Why Do I Even Have to Learn This?

“Why do I even have to learn this?” was a question I uttered often throughout my years in school. I was missing the forest for the trees, not realizing that knowledge, like a mural, is made up of small pieces that come together to form a greater image. Like many students before me, school felt like a daily routine, a process everyone under 18 was expected to complete as an introduction to adult life. I used to think, Why not just show me what you do as an adult and explain the steps to get there?

That question stayed with me for years. It wasn’t until the pandemic, when I was given the opportunity to teach three fifth-grade students, that I finally began to explore an answer. Parents had seen me working with their children over Zoom and noticed how I built rapport while also providing concrete steps to help develop executive functioning skills through schoolwork. That summer became my first real chance to respond to my own lifelong curiosity—the same one now echoed by my students: “Why do I have to learn this?”

Their question became an opening for a lesson that went far beyond academics. It gave me a chance to explain something every learner eventually understands: the foundation for how you handle life’s obstacles begins with the skills and knowledge you build now. Of course, helping students see that connection isn’t always easy. It requires relating lessons to their own interests and experiences so that learning feels like a tool, not a task.

That’s when I started to connect school subjects to the world around them. Whenever possible, I pointed out that numbers give us a reference point for quantity, capacity, time span, and relative change. We practiced math using information from videos, news snippets, and shared experiences. Slowly, numbers began to take on meaning. They became a language of progress, showing how we measure growth, distance, and improvement.

Once students could see that, it was easy to move into science. Everyone has a body, after all, and science gives us the language to understand how we function within the world. Biology—the study of living things—can help students begin to reflect on themselves: how their brains work, how behavior changes in response to the environment, circumstances, access, and countless other variables.

What I learned from teaching those subjects was that the goal isn’t just to transfer knowledge. It’s to unlock curiosity. Applied Behavior Analysis calls this a behavioral cusp: a skill that, once mastered, opens the door to an entirely new range of learning opportunities. One of the most powerful cusps any student can develop is the ability to read. Reading allows us to explore what exists beyond our reach, to measure not just physical distances but emotional and intellectual ones too—our dreams, our fears, and our understanding of others.

That’s where the humanities come in. Poems, epics, and reflections from countless eras each offer a new lens on what it means to be human. From the rhythm of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter to the introspection of Invisible Man, where Ralph Ellison wrestled with identity in a post–World War II America still reckoning with race, literature helps us grasp the emotional and social forces that shape our world. Through history, we see how those same forces sparked new movements and new consciousness—especially in the mid-twentieth century, when questions of race, justice, and identity led to some of the most transformative decades in modern history.

Of course, this journey through learning doesn’t stop there. Humanity’s pursuit of self-actualization has taken countless forms, from revolutions in China and Vietnam to the more recent Arab Spring movements. Each reflects the same underlying drive: to understand, to grow, and to apply knowledge in ways that shape the future.

At Mr. L’s Tutoring and Enrichment, that same belief guides everything we do. The question, “Why do I have to learn this?” isn’t something we avoid—it’s something we embrace. We see it as the starting point of curiosity. Our goal is to help students connect what they’re learning to the bigger picture, linking academics to confidence, problem-solving, and real-world understanding. Whether we’re working through math, science, reading, or the humanities, we aim to help students see that learning isn’t just about passing a test. It’s about preparing to navigate and influence the world around them. Education is not just preparation for life; it is life unfolding in real time.