"When Am I Ever Going to Use This?!"

A Parent and Teacher's Guide to Answering This Obnoxious Question

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” - C. S. Lewis

At the outset I must say that “When am I going to use this?” is not inherently a bad question. It’s a reasonable question, particularly in light of the fact that most people have a complete and total misunderstanding of the purpose of education. The reason this question has irked so many teachers is not because it’s a bad question, but because it’s usually asked in a derisive tone which implies the worthlessness of something because of its apparent uselessness. The problem is that many teachers do not themselves know what to say to this question. Inevitably many teachers will respond something like, “It’s just something everyone has to do, okay?” Which is, of course, a very unsatisfying answer and the student knows it. So does the teacher. Such an answer goes a long way toward confirming the student’s objection that this, whatever this is, is stupid and worthless.

So what are some better answers to this all too common question?

1. A Liberal Arts education (of which this is a part) teaches us that some things are full of worth for other reasons than their use.

The question “When am I going to use this?” hails from a misguided notion that everything we learn must have a utilitarian purpose. In other words, many people think education’s real purpose is to teach people how to do practical things that will ultimately produce some product for the good of society and make money for the one who wields that practical knowledge. Now, don’t misunderstand me, practical knowledge, how-to knowledge, is a good thing. Making things that are beneficial to our fellow man is a good thing. Making money to support and care for one’s family is a good thing. Further, any education that churns out students without any ability to be go-getter makers of good things has, indeed, failed. Even so, education shouldn’t be first and foremost about utility, it should be about the formation of human souls as image bearers.

Yahweh our God, who made Heaven and Earth and all that is in them, made us in his image. As we explore all the ways he has disclosed himself to man in the things he has made (as well as in his direct revelation, Christ and Scripture) we find ourselves studying things like mathematics because it allows us to examine the universe God made and the way he has expressed his thoughts to us in number. Wait until you realize that Golden Ration is everywhere in nature! When we study language we see that the God who spoke all things into being by the word of his power also set forward the meta-grammar to which all languages are bound to obey. Have you ever thought about how every statement must have a subject and a predicate no matter what language it is spoken in? Things like that are amazing! When we study history we see the providential hand of God orchestrating human affairs and the way he shattered all expectations by entering into human affairs as a baby lying in a manger! Nations and empires rise and fall but God’s purposes endure! When we make music or paint or consider philosophical matters we are doing “useless things” but we are participating in the things which actually make life most meaningful.

Imagine someone asked a man the question, “Why do you love your wife? What is she useful for?” I should hope that the answer returned is something along the lines of, “Useful for? I love her for the very fact that she is who she is. I don’t want what she can give me, I want her!” Love is not utilitarian. Utility matters (a guy has to eat), but it is love and wonder and beauty which makes a person want to keep on living.

The Liberal Arts, which include at base all of the different areas of human learning, are things we should fall in love with. When you fall in love with them then you no longer ask such silly questions like “What will I use this for?” You will sit under the stars and be in awe of the vastness of creation and begin to wonder about distances between stars. You will look at a pinecone and a seashell and say “How is it that the same pattern came to be in both!?” You will wonder why every statement is either true or false and how it is that certain laws govern the very thoughts in our head! You will sit before a piece of architecture or a painting or listen to a poem or piece of music and you will just forget yourself and be caught up in the wonder of it. When you love, as we should love every area of learning (because it is from God and flows back to God), you will realize that its use is a very secondary question.

I assure you that my wife is the most useful person in my life. I would, however, continue to love her if all her ability to be useful failed her (as someday it could) because love is not about usefulness. Meaning and purpose and joy in life are not first and foremost a result of usefulness.

