‘I’m never gonna use it!’ — the truths and the lies
“I’m never gonna need this!”
Me, I’m an editor, so I use the English stuff I gathered in school all the time. And I deal with sports stats constantly, so math is always hanging around. My best friend? He’s a veterinarian. What he learned in science class pops up constantly.
What vocation you enter obviously dictates a lot of what you apply from your school days to your adult life. But we can still apply a general statement to our class. For example: Yes, I use math all the time. But in ninth grade, we had to learn how to calculate square roots without a calculator, and while I generally bristled at “I’m never going to use this in real life,” this one stuck out, so I genuinely had to ask. What on earth was a plausible scenario in life where I would desperately need to figure out a square root but have no calculator to help me? This was even before smartphones and I couldn’t conceive of one. A mathematician would always have a calculator. Any job would.
“Well,” the teacher said, looking very cocky, “what if you become a teacher and you have to teach it?”
She seriously thought that, that you’d only need to know how to do something pointless so you could teach how to do something pointless, was a good answer. I did not. I mean, I still ended up having to learn how to do it, after which I promptly and intentionally forgot how to do it (is it just trial and error? Think of a number that seems like it would be the square root and check? I genuinely don’t recall), and it has not yet come up in the 20-some years since.
So there’s that. On the other hand, the most common subject that gets the question is algebra, and that’s so freaking stupid, because you use algebra all the damn time. No, nobody is running up to you and saying “y=x2+7, what’s x??” But if you’ve ever gone to the store with $20 and wondered how many candy bars you could buy (or whatever, that’s just an example), that’s algebra. Word problems are the only real math we do do in our everyday lives.
My brother used to spend a ridiculous amount of energy talking about how pointless algebra is in his everyday life. He also, conveniently, had a story that he liked to tell where when he was growing up he didn’t think of things in terms of how much they cost, but rather how much work my veterinarian father had to do to afford it. “Let’s see, Brent charges $20 a palpation, so this thing costs three palps.”
I pointed out to Jeremy that that was literally as good an example of algebra in action as you’d ever see. He bristled, but I also haven’t heard him decry the pointlessness of math class since.
That’s what I’m doing today. Using the standard high school subjects (English, literature, history, economics, civics, algebra, geometry, calculus, biology, chemistry, physics, foreign languages), I’m going to rank them in order from the one that matters the least to the average person’s day-to-day life to the one that matters the most. This is your definitive “I’m never gonna use this!” breakdown. Remember, this is the average person. Don’t come at me with “But I’m an experimental physicist so I use physics all the time!” I don’t care.
(Do any experimental physicists read me? That’d be weird.)
12. Calculus
Listen, I’m a bona fide math geek. I am not a bona fide math expert, inasmuch as most of what I learned in calculus is just absent from my brain now, but I do have a soft spot for math education and think it largely gets a bad rap. That said, no, no one who doesn’t actively need calculus on a day-to-day basis ever uses it. In defense of calculus, it’s hardly a prerequisite class in high school. You only get to it if you choose to. Good thing, too, because it’s pointless.
11. Literature
I mean, I’ve written a book, and I have two more coming. I definitely value the high literature (not that mine is that, but you get my point). And man, people who are well-versed in the classics are by and large more interesting to have a conversation with (although there’s a definitely tipping point after which they become insufferable). But just for your day-to-day life, you really don’t need to know the ins and outs of Hamlet or what was going on in The Catcher in the Rye. You just don’t.
10. Geometry
Unlike calculus, most students get to geometry at some point or another in high school, but it doesn’t really have much more adult-life application. I’m sure you remember SOHCAHTOA, but when is the last time you needed to use it? Heck, do you even remember what it means beyond that combination of letters? Yeah, geometry stuff pops up on occasion, namely if you need to calculate the area or volume of something, but the odds that you’ll need to apply the geometry you learned in school very often are pretty slim.
9. Chemistry
There is chemistry worth knowing. There absolutely is. But could the average adult get through their everyday life without having the first clue what’s going on in the periodic table or what is a noble gas or a halogen? Of course. A chemistry education on the high school is a lot of memorizing valence electrons and how to balance equations, and I ain’t had to balance shit for chemistry since. If you’re growing a home garden or something, you definitely need some knowledge of the chemistry involved, but frankly, that wasn’t the chemistry we learned in school anyway.
