BY: Mike DiMatteo
When I was teaching, I started each new year with a simple question: Why are you here? Kids, new to me and my classroom style, looked at me as a dog might look at a new kitten brought into the home—a mixture of confusion, questioning, and bafflement. So, I’d ask again, this time smiling as I restated the question: “I’m serious, why are you here? I mean, why take a history class? Unless you’re like me, you’re not going to go home and discuss the importance of the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485) and its ramifications for English history.” (There would be some muffled laughs, students still a bit confused.)
Eventually, one brave soul would chime in, “Because our parents said so.” A few more giggles, and a wider smile by me—now I’d hooked ‘em.
“I get that. But there has to be another reason why you’re here, besides the obvious.”
More puzzled looks; it wasn’t obvious.
“You know, the parent/teacher oath. The one your parents had to sign when you were born, stating that if they had to suffer through twelve years of school, so do their kids.”
Now there was some more laughter, with a few heads nodding in the affirmative. I’d won them over, broken the ice a bit. Maybe I wasn’t as intimidating as they first thought. So, I asked the question again, but this time there were a few more hands in the air with a few more varied answers.
“Because the state says so.”
“Because we need to learn this stuff so we can be smarter adults.”
“So we can get to college.”
That last one always brought this response: “But what about those who don’t go to college?”
Silence and a few head shakes, maybe one shrugged shoulder from someone in the back.
Finally, I’d give in.
“The reason is that each class serves a purpose, one you might not think of right away. History? So that you can learn to see patterns, extrapolate information and process it, and learn to read and interpret. After all, the study of history is primarily two things: reading and writing. English? Learning to read complex material, as well as decipher the meaning of words and phrases. It’s also the most important part of being human, as the notion of Big History teaches us—we’re uniquely capable of storing, sharing, and building on knowledge across generations. Mice, elephants, and dogs can learn from one another, too, but humans have developed collective learning on a scale that allows each generation to build on what came before. Not to mention the wisdom locked inside great books that can still teach us about the human experience.
“Math? Simple logic. You may not go to the grocery store and calculate the algebraic equation for removing a box of Cheerios from the top shelf, but you can learn to think logically about a given problem, maybe even understand the power of numbers in your everyday life—especially when it comes to your paycheck and your bills.
“P.E.” (Followed by groans.) “Lifelong skills of staying fit—move it or lose it. Learning how to eat properly. Trust me, when you get as ancient as I am” (a few giggles) “you’ll understand the importance of P.E.”
I’d continue on, and there would soon be nods of approval and looks on their faces like, “I’d never thought of that before.” Exactly what I wanted.
Students today are not interested in following orders or prescribed things to be done because we “say so”—they need to know and understand the “why” of it all. Once you get to the why, and it makes sense, they’ll be on board in most cases. The problem is getting to the why.
Is There Evidence for My Assertions?
There is, and quite a lot of it.
Dorothy Sayers wrote in The Lost Tools of Learning that the goal of education, in the end, is not education itself but rather that its true end is “teaching people to learn for themselves.” The way to do that is through traditional educational practices as well as subjects, treating the notions of grammar, logic, and rhetoric as disciplines of the mind, not rote learning for its own sake. The sequence described in my classroom is exactly that—classical learning with a purpose, to give people the tools to continue learning on their own.
In his work The Paideia Proposal, Mortimer Adler argued that there should be one unified liberal curriculum available for ALL students, college-bound or not, on the grounds that the same subjects (literature, history, math, science, fine arts) build core capacities regardless of a student’s eventual path. The value was in the exercise, he said, not simply the destination.
These are just a couple of works proving my point, but let’s go further.
What About the Subjects Themselves?
Yes, there is research there as well. We’ll start with my expertise: History.
UCLA’s National Center for History in the Schools frames chronological thinking as the foundation of historical reasoning itself—without a sense of when things happened, you can’t examine how one event relates to another or explain historical causality. It’s one thing to know the date of something, or the person; it’s quite another to understand how they all work together. When one learns that skill—applied history—other doors of examination open, and history no longer is simply a series of names, dates, and events; it becomes a story, part of the human mosaic. Students learn that often there is more than meets the eye (Niall Ferguson is important to the notion of applied history).
English
E.D. Hirsch argued in his work Cultural Literacy (1987) that students’ ability to understand complex written language is closely connected to the background knowledge they possess. Without the skills needed to read and decipher—to understand complex thoughts via the written word—students will be bound to their limited understanding, often a barren desert without proper education. English/literature opens that door, for once a student can read, and read well, the possibilities are endless as to what the student can learn. The aforementioned notion of Big History (David Christian) is central to this thesis.
Math
This one is simple: the value isn’t only the formula, it’s practicing that a conclusion must follow honestly from a premise. This permeates all of society and all of human life. And the research suggests there is something to the connection between advanced mathematical study and conditional reasoning—students who studied post-compulsory mathematics developed conditional reasoning to a greater extent than comparison students studying English literature, although the researchers cautioned that the nature of that development was more complex than a simple improvement in logical reasoning (Attridge & Inglis, PLOS ONE, 2013). The formula fades. The reasoning stays.
Physical Education
The Ancient Greeks paired gymnastics with music education, believing training the body should never be separate from training the mind. In our own nation, this same notion was brought by German settlers in the form of Turner societies—Turners being practitioners of gymnastics. German immigrants brought Turnen to the United States in the nineteenth century, and Turner societies played an important role in efforts to introduce physical education into American schools.
Further, a 2025 University of North Carolina Greensboro study, published in Psychology of Sport & Exercise, found that just nine minutes of high-intensity exercise immediately before testing produced measurable gains on a standardized verbal comprehension measure in children ages 9 to 12. In the study, 25 students performed the brief exercise sequence and subsequently scored higher on the verbal comprehension test than when they had watched an educational video before testing (Drollette et al., 2025).
Nine minutes, and the scores moved. Finally, in grade schools, especially for boys, rigorous physical activity can be important for helping them remain engaged with the mental aspects of school. Recess should not be an afterthought, but a necessity. Finally, learning the life skills to remain a physically active person is paramount to living a longer, more productive life.
Fine Arts
Every other subject up to now is about following a correct procedure; the arts are where a student practices generating something with no single right answer. Throughout all of human history, music and the creativity of the mind have been essential to the development of the whole person. While one may never become a musician or artist, that portion of the mind must be opened, even if only cracked, to allow the potential of the other areas to flourish. Of this, there is no argument.
Conclusion
There is an art to education, but there is also a method. The method is the prescribed curriculum; the art is how one goes about it in the classroom. It’s more than opening a book and assigning a reading, or following some prescribed guidebook. Students need to understand the method, the “why,” so that they can appreciate the process. Parents do too. The assertion here is that once they do—all parties—the true result of education will manifest itself: better, more prepared students who will continue to learn on their own.
