As a home tutor for more than 10 years,
I faced this question many times before:
"TEACHER,
WHY DO WE NEED TO LEARN THIS,
IT IS NOT APPLICABLE IN OUR DAILY LIFE THOUGH."
Frankly speaking,
I was once a student,
and I thought about all these questions many times:
"Why do I need to go to school?"
"Why do I need to learn this/that?"
"Why do I need to learn something which I cannot apply it in my daily life? "
The first answer I heard was from my parents:
"Boy,
you need to learn and study well,
so that you can go to good university,
get a degree so that you can look for a job with nice salary."
To shorten it with two simple words:
"FOR MONEY."
Even though it was told by my parents,
but my believe of "Studying to earn money" is getting stronger and stronger when I get older and older,
especially when I started to realize the importance of money,
and the consequences.....
It caused me to disrespect knowledges and school.
After becoming a home tutor,
whenever students ask me this type of question,
I will answer "To earn money" since I am actually earning money by giving tuition.
And yeah,
a lot of students not satisfied with the answer.
HOWEVER,
until recently,
I started to change my mind.
If I need to answer to "WHY DO YOU GO TO SCHOOL?" again,
my answer now is "TO LEARN ABOUT MYSELF".
"WHY ARE WE LEARNING LANGUAGE?"
Answer:
"So that we will be able to construct our thinking,
knowing clearly what we are actually thinking,
to be able to understand ourselves. "
"WHY WE NEED TO MEMORIZE ALL THESE THINGS?"
Answer:
"The most important thing is not what you memorized,
is how you memorize it.
After trying to memorize so many different things,
you will find out that which method of memorizing is the most suitable for you,
you will understand which way of memorizing fits your brain the most.
For example,
some people will read it out loud to be able to memorize it,
some people will use different colour to memorize well,
some people will use linking method or story-telling method to memorize well.
Let me repeat again,
the most important thing is not what you memorized,
is whether do you understand yourself well,
do you know which method of memorizing suit you the most,
so that you spend the least amount of time and effort,
but still able to keep the knowledges in your long term memory."
"WHY WE NEED TO LEARN ADDITIONAL MATHS? WE ARE NOT GOING TO USE IT IN DAILY LIFE THOUGH, FOR EXAMPLE LIKE LOGARITHM."
Answer:
"The most important thing is not what you learnt, is how you learn it.
If you find out which learning method enabled you to master Additional Maths,
then you can apply that learning method for anytime of your life.
Additional Maths is actually everywhere at your daily life,
the question is,
did you learn enough to be able to see the Additional Maths around you?
The exam paper of Additional Maths consists of more than 10 questions,
for every question you first need to recognize it is from which topic,
from that certain topic you consider all the solutions,
then you choose the best solution to solve the question,
after solving it, you double check your answer,
don't you think the process is the same like how you deal with your daily problem?
1) Recognizing the exam question from which topic = when dealing a problem, recognize the core of the problem first.
2) Consider all the possible solutions of the exam question = Consider all the possible solutions of the problem.
3) Choose the best solution for the exam question = Choose the best solution for the problem
4) Execute the solution = Start solving the problem.
5) Get the answer for the question = Attain the result after solving the problem.
6) Double confirm the answer for the question = Review the result after solving the problem.
Thus,
by learning Additional Maths, we learnt the process of how to solve a problem."
"WHY DO WE NEED TO LEARN BAHASA MALAYSIA?"
Answer:
"As a Chinese, I found that a small portion of Chinese people feel that learning Bahasa Malaysia is not that useful.
First,
please look at the name of the country you staying now.
Second,
by mastering Bahasa Malaysia,
I found that I am able to communicate with people from Indonesia, and yes, we communicated well.
Third,
a lot of secondary school students nowadays like Korean culture like K-POP, especially BTS.
Based on my experience of learning Korean language and Japanese language,
I can say that Bahasa Malaysia helped me a lot in pronunciation of the languages mentioned above.
For example,
가구 or かく,
Since I know Bahasa Malaysia,
I am able to see the words above as "kagu" and pronounce it well."
"WHY DO WE NEED TO LEARN CHINESE LANGUAGE?"
Answer:
" A lot of students from international school not very keen on learning Chinese language even though they are Chinese.
Rather than learning Chinese language,
they prefer to learn Korean language since K-POP is more popular than C-POP,
but they found that learning Korean language is quite hard.
Based on my personal experience of learning Korean language and Japanese language,
Chinese language helped me to understand better the languages mentioned above.
For example,
Headache in Korean language is 두통(tu tong) , in Chinese language is 头痛 (tou tong)
Hair in Korean language is 두발 (tu bal) , in Chinese language is 头发 (tou fa)
Brain in Korean language is 두뇌 (tu nui) , in Chinese language is 头脑 (tou nao)
Don't you see the similarity?
For Japanese language,
let me show you a sentence :
私わ今年も忙しいです. = 我今年也很忙 。
Can you see that some characters appeared at both Japanese sentence and Chinese sentence?
If someone ask me why I am able to master both Korean language and Japanese language,
my answer is because I have good foundation of Chinese language."
Okay,
enough of giving examples.
One thing though,
I am not saying that the current education system is perfect,
I think there are still a lot of rooms for improvement.
The biggest problem now is that.....
when a student asking :"TEACHER, WHY DO WE NEED TO LEARN THIS?"
The teachers are not able to answer or they gave an answer which the students not satisfied with it.
Even the teachers also don't know why they are teaching this.
If I am able to travel back to time,
and meet myself from secondary school again,
I will tell him,
go to school not just to learn something,
is to learn how to learn something.
"WHY DO YOU NEED TO STUDY?"
"TO LEARN AND UNDERSTAND MYSELF."
Thanks for reading.
If you have any enquiry or need an online tuition,
or even a home tuition if nearby my place,
please contact me via:
EMAIL : leonleongmaths@gmail.com
FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/leonmathstuition/