2. A Liberal Arts education (of which this is a part) makes you more interesting.

In other words, let’s not worry for a minute about how you can use this, rather, let’s talk about what use it can make of you. A non liberal education, a strictly utilitarian education, is a boring education. It’s not only humdrum to take in, it churns out humdrum people. Wouldn’t you like to be the kind of person who chimes into the conversation with something like, “Actually, the Romans had running water in their cities and indoor plumbing, so in the Middle Ages some of that technology was lost which we have now regained.” Again, “You think that drone strike was cool that Elon was talking about, but have you ever heard of an African guy named Hannibal who took a bunch of elephants across the alps and nearly conquered Rome?” Again, “Have you ever wondered about whether God could provide salvation for a people that were not descendants of Adam? C. S. Lewis’ Ransom trilogy offers some really fascinating ideas about that.” Again, “Did you know that by measuring the length of this shadow in the photograph that if you know the exact location you can tell the date and time it was taken?” I mean c’mon that’s interesting. Way more interesting than, “Did you watch that show on T. V. last night?”

3. A Liberal Arts education (of which this is a part) makes you more versatile.

Our society has often told its children, “You can be anything you want to be!” Aside from the way in which that has really gone bad lately, even if we take it in the original sense of being a doctor or lawyer or engineer or teacher or what have you, modern utilitarian education causes problems here too. For one, modern education is constantly failing to produce high flying kids in general, but even when it succeeds it typically does so narrowly. The drive for utility in education taking the lead tends to narrow a student into learning mostly one thing to become highly skilled in it.

Again, high degree of skill is good (I want my surgeon highly skilled), but starting that narrowing too early is bad. Why? What happens when one finds themselves unable to do the one and only thing they know how to do? If all a person knows is a certain kind of computer programing but suddenly there is a new advance that makes this obsolete or the market is flooded with too many professionals in that area and not enough jobs, then what? The man who knows only one thing is enslaved to that thing. The liberally educated person has options. The Liberal Arts provide a wide base of learning which teaches young people not only knowledge, but the skills of acquiring knowledge for themselves. They also have a foundation towards many branches of knowledge which lend to many possible career paths and forms of higher education. You simply have more options if you aren’t pigeonholed into a utilitarian education. You are far more easily enabled to switch careers or pick another path if need be.

4. A Liberal arts education (of which this is a part) will enable you to speak with your neighbors.

It is that same diversity in education which makes us happier (because we love), more interesting (because we know fascinating things over a wide range of topics), more versatile (because we know how to learn anything and have wide base to pursue other avenues), which also lead us to be able to relate to our neighbors. What can the man who only knows how to lay bricks have to say to the person who only knows how to code and what can either of those say to the man who only knows about brain surgery? Sure they can potentially listen to one another and learn from each other, but will such an education as they’ve had lend them to that suggestion? Not likely. They won’t see why they should care. But a person with a Liberal Arts education will have exposure to math, logic, biology, architecture, art, literature, history, and so much more which enables him to have some commonality of understanding to many different people and their professions. This will help you be a better neighbor who can talk to people you meet doing other things with some understanding (not to mention an awake mind full of curiosity for what other people do). Socrates could find interest in talking to anyone, no matter their profession, and we can too.

5. You will, in fact, use this and you might, in fact use this thing in particular.

The fact of the matter is this, all the above reasons already given amount to a kind of usefulness. Its application might not be as direct as the student had in mind, but it’s hard to deny that such a liberal education benefits the one who has it in many ways. Not only this, though, but whatever the this happens to be at the time the student is asking that question may actually be something that he ends up using directly! No one thinks when looking at a bored and disgusted 7th grader that the next great philosopher, logician, historian, painter, mathematician, biologist, chemist, engineer, etc., is before them, but he or she might just be. That thing the student can find no use for at present may end up being the thing most directly impacts who he becomes and the contribution he makes to civilization. He doesn’t know yet and neither do we. Don’t we owe it to our students, and they to themselves, not to cut them off from all the wonderful possibilities of what God might do with them?

I assume, because of the reprobate life I lived as a young teen, that many of my teachers in middle and early high school would probably think I am dead by now. Believe me, I didn’t see the point in learning ANYTHING at that point. I thank God for his grace toward me, because he made something truly useless into someone that would be able to praise Him and find wonder in all that he has made.

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