how to answer the- why do we have to do this question

mengele

I presume this happens in every subject and especially in Irish. I often get the "why do we have to study this" or "when will we ever use this". What intelligent ways have teachers come up with of answering these questions. repeating that its our national language etc gets a bit boring and I need a more inspiring answer. Similarly students studying Maths doing maths problems which they will never use.

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Maybe saying that skills are transferrable.

A bit like colours, you might think you'll never use a specific colour, maybe because you don't like it, and then you realise that you need it to mix another colour you want, and it wouldn't turn out the same if you didn't.

Either that, or tell them that it could come in handy for table quizzes and tv competitions, where you earn money.

TheDriver

Because its good training for all the things in life we don't like doing but must do it!

RealJohn

TheDriver wrote: »

Because its good training for all the things in life we don't like doing but must do it!

Yeah, this.

On Irish, I'm not sure going down the "It's our national language" path is necessarily the best route. Sometime the more "Because if we don't, we might as well put the queen on our currency and fly the union jack outside the school and play rugby instead of hurling" might get a bit more national pride flowing.

As a science teacher, it's easy for me to point to the similarities between Irish and some European languages in terms of the periodic table and how knowing Irish can give you a wider perspective, even outside of languages. Silver has the chemical symbol Ag for example, which doesn't make much sense in english but if you look at the Irish (airgead), you can see it, like in French (argent), Italian (d'argento), Latin (argentum). Same with gold and a few others.
You could also tie it in with money - Irish for money is airgead too whereas the German for money is geld, which is like gold. That way you can sell the whole 'learning languages can broaden your perspective' angle, which might sell better to the stronger students.

As for maths, maths teaches you a way of thinking logically which can be applied to a lot of things in life. That one doesn't convince weaker students so much but it's ok with stronger ones. For weaker students, you could always point out that when you go to the shop and buy three Mars bars and two cans of Coke and you're working out the price, that's the same as 3x + 2y = ... They still won't really buy into it for the most part but sometimes you just have to sew the seeds for later in life.

And of course you could always remind them that they have to learn it because it'll be on their leaving cert. "When will we need this in real life?" "Well this is real life, is it not?"