I remember reading this article and getting very upset and my ex not understanding why. “Let them believe what they want to believe, it doesn’t affect you,” she said. “These people vote,” I said.

Skip to now and I’m pretty confident that I had the correct response.

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/looking-for-life-on-a-flat-earth

We had these classes and people are still stupid. Your point?

Yep. This is a thing. Students will learn a lesson best when the student understands the value of the lesson to them in their lives.

This is one of the six basic principles of learning, it’s called the Principle of Readiness. You can read all about it in the Aviation Instructor’s Handbook alongside other smash hits as the principle of exercise (practice makes perfect) or the principle of primacy (first impressions matter). It’s that basic.

Establishing that value, giving the students the context and reason the lesson is valuable to the students is the teacher’s responsibility. And I noticed that most teachers forget this somewhere around the 7th grade. Way too many of my teachers answered “Why do we need to learn this?” with “Because it’s required to get your diploma.”