their adult life.
But obviously learning how to write English is still valuable. Why? Because of the transferable skills that come along with it. You may not write an essay again, but you will be equipped with skills of writing, reading, and editing properly, all of which are essential in adult life.
So what are the transferable skills of math? I like to put it this way: the ability to look at a fixed set of information and figure out what you can do with it. How to logically deduct from a situation, and build conclusions that require insight or intuition. Figuring things out, using merely our problem-solving intuition, is a skill every one of us uses every day, whether math is involved or not. For example, this could range from issues a businessman faces or perhaps even a sticky situation in a sports game.
Just food for thought, but I think this post is a step in the direction of properly answering the question "When am I ever going to use this?"
