The real life use is a quite tricky. If someone never needed something means either he really didn’t need it or he needed it but didn’t know that he can use that there. So if you don’t know something means – you won’t know where to apply it as well. It’s like you’ve never needed to cook – somebody was always there to cook for you. But if you know how to cook you probably will do it sometimes yourself.

Totally agree you won’t know what you’re going to need. In highschool I was convinced that I won’t need biology. I was totally convinced about it. Yet now I’m doing my BSc thesis in population genetics. So yeah…

Funny, just a few days ago I was thinking of the same concept, but using slightly different terms: “ahead of time” instead “just in case”.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=238231553&blogId=331447364

May be YOU can initiate such endeavour

When I finished reading this I thought of the book “The pragmatic programmer”. It also has so nice truths. I love to collect those statements. They help me to get my “manual for a good programmer”.

For instance learning statistics as a mathematical science has nothing to do with a lot of stuff but once you learn statistics, you’ll gain a new perspective on looking at the problems and this perspective will be useful in problems ranging from medical diagnosis to software code debugging.

I was told by a few people that I wouldn’t need a Masters and it wouldn’t be useful. However, just about every day I draw upon knowledge I’ve learned from it, and I’m only half-way done. Cache effects? Parsers? Automata theory? They’re all invaluable to me now, but I didn’t miss them before I had them.

It was a drive to learn that made me realize there were things I didn’t know I might benefit from even if they weren’t immediately necessary for my job. All these theory classes are immensely valuable.

Apparently, research shows that students are more motivated to learn when they first see the need for the new material. However, there is a difference between engineering students and science students: the latter are always interested, whether there is a clear use or not.

But even when you “have” to give stuff “just in case” (high school math), you can structure your lessons so that they start with a real problem, and become “just in time” learning. Like the approach Dan Meyer is using: be less helpful, create a “gap of knowledge”, then fill it.

We’re already committed to unschooling, but the way schools operate also has implications for society in general.

I see in the comments to the linked posts that you’ve gotten the common objections from those who are still in the box, when you’ve posted about this before.