Title it Advanced Essay #2: The School Sylubus

I constantly hear students complain about math homework, or just any homework in general, asking questions such as, “How is this going to help me in the future? What purpose will it serve? How will it be useful? When am I going to need to use this? Why is this important or relevant to me? The questions ring in my ear, I swear it is contagious. I now have started wondering if there are certain things that I am not going to need to use after I get out of school and enter the real world. In fact, I remember recently talking to my mom who is a graduate school math professor about homework that Mr. Reddy gave us. “What are you doing in math class these days?” she asked me.

“…uhh….” My mind was blank. It was a friday night and I didn’t want to think about any sort of work at all, but she wanted to know the status of my homework for the weekend. “Oh right,” I just remembered. “We are learning about the division and simplification of polynomials.”

She asked me to explain it because this is something she had not learned in a long time and had not needed to know. I did my best to recall everything that Mr. Reddy drilled into our head. She easily understood what I was explaining, but there was a look on her face that suggested confusion.

“What?” I asked.

“Why would you put the remainder over the complex polynomial?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I tried to force an explanation out of my mouth, but nothing would come. I finally said “I don’t know” in an attitude that made it seem as if I had something to defend. “ I mean… I guess… Because-”

She interrupted. “Oh, because in normal long division, you put the remainder over the divisor and that is how you get the decimal.”

“Oh that’s true,” slight pause. “Also that’s what we were told to do.”

“That just seems useless,” she added, almost as an insult to what we were learning in math. “It just seems pointless. How would that help you? How would that simplify the equation?” I was speechless; my mind was flipped upside down; I was shocked. I never thought that my mom would ever in, her existence, question what I would be learning especially in my math class. I could not for the life of me think of any sort of response to her question. I wasn’t barely even confident enough to say “I don’t know,” but her question got me thinking. Do schools teach us to be literate in the real world? I mentioned this to my mom and we eventually got on the topic of what in school is necessary to be taught in schools, and what is not. I then told her about a video on Youtube that I had seen recently. It was of a British guy, Dave Brown, rapping about how the school curriculum was flawed. Ever since watching that video I had wondered if what we are learning in school is important to us. My mom also showed me the video titled “Somewhere in America,” the video in class. It was featuring three teenage girls who performed a slam poem about how the most important lessons we need for everyday life are not taught in school. Ever since then, I have always been interested in what is important to be taught in school versus what is irrelevant.

“I wasn’t taught how to get a job, but I can remember dissecting a frog,” Dave Brown. Unless you are passionate about becoming a scientist, learning how to dissect a frog is not important. If you are a junior or senior in high school, or if you’re just starting college, a skill that your survival in the world depends on is getting a job. This is especially true if you are trying to afford college. So far the only two jobs I’ve gotten are because my mom knew a couple people who were interested in hiring, and wanted someone who could help out with a large amount of work. I have never experience the process of applying for a job, sending in a resume, and setting up an interview. Now I’m afraid of what will happen when it comes time for me to get a job. I wouldn’t know how to handle the responsibility of getting a job even if I was approached with the opportunity to get hired. I wasn’t taught how to use computer programming, so how am I supposed to major in CS without any experience. How am I supposed to find an internship or volunteer work that can help me if I don’t have a platform to work off of. This makes me look like an idiot, especially when talking to professional programmers, video game designers, and computer scientists. The typical sting of the dreadful question that nags at me as if I’m stupid gives me a headache. “So, what programing experience do you have?” My mind hunts for words putting them together in one long command to impress whoever cares to listen. I fail each time, and have no clue what I am actually talking about.

“Umm… I uh… I can umm… I- I’ve- I’ve coded a few times… using processing… and then I- I tried using eclipse… which I think is javascript based. I found eclipse to be too hard though”, and now I know we’re off to a great start when I can’t even understand one of the most simplest programing applications, and its language. Their response is always the same.

“We can start you on something a bit more basic,” or “it takes time everyone needs room for improvement and room to grow.” Honestly I get it. I understand. There isn’t any reason the truth needs to be hidden. I know I am not that good, especially if I have no where to start.

I am trapped by my lack of knowledge. If only I had learned this is school. Unfortunately those in charge of the school curriculum believe that dividing polynomials and staying up all night writing essays about the history of these United States is more important.

“I mean I get that you want us to practice writing but in real life when am I ever going to need to do in depth research of how the English, French, Portuguese and, Spanish sailed across the Atlantic and slaughtered the Indigenous people with guns, germs, and steel? And when in my life am I going to need to solve equations that involve dividing polynomials? Even If you are interested in majoring in math no one whatsoever will need to know all that information about vertical, slanted, or horizontal asymptotes?”

Literacy is understanding the world around us. Schools do not always teach us to be literate. We often learn to be literate, but not from our parents, guardians, friends or family. We do not often remember learning how to be literate. Do you remember who taught you to always fill in “C” on a quiz or test when you do not know what the answer is? Do you remember who told you to pretend to be on the phone if you think someone is following you?