Do I Really Need to Know This Stuff?

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. --Paul Simon, “Kodachrome”

This is a pop quiz. Who were the Huguenots?

Give up? OK, how about this--what is the Krebs cycle?

Let’s talk math. Who remembers sines and cosines? Ah, a few hands. Congratulations. You still retain a few scraps of the knowledge you acquired in high school.

Now, another question for the class: Which of you has had reason to speak of or even think about Huguenots, sines or the Krebs cycle since Graduation Day?

Thought so.

These subjects fall into a category that we non-teachers might call Useless Information.

By that we mean knowledge that does nothing to help us find a job, pay our bills, get our kids to bed on time or decide what to watch on cable. It’s information that might have seemed vitally important for the week or so that it was covered in high school, but which evaporated the instant we took the final exam.

This is data in a vacuum, facts devoid of context that pass through our consciousness like comets on their lonely journey through the universe. And now a journey through some Useless Information.

* Sines (and cosines): I studied them in trigonometry. I’m positive they had something to do with graphs. I’ve heard of sine waves and I’m told they appear on oscilloscopes.

But I’ve never understood what sines are good for.

My dictionary says a sine is “the ratio of the opposite side of a given acute angle in a right triangle to the hypotenuse.” Yeah. So?

* Krebs Cycle: I have warmer feelings here. I learned about it from a high school biology teacher who was a funny guy. I still remember enough biology to be able to watch the television medical updates of Dr. Art Ulene with a certain smug comprehension.

But the details of the Krebs cycle, which describes how our cells metabolize food byproducts into energy, are lost in the mists of time.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad somebody understands the Krebs cycle (cancer researchers need to know this stuff), but it doesn’t help me get the house warmed on a cold morning.

* Participles: They crop up in the study of grammar, a subject you’re supposed to have down cold when you write for a living. This leads me to a shameful confession: My grammatical education stopped at nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Would it help me on the job to understand that participles are verbal forms “having some of the characteristics of both verb and adjective”?

Probably not. I just go with what sounds right.

* Huguenots: They were French Calvinists who were persecuted for their religious beliefs in the 16th and 17th centuries.

I didn’t have to look this up, because I was a history major in college. Facts and dates from the past are meat and potatoes for history buffs. You may not care a fig that the Norman invasion of England occurred in 1066, but I do.

Which brings us to this point: When you think about it, one person’s piece of Useless Information is the very thing another person finds fascinating. (Bert and Ernie have been having this discussion for years concerning rubber duckies and bottle cap collections.)

For example, sines and cosines are useful to astronomers and physicists. But since most of us aren’t scientists (or grammarians or cellular biologists or historians), it’s fair to ask why we’re exposed to this stuff in the first place. Do high school teachers really believe any of it might stick?

Oddly enough, they do. It has something to do with becoming a well-rounded person.

Consider life a few hundred years ago. Most people were basically farmers. True, there were some craftsmen, clerics, soldiers and shopkeepers, but career possibilities were pretty limited.

Today, the explosion of technology and the resulting proliferation of occupations has made specialists of most of us. It may take us months or years to learn to do our jobs well, and even then we need periodic retraining to keep abreast of the changes.

The more specialized we become, the greater the need for a common ground of knowledge to bind us together. A shared frame of reference, after all, is what makes it possible for a large and complex society to function.

The point of education, at least through high school, should be to ensure that we each have a passing acquaintance with the varied disciplines that shape our world.

Ideally, the study of a range of subjects--including those for which we might not have much aptitude--gives us an appreciation of how each body of knowledge relates to all the rest.

In practice, however, school curricula often fail to help students develop an understanding of the Big Picture.

Lose the Big Picture and you get Cliff, the annoying, trivia-spouting letter carrier from “Cheers,” who is walking, talking proof of the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

So maybe sines and participles aren’t so useless after all. Consider them a necessary evil--part of the price we pay for a liberal education.

And maybe, when you’re trying to recall the order of the elements in the periodic table or pondering the value of pi, your life will be enriched when you remember: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. (The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts.)