Why are we forced to learn what we’ll only forget?

While attending to his regular workout in the Five Colors S&T exercise room, our astronomer was reminded of his High School geometry class.  (We’ll explain the connection later; it has nothing to do with the angles at which his various muscles were applying force.)  Everyone was required to take geometry (and pass it), and most were required to do the same with algebra.  Yet it’s a truism that very few people actually use those subjects later on, and most forget them immediately.  Why, then, do we bother with teaching and learning them?  There are several possible answers, to which we’ll add one of our own.

In the U.S. system of education, High School students and undergraduates are required to take a wide variety of courses.  Except for those in their own major field, what they learn tends to get forgotten quickly.  (This is generally true, though we’ll confine ourselves here to science and math courses for non-technical students.  We’ll be thinking specifically of algebra and geometry.)  It’s probably true that most could not pass the final exam in the course a year later, much less any farther down the line.  This is a depressing thought, for the teachers as much as for the students.  Why do we go through such a complete waste of time?

The most cynical answer is a sort of baby-sitting: the children must be kept occupied for a certain time while the parents are working.  You could think of secondary school in general this way.  (We prefer not to.)  Or you could say that no one can be quite sure what part of one’s education will actually turn out to be useful.  It seems pretty inefficient, however, to require a major investment in time and effort that will pay off only for those English majors who wind up as scientific computer programmers without further education.

There is also the point that the students will remember that they knew the subject once, and will be able to relearn the material more easily if they need to.   Certainly having some skill in math and science is useful in working out who to believe when “experts” disagree; but we think it unlikely that many people actually keep their textbooks around and use them when technical questions come up.

The reasoning actually used is probably that students should be introduced to the idea of a rigorous proof, and a field in which one can only get the right answer by following exactly a set of rules.  This is worthwhile and probably justifies the effort, however non-rigorous people get in their reasoning in other fields.

Our own thought comes from an analogy with working out in the exercise room.  Our astronomer follows a sequence of exercises set out for him by experts.  Few or none of them is a motion he’s likely to do in any sport or in his daily life.  But each has a purpose in building up a quality like strength or flexibility or balance; he is better able to do anything physically by doing his exercises.  We think the mind works similarly: if you exercise it in many ways, it will be more capable in general.  (This certainly works with memory: if you use it, it gets better.)  Geometry and algebra are part of the mental workout to get you fit for whatever subject you’ll specialize in.

It’s up to you whether you continue your workout on your own.