are necessary in forming well-rounded individuals. Every component - the mathematics, the sciences, the humanities, the arts - have a role to play especially early on as it allows students to be exposed to different fields quickly. I'm not one of those people who think math is useless or geography is useless, with the right people they can be useful and interesting in their own right. The root cause of such hostility towards certain subjects in school stems from the fact that they're taught like shit.
"Truth is like poetry.... and most people fucking hate poetry."" - The Big Short
I remember sitting in English classes and thinking to myself what the fuck am I doing analysing poems or writing essays on literary devices or shit like that. I hated literature as a kid but the more I read the more I started to appreciate literature. I've realised I didn't hate literature itself but instead I hated the way it was taught.
To paraphrase Nietzsche: "Traditional academics have poisoned the way we see the humanities or the arts. It has turned such wonders into dry academic exercises, like one should only read literature or the humanities for the sake of reading and knowing the content. What is the point of knowing all the content when you try apply your understanding to the world beyond the pages. The ancients didn't create the humanities so that we could regurgitate it's contents back onto a page. The humanties was always intended to be used as a guide to life, the humanities teaches us about our own well... humanity - what it means to be human." The humanities historically has educated us on morality, politics, sociology, psychology. I'd imagine that every great author is trying to tell us, through their pages, of the immediate realities of the world beyond the classroom. I'd imagine Shakespeare, Orwell, Chekhov... would be horrified if they they knew what their life's works are being used for in today's education.
The same goes for the sciences, the mathematics, the more 'technical' subjects. The reason why people believe mathematics is so useless is because they don't know the applications of mathematics in the world around us. Our modern world is fucking built on math so I really pity those people who go around saying that maths in high-school is useless, it's not useless the system has just failed them. They've failed to make the sciences or mathematics interesting by weirdly sheltering them from it's applications. Once people see the why and the potential of a field they will be more motivated to want to learn more.
Elon Musk had an analogy that goes something like this: "If you want kids to learn about engineering or design or anything like that you start from the top. Like you get them to take apart an engine and in the process of taking apart the engine you learn about screws and combustion and pressure, tolerances etc. You don't go around go around having an entire class on screws or combustion like how is that ever interesting." He couldn't be more right. Give students something to look forward to when studying. Traditional education is bottom up but what we really need is something from the top down.
Challenge 2 - Teaching students the applications of their learning first. Change education to from the bottom up to the top down.
