It’s so strange how despite doing software development for over a decade, I never quite developed an appreciation for periodic functions…until I did VFX work recently. Suddenly I needed sine and phase shifts and periodicity to make the visuals behave the way I wanted. Suddenly all those formulas I learned in school made sense. The main difference? I had a specific goal for which the math was a necessary tool.
Which brings me to the way we traditionally teach math and many other subjects: we silo each subject into meaningless slices that don’t tie in with one another.
Why isn’t education structured around interdisciplinary projects for which students need to use everything they learned in all their subjects (math, history, science, english) to complete the project objectives?
Why are subjects taught in a way that’s so divorced from the tasks in which they will actually be useful?