“Mr. Hasan?” he asked from the back of the room. “Will we ever use this?”<\/p>\n
This is a frequent complaint in math classes. To my everlasting frustration<\/em>, it’s a common refrain. Frustrating because, do they ask this of their English teachers? Their Theatre teacher? History? Band? Economics, for heavens sake?<\/p>\n Of course, that’s not how I answered. I didn’t say that, because in this particular case, his polite, diplomatically phrased question was a good one. <\/p>\n I had given the pre-AP kids a really hard homework assignment (finding zeros of polynomials, including complex conjugate pairs). The four problems were long, tedious, and difficult. The algebra for one of them filled a full page. It must have seemed like busy-work. <\/p>\n I conceded his point and explained my rationale.<\/p>\n “I know these were hard,” I said. “I assigned them because there are some things in life are just plain hard. Some things require paying attention to detail. Cooking. Changing a transmission. Installing a downspout without cutting into the plumbing that runs behind it.”<\/p>\n (Just kidding. I didn’t go into my own downspout shame.)<\/p>\n “I designed these problems precisely because they are hard, because they are tedious, because you won’t get the right answer unless you are neat and careful.”<\/p>\n I stopped for a second and looked at them.<\/p>\n “We talked about this at the beginning of the year. This class isn’t just about the math. It’s mostly about teaching you to think clearly and communicate well. And for those things, you need to sweat the details. These problems teach you that.”<\/p>\n I waited a second and then looked back at the boy who had asked the question.<\/p>\n “Does that answer make you angry?” <\/p>\n “Kinda,” he said.<\/p>\n “That’s fair,” I said. “But that’s the best I can do. And it’s the truth.”<\/p>\n We started with logarithms a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n2. Logarithms in the Real World<\/h3>\n