8. Biology
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell! I know that, you know that, we all know that. And here’s the thing — I don’t have a single clue what that means. They drive that sentence into your head every year from fifth grade until graduation as though that by itself explains things. What does that mean? The mitochondria is the bouncer, punching anything that tries to get in? It’s the captain, steering the ship? It’s the linchpin, without which nothing else in the cell can process? Any one of those could theoretically be what is meant by “powerhouse of the cell,” and literally, I don’t know which it is. So again, if you have a garden or any number of a lot of other scenarios, you might need some biology, but it wasn’t the biology you got in school anyway.
7. Physics
Physics was probably the class I struggled the most to rank. One point is that I hate physics — both the course (I struggled so hard in it, despite the fact that I’m very good at math) and the concept (I’m never closer to “MURDER EVERYTHING” than when I try to put something where it goes or what-have-you and the physics, which is not an evil being intent on ruining my life but I swear it actually is, fight me). But another point is that, like, do you need a lot of physics? Specifically, not really. But conceptually? Sure. I mean, if you’ve ever wadded up a paper ball and thrown it at a trash can, you’ve used physics. I struggle with the idea that what we did in school really influences that, which is why I really don’t know where it belongs in these rankings. Seventh. Here you go.
6. History
There is some real value in knowing history, especially these days when “[dude] fiddles while [place he’s in charge of] burns” is, like, right there. But there is a lot of history class that doesn’t come up that much, and even if there’s a “he who ignores history is doomed to repeat it” aspect of everything, if you had to choose between history and, like, civics to be one subject you apply to your day-to-day life (with the acknowledgement that there is a lot of overlap), history would be the last choice.
5. Foreign language
Obviously, this depends significantly on what the foreign language is. I took Spanish in high school, retain a fair amount of it, and it comes in handy from time to time. I took Italian in college, retain virtually none of it, and wouldn’t have opportunity to use it if I did. Spanish? Very beneficial. Japanese or Chinese? Solid! Latin? Comes in handy in other intellectual pursuits, but really not that helpful in your daily life. French or German or Italian? They’re just there for you to look snooty. If I were to break these down by the specific language, Spanish would be near the most important, the others far less. In the aggregate, here’s where we land.
4. English/grammar
There’s a serious disconnect here, and we all know it. The usage of proper English should be of great importance. In practice? It feels like half our population can’t differentiate between homonyms or between homophones, and a good two-third of those don’t even want to in the first place. And there’s no “a” in “definitely.” But you can clearly pretty easily get by in your daily life as those people do, ignoring the rules of English and grammar altogether. I wish it ranked higher. But it doesn’t.
3. Civics
It’s a weird non-coincidence that two of the most important topics on this list (this one and the next one) are the least common courses in high school. I never took a civics class (I don’t think there was one at my high school, just roughly rolled into U.S. history and such in a way that ensured we didn’t learn enough of it). But good lord, look around for 10 seconds and tell me we don’t need exponentially more civics education in our modern world than we have.
2. Economics
Like civics, econ is stupidly important in our daily life, and like civics, econ is essentially ignored by our school systems. I took one econ class in my life, in the summer semester after my freshman year in college. I don’t know a damn thing about my taxes beyond “give the paperwork to Bob and hope for a refund.” That’s a personal failing, absolutely, no question, I should be ashamed. But man, there are a lot of things that would be a personal failing if I didn’t know about them, only I do know about from school. It probably is good in some way that I can run off the entire Hamlet’s father’s ghost monologue or balance a chemical equation. It isn’t in any way helpful, but it makes me look good. This? I mean, as I said, I don’t really know crap about my taxes and only have fleeting knowledge about the system on the whole, and I would still wager I’m comfortably in the 90th percentile of econ knowledge across the general public. We suck at this. It’s so damn dumb.
1. Algebra
Boom. In your face, “math doesn’t matter” people. You use algebra all the time. “I have $10. How much gas can I get?” That’s algebra! “I want to make a double batch of these cookies. Do I have enough butter?” Algebra! You use algebra more in a day than you use half of these subjects in a lifetime. You just do. The next time someone complains about algebra and not using it in their day-to-day life, you have my official permission to tell them they are big ol’ dumbheads.