I just had a 30-minute-long debate with 13-year-old girl.

She asserts that 80 per cent of her schooling knowledge is useless because she will never get to use it.

While I am one of the fiercest critics of our modern education systems, there is no greater educational fallacy than that of assuming knowledge is useless because you don’t get to use it.

So, I had to nip this fallacy in the bud.

Since we were driving from her gymnastic class, we had a perfect metaphor at hand.

I ask her how many of her core training exercises she ever gets to perform at competitions; she tells me almost none.

I tell her that knowledge of any sort (I am of course referring to the peer reviewed knowledge base here), whether it’s about a locust or tectonic plates, serves to strengthen the core of our thinking.

I tell her she must think of learning as a process of exercising her cognitive muscles. The issue is therefore not whether she will ever get to use the knowledge, but rather how the process of processing such knowledge strengthens her core thinking.

I agree of course that not all knowledge strengthens the core with the same rigour, which is why there is always a need to continuously research on this, but it’s a fallacy to think knowledge not used is useless knowledge.