“Why am I learning this?” is already too late
I remember sitting in my 7th grade social studies class. I was growing frustrated as we watched a video about ancient civilizations. “These people were alive thousands of years ago and I’m being forced, against my will, to watch a video about how they migrated to river-valleys?” It all seemed like a form of cruel and unusual punishment to eleven year-old me, so I raised my hand and asked, “Why are we learning this?”
Fast forward eleven years, when I was teaching a class of aspiring computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. I stood in front of the class discussing the theory behind calculating a program’s efficiency. I’d just finished the discussion and I was proud of my explanation. I looked up at the class and asked, “So, who has questions?” A few hands shot up and the first student I called on asked, “Why are we learning this?”
I knew I had lost that student and probably many more during my explanation. I had made my explanation so theoretical, so detached from the world we live in, that my student questioned whether this topic was even worth her time.
This question is not new. Every teacher and every student has had this feeling at some point in time: “I lost them” or “They lost me.” In fact, the internet is filled with blog posts and articles tackling this very question with titles like, “What to do when your student asks, “Why Am I Learning This?” But that title, and the articles it represents, fundamentally miss the point.
By the time a student asks this question, you’ve absolutely lost them. The issue is not the time lost to pondering the question, the issue is the fundamental disconnect between the content being taught and the world that the student lives in. The goal should not be to answer the question — the goal should be to never hear it.
One of our goals at Parthean is to never hear “Why am I learning this?” and to achieve it, we’ve developed a framework. We use the framework with our clients at Parthean Consulting and it’s been used in classrooms, in workshops, in YouTube videos, in blog posts, and in presentations — and it’s been effective with over 1,000,000 students. The framework has three parts: Engage, Inspire, Educate.
Engage, Inspire, Educate
When I walk into a classroom, workshop, or studio (to record videos), the first thing I want to do is engage the students. I want the students who are on their phones to stop texting Jimmy and look up. Then, I want to inspire them. I want them to think what they’re about to learn is cool. Not in a “I’m a teacher who says hip lingo to stay rad” type of way. But in a “Wow, I’m gonna learn how to do THAT?” type of way. Lastly, I teach them.
To explain this further, I’ll explain a type of exercise we deploy with our clients and in-house curriculum. It’s called a “Watch then Learn.” We often use this exercise with programming and the idea behind it is simple — we show them the end result before showing them how to build it.
As an example, let’s discuss our web development course. It usually goes something like this:
- We start by sending everybody a link to our finished webapp. They have five minutes to click around and play with it. Engage.
- After that, we have an instructor stand in front of the class and build the app from scratch with minimal explanation and little-to-no questions. That usually takes about 5 to 10 minutes, which impresses the students, but also removes any fear. They feel “I can do this.” Inspire.
- Lastly, we send them a step by step tutorial that explains how to build the webapp. They work on it while we walk around to answer questions. Educate.
This framework — Engage, Inspire, Educate — keeps students excited, keeps learning practical, and keeps teaching effective. It’s general, so it can be applied to many different exercises and lessons in all types of disciplines and topics.
Our goal, as any stakeholder in education, is to make learning more effective and fun. We should not strive to curb questions that point out the flaws in our system. We should instead invite those questions to point out our flaws and work to never hear them again.
P.S. We’d love to hear how you apply this framework. Reach out on parthean.com/contact-us if you find new ways to Engage, Inspire, and Educate!
