✨“When Will I Ever Use Math?” — A Better Answer Than “Taxes”

Discover a more inspiring way to get your kids excited about math through connecting numbers to humanity’s ancient story of wonder and discovery.

When will I ever have to do this?

How many of you have heard that question while helping your child with math homework? Most of you, I’d bet. If you’re like me, you’ve probably given some version of: “Because you have to be able to keep track of your money, invest, pay taxes.”

But is that really why kids should learn math?

Do we learn to read so we can decipher instruction manuals or furniture assembly guides? Reading is the foundation for everything good, true, and beautiful. It’s nearly impossible to succeed in the modern world without it.

But that’s not why we ask kids to read. We show them it’s because they’ll get to dive into stories about dragons, knights, far-off lands, and heroes.

That’s far more compelling.

With math, though, it’s → you need it to do taxes.

Ick. No thanks.

So why should kids bother learning math?

Because it connects them to an ancient tradition of solving some of the world’s most compelling and complicated mysteries.

Hear me out.

Every math problem your child does is the result of thousands of years of study. Yes—thousands of years.

We like to think of math as lifeless and abstract. But it’s as much a part of the great conversation as the stories we read to our children.

And I think reconnecting children to that history may be the most compelling reason to study math.

It quietly teaches that it’s okay for it to take hours—or even days—to understand math because once it took centuries.

Centuries of contemplating the universe. Of making the chaotic, ordered.

The Pirahã people of the Amazon are an anumeric (numberless) society. They have only three words to count: hói (~one), hoí (~two), and baágiso (many).

Once upon a time, we were all the Pirahã people. Numberless.

What an incredible journey we’re on.

Our children are a part of that journey—but someone needs to tell them that.

It’s easy to feel part of history when reading Little Women, Pride & Prejudice, The Prince & the Pauper, or Henry V. You connect with past humans as you become fully immersed tales decades or even centuries old.

Wrestling with long division is also part of that same grand story — it’s just much harder to see.

We need to tell our children Euclid and Pythagoras’ stories. How hard it was. Their struggles. Their triumphs. We should let children walk in their shoes, exploring the same ideas through imaginatively playing with triangles and circles.

Let our kids ponder: What would the world be like if there were no numbers?

Very different indeed.

In this way, we help children enter a new realm of humanity’s story—and show them that math is a grand adventure, not something to fear.

Next week, I’ll share simple ways to do this — including stories and activities to share with your kids.

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Remember → Children are our most important work♥️

~Dr. Claire