Why study - when you don't use most of what you have learnt in real working lives?
Joseph Yeo, Dec 1999
Some pupils have heard from working adults that they don't use most of what they have learnt in school during their working lives. So how are we to convince them that they should study everything that we teach them?
(1) Too early to specialise
Ask your pupils who have decided what their ambitions are. Most likely you will get only a handful because most of them will not have decided what they want to be. So how are they going to specialise in the relevant subjects when they don't even know what they want to work as?
For the few who have decided what their ambitions are, ask them who have changed their minds before. This time, you would get even fewer responses. But as they grow older, many of them would have changed their minds at least once. So impress upon them that they may change their minds later on. Although certain subjects can be picked up later in life, it is not so easy to study other subjects (especially the more technical ones) at a later stage.
But there may be a few who are so sure of their ambitions that they think that they will not change their minds. So impress upon them that they may be forced by circumstances to change their ambitions. For example, they may decide to be a doctor in Sec 1 and start studying only medicine subjects. By the time they are about to enter university at the end of six years, they may discover that there are far too many doctors here and they may not wish to migrate. Then they may be out of job if they were to pursue their dream of being a doctor, not to mention that the government here may restrict the number of undergraduates for the medicine course so that there will not be an oversupply. By then, it is too late for them to switch to another course because they have no foundation to build upon.
(2) Broad-based curriculum provides opportunities for pupils to discover their interests
The education system here provides at least ten years of broad-based curriculum for every pupil. Rather than specialising on certain subjects too early, this curriculum covers a bit of everything. Other than the fact mentioned above that most pupils would not be able to decide what subjects to specialise at such a tender age, this broad-based curriculum actually helps them to decide what their interests are. If a pupil has not taken Geography, how would he know that he does not want to be a geologist? If he has not taken General Science in lower secondary, how would he know that he prefers, say, Chemistry to Physics? So we should encourage our pupils to study everything in order to find out what their interests are.
However some pupils have decided too early that they don't like a particular subject and so they want to give it up. But we should impress upon them the following:
Certain subjects are not so interesting when you are dealing with the basics. But as you progress further in depths, you may find certain topics interesting.
You may not find certain subjects so interesting now. But who is to say that you won't change your mind later on?
Certain subjects may not be interesting. But the foundation may be useful later on (see Heading (3) below).
Let's face it. Many people take up a job not because it is interesting to them. They do it to survive. So even if you don't like a subject, you may end up doing something that is related to that subject. That's life.
In conclusion, pupils should not give up subjects which they don't like because they may need them later.
(3) Broad-based curriculum provides the foundation for pupils to build upon
I have a friend who is an engineer. At one stage, his job required him to learn linear programming. It was a branch of mathematics which enabled him to maximise or minimise a few variables subject to certain constraints. He had no problems learning it on his own because the mathematical foundations, linear inequalities in two variables and matrices (no longer in secondary math syllabus), were laid during his secondary school years. If he did not have these basics, imagine trying to learn, on his own, about the concepts of linear inequalities and finding the inverse of a matrix. It would be quite tough and time consuming. So pupils should study everything because the foundation is important for them to build upon later on in their working lives.
As an aside: My friend was so excited about linear programming because he had seen the wonders that it could do. But when he was a student, he could not see the relevance of linear inequalities and matrices. Even a mathematics undergraduate studying linear programming might not be as thrilled as him. What I am saying is that pupils may not appreciate what they are studying now because they cannot see their relevance. So there is still the need to include real life examples and applications in our teaching although it is not that easy. For further discussion, see Why study Math?
(4) Study for the love of learning
There is a school of thoughts that say that we should study what are useful and relevant in out lives. But another school of thoughts believes that we should study because we love to learn. If we look at the past, there were many topics which had no uses at all. But as years passed, these topics have found a place in our lives. For example, mathematicians studied number theory for many millennia but it was only found practical in recent years with the advance of computers (e.g. they use products of big prime numbers to help encode passwords which are difficult for hackers to break). Imagine if no one wanted to study number theory in the past because it had no known uses, then software engineers today will have one avenue less to protect their passwords.
But it is not so easy to instill in our pupils the love of learning. Perhaps we can make them see the relevance and the usefulness of the subjects first. Once they are interested, then it is easier to persuade them to study for the love of knowledge. This knowledge may even be useful later on. Any suggestions?
I hope that you will find this short discourse useful to motivate your pupils to study.
If you have any comments about the above discourse, you can e-mail Joseph Yeo. Please indicate whether you allow your comments to be published in this website.