Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Moan - Why do we have to use it?

I would suggest that perhaps the people who bemoan not needing to use things they have learned are people who have difficulty with transfer, and that those who love learning for its own sake are more likely to be able to see connections to their existing knowledge base. I know that I find applications in places where I'd least expect to for all sorts of obscure things that I've learned. Of course, the most useful application, bar none, for learning widely that I have encountered yet has been the ability to get more of other people's obscure jokes.

I have wondered about that. �I used to feel like intelligence had something to do with adaptability,�that would be transferability, but later I learned about the existence of savants and prodigies exceptionally gifted in a domain. �Perhaps the difference is talent, dedication, passion, or maybe you develop a talent or a gut instinct however you achieve mastery. �My best guess is that u can learn to recognize and optimize or at least appreciate where you are in the process of your various pursuits. �Maybe that's just what they told me at school and I believed it.

I think also that fundamentally if you are rote learning and never really "Got" the math, then it probably will be completely useless to you down the track. If what you learned was conceptual thinking and HOW to learn, then you probably won't even notice whether you are using what you learned from those math classes. For those of us for whom learning the concepts came easily we also learned how to learn (or already knew), it wasn't a bitter and painful experience from which we got no apparent value.

I don't know that I have ever directly applied any of my high school math. I can't even remember exactly what I learned, given we just call ALL math "Math 1 and Math 2" here I can't look back and say "Yep, studied algebra, trig, and geometry". Actually I just confirmed with DH and we both would have done algebra, trig, geometry, calculus. The only thing I can clearly remember is probability - because I couldn't do it.


20+ years later I probably use underlying principles of all that math regularly enough, particularly algebra. But the only thing I remember clearly is that I never mastered probability - and "I have never needed it anyway".


I will need to read a text book when it's time to help my kids with highschool math, but I have no doubt that I will be able to remember it all with some prompting. Except probability :-). Where as I am guessing the adults that are complaining they never used that math probably never understood it that well in the first place and will not be able to quickly and easily re-learn it to go through it with their kids. Someone else is going to have to teach my kids probability, and maybe teach me while they are at it.

I struggled with learning expository writing as a first-semester freshman in college. Overall, I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees and learning how to use the correct style needed for good writing of this type.

Then I had a flash of insight: good expository writing is a lot like a proof in geometry or the derivation of an equation. You have to move logically from one idea to the next one, you can't use an idea or term without defining it, and you have to justify what you claim.

In that moment, I visualized how to use these principles to structure sentences, paragraphs, and an entire essay. I still had to work very hard and think a lot to produce a three-page paper, but I went immediately from getting low Bs or Cs to As.

I use these ideas in contract work that I do, which involves critical reading of manuscripts and grant applications (I review federal grant applications reasonably often, so I can read like a friendly but tough reviewer).

I tell my clients about my geometry-based principles, and they seem to be helpful to grad students through faculty members.

Exactly! Thank you for the beautiful illustration of what I was clumsily trying to say.

Kate,

I'm with you. I would be a professional student if I could afford it. Just 'cause. :-)

There are people who would say I AM a professional student

... with some justification, I think

I WOULD be a professional student, if I could! Having said that, as a physician, I took alot of courses that, looking back, were a huge waste of time and taught me little in terms of knowledge or skills.
I took 2 years of Calculus-based physics- which I never remotely use in my daily practice! Or the year of organic chemistry. Etc. And when I started my internship, on the first day of being a "real" doctor, someone had to show me how to write a prescription!
I do support learning interesting things for the sake of learning. My son and I are studying geography nightly with the idea that he will enter a Geo Bee, and we are reading a History of the World together. Lots of "useless," but interesting facts. However, there are classes you have to take in school/college, etc. that, in my opinion, are a waste of time!

I was an egineering major before I switched majors and I used to say it just made me well rounded, rather thsn being a waste, but now I know what all those science and math courses were actaully for - raising my DS!!! I really wish I had done astrophysics, cause I am doing it now. I actually find it super enjoyable to learn this way as I hunt for interesting books and toys for him. And it also makes me comfortable that it will be awhile before he knows more than I do in some subjects (although not as long as I would have thought!!!)

DeHe

I'm a big fan of learning for the sake of learning and loved Val's example of connecting geometry to essays. I recall a conversation a couple of years ago with my DD (who is more passionate about language arts than math) who was trying to make sense out of negative numbers. She understood the rules, but was bothered that she didn't feel like she understood the reason behind the rule for multiplying a negative by a negative. It was the "double negative" in grammar that helped her grasp it as a concept instead of a rule and to then move onto a more mathematically based understanding.


I suspect we all look back on classes that seem like they were a waste of our time in retrospect. These are usually classes that we wouldn't have chosen simply out of interest, and which we end up not really needing. I think though about how many people start out on one path in a general area of study and then, based on some experience or another, veer onto another class in the same general area. I think sometimes there is a general pool of related pre-requisites or requirements that lead to a few different specific paths. I'm thinking it might just make sense because it's more cost effective to create a foundation that allows for more than one possibility, particularly if the foundation is at the undergraduate level for a course of study that requires grad school, med school, etc. If you are a college or a university, you don't want to waste time teaching what students should have learned in the previous level, but specialization may not be decided upon until a student is involved in a graduate level course of study. Just a thought....