I know that there were many classes that I didn’t like going through school and even into college (especially with the general education requirements) but I also realized, through both my teachers and my parents, that I would use that information in my future regardless of the path I took.

I’m glad I took the time to learn many of those things as my “future” changed two or three times while I was in college and has changed several more times since. Had I written off the lessons as meaningless because of what I perceived my future to be, I would be lacking in those skills now.

The “how to make lessons relevant” has plagued teachers for decades and I’m not sure I know the answer. I know that I bring a unique perspective because, while I teach in a metropolitan public school, my children are home-schooled by my wife and myself. The number of real-world lessons increases exponentially when the world is the classroom. I do a lot of work in the theatre and there is math all over in building sets, hanging lights, running sound, etc. I also do a lot of work with music…how much math is involved in that? My children are also learning math through grocery shopping and running races…they learn English by reading and acting our plays…they learn history by acting it out (how much more realistic can you get but living out the life of Anne Frank and her family for a couple hours…especially when the rehearsals include character and historical analysis).

Several years ago my dad, a librarian, sent an email to my sister, also a middle school teacher at the time; and myself. It was a test for 5th graders from the one-room-schoolhouse days. Most of the problems I would not have been able to answer and most phd’s would have had trouble with them except for the questions in their field. His questions was about the quality of education. Our response was the fact that in this information age when facts can be found by typing a few words and clicking the mouse a few times, is having memorized the formula for area of a circle or knowing the difference between a coordinating conjunction and a pronoun as important for those who do not use it everyday? My answer would be no. We have become such a specialized race (meaning the human race) that we have espoused the definition that an expert is someone who chooses to be ignorant about many things so that they can know everything about one thing…we all want to be experts at something don’t we?

Anyway, I’m rambling somewhat. But, it does still come back to the question of relevance…how do we make lessons relevant to students who may or may not be thinking realistically (even to themselves) about their future?

I wish I knew…

I wonder how many of our students feel the way you and Matt do. Years later, they *might* reach those conclusions, but in the moment? I venture to guess it’s a very small percentage. Further, since apathetic is how students feel a large part of the time while receiving their high school education, what can we do? Whether it’s apathy about high school classes or apathy about their future, how can schools be structured in a way that makes a difference?

Your second paragraph is what raises some interesting ideas. Those are tough questions to answer. Is there a happy medium, a way to encourage the dreams, but also push students to a Plan B? Oddly, though, reading that second paragraph, it seems like you have reached many of the same conclusions I espoused in the first place.

Whatever the reason, apathy is there and it’s a horrible thing to see. This doesn’t have anything to do with my experience in high school. Apathy is a fact. How can we change things?

I teach now and deal largely with apathetic middle school students who come from households that, if they are lucky, might be able to afford to send them to a community college after high school. If you ask them what they want to do with their lives, they have dreams like movie stars and athletes…occasionally a doctor, lawyer or teacher. Do we squelch their dreams by telling them statistics about the number of aspiring high school athletes that actually make it pro or do we let them go on thinking that their strong love of the gridiron or basketball court will be sufficient to meet their needs? If we tell them the painful truth, then they become more apathetic. If we let them continue to believe a lie, then nothing changes except their reactions toward real work (negative reactions of course).

Same goes for college: I got one degree in philosophy and one degree in Japanese. I lived in Japan. I worked as a speech writer and translator at the Japanese Consulate. I went to Stanford and got my master’s in Education, which I now use as a teacher of Japanese language at the same school with my brother-in-arms, Todd-sensei.

High school seems very real for me, because what I did there enabled me to get to the next level of education, which is where I received the training that I now use in my daily life. Further, high school gave me several habits of mind that allowed me to survive and flourish at that next level of training and beyond. I feel I have been in training for this job my whole life. I am really happy to be using my degrees on a daily basis.

Follow-up question (Todd, you’ve heard this one): How much does your own experience in high school color your view of high school in general? As a teacher? As a parent of a high school student? As a tax-payer? As a voter?

I’m in a negative enough frame of mind to feel that there isn’t much hope for breaking any of these cycles. The patterns and what I see as corruption is just to ingrained. There is too much money being made by traveling this path regardless of the consequences. Oddly, I feel about the same about our government.

Thomas Jefferson said “Every generation needs a new revolution.” (I live in VA where you might think Jefferson’s still alive based on his importance) I think we’ve gone far too long without one in education. The book I’m studying on educational psychology is pretty consistently referencing studies from the 1930s. We are stuck with schools that prepare kids for the 1950s. The teaching of intelligent design is straight out of the Dark Ages.

I’m not positive we need to start from scratch but I’m pretty sure it’s a good idea. I don’t think it’ll happen but I’d like to see it.