How much of what we learn in school do we actually use in our adult lives?That's a question my teenage son seems to ask once or twice a week - not looking for a serious answer, of course, but merely to vent his frustration about being expected to use brain cells for anything other than videogaming.
I can't remember the last time I needed to diagram a sentence or determine the cubic hypotenuse of a quadrilateral hexagon.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for gaining a basic understanding of the problem-solving process. I may not remember many specific lessons from Logic 101 - ("God is love. Love is blind. Therefore, Ray Charles is God.") - but that introduction to conceptual thinking has paid off on thousands of occasions.
For example, I was able to stick with the "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" explanation long enough to grasp its meaning. (Luckily, it didn't involve a hypotenuse.)
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