That is to say, they are trying to overcome the typical lack of motivation and interest and push-back from the kids by leveraging the shortcuts of what they know the students already find entertaining and exciting.

Every teacher in every class has at least one, and often many, surly kids with their arms crossed who don’t care about what is being taught and don’t want to care, and think they are correct in their assessment that they ought not to care, and that what is going on is a big, boring waste of their time during which they are obligated to remain a captive audience for no better reason than the convenience of adults or “the system”.

It is pushing on a rope to try and convince such kids to even try to appreciate something in which even the best “argument for importance or necessity” is not immediately obvious to them. Every teacher’s been through that futility.

So, there is a desperate demand for something the kids already know and like, and to try with simultaneously implausible and herculean efforts to use that content as “bait” and an unlikely subject with which to illustrate and teach the lesson objective. “Get them interested to get them to tune in to get them thinking.”

I sympathize with teachers who retort that if the kids tune out, you can’t reach them at all, so, yeah, it’s sad what it takes to get them to tune in, but it’s better than nothing, and just maybe it will set one in a hundred of them on a path of curiosity and learning in general.

But this is a bad argument because it ignores opportunity costs. The question is not whether this particular use of time could possibly have a net positive expected outcome, but whether it is the best use amongst the set of all the other alternative ways we would use this educational time. For the kids that need the subject matter to be hip hop lyrics or else they’ll tune out, there are much better ways to help equip them to succeed — or at least fend for themselves — in adult life.

What else?

Apparently balancing a budget is hard? Could do that.

Finding a good lawyer or doctor.

Marketing. Every school should include a flea market so the kids can sell to other kids.

I’m seeing a pattern. A very JT Gattoish pattern. Maybe stop trying to pretend trigonometry is relevant to 80 IQs?