Relevance

Let's talk about problems that you may face when you are teaching. Although it may be presumptuous of me to discuss about these kind of problems when I've not been out into such a situation as of yet, I will still attempt to do so.

One of the possible problems that teachers may face is the question of relevance. Confining the subject matter to mathematics, and we find many instances that relevance becomes a big question mark in terms of a student's education.

Taking a step back, what is the purpose of education. It is not an easy question and will probably yield countless answers. One of the possible answers is that we learn about things that we can apply later in our everyday lives. Here is where relevance steps in.

How do we convince students that subjects like differentiation/integration, trigonometry, complex numbers or linear algebra have any relevance in their lives?
One possible argument is that many of these subject matters form the building blocks of more complex and possibly more applied topics which can play a part in their future jobs and aspirations. Definitely, a basic knowledge of the above-mentioned topics would be beneficial to some degree. However, unless the student's dream job is a academic, statistician or teacher, most of the topics become general knowledge at best. Doctors, lawyers and pilots probably do not need such knowledge.

So the question remains: How do we convince the students if we also need some convincing ourselves?
Even as a student of statistics for the better part of 5 years, I find myself asking the same question. The link is there but it is tenuous. We are told to try to relate the topics to real-world applications but some topics are quite specialized and only applicable to certain circumstances.

Humans have limited brainpower something I affectionately call RAM. University life has taught me a little bit more about RAM. I can probably only hold on to knowledge for 1 semester before I have to undergo a memory dump to clear the RAM in order for new knowledge to seep in. Unfortunately, we have not progressed until the point when we are able to retain memory of everything we have taught. We only keep the memorable (and sometimes useless) knowledge while dropping the rest. Unless, the education system changes into one which depends less on examinations, teachers would still be obliged to prepare the students for them and sacrifice the other goal of inspiring students to learn for their own interest and knowledge.