Why teaching Maths needs a real-world connect

‘Ma’am, why do we need to learn this?’ It is a question Maths teachers hear often. And almost inevitably, it arrives when students encounter Sine, Cosine, and Tangent. It sounds like an ordinary question. But hidden in that question is a beautiful doorway into trigonometry — a way of measuring the unseen with what we can see.

For many students, trigonometry begins as a collection of unfamiliar words, formulae, and ratios. They learn SOH-CAH-TOA (a memory trick used in trigonometry to remember the three main ratios of sides in a right-angled triangle), substitute numbers into a formula, and wait for the calculator to produce an answer.

(SOH means Sine = Opposite side over Hypotenuse side, CAH means Cosine = Adjacent side over Hypotenuse side, TOA means Tangent = Opposite side over Adjacent side) But somewhere between memorising the formula and finding the answer, something important can get lost: the Maths itself.

I remember watching students struggle with a simple trigonometric problem. They could identify the opposite side, the adjacent side, and the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle. They could even remember which ratio to use.

Yet, when I asked what the ratio actually represented, the classroom became quiet. They knew the procedure. They had not yet discovered the relationship. That distinction matters. A building can change the way we see trigonometry.

Instead of beginning with a formula, imagine standing outside a school building and asking: How could we find the height of that building without climbing it?Suddenly, trigonometry has a purpose. We can measure the distance from the observer to the building.

We can measure the angle of elevation to the top. A right-angled triangle emerges from the situation, with the building as the perpendicular leg, the distance between the observer and the base of the building as the adjacent leg, and the line of sight to the top of the building as the hypotenuse.

The relationship between the angle and the sides allows us to determine the height. The formula has not changed. But the student’s relationship with the formula has. Maths has moved from the textbook into the real world.

This, perhaps, is one of its quiet powers, as it allows us to measure what we cannot directly reach. A tree can be too tall to measure with a ruler. A building may be inaccessible. A distant object may be impossible to measure directly.

Yet, Maths gives us another way of knowing. There is nothing wrong with teaching students a useful mnemonic such as SOH-CAH-TOA. In fact, such tools can help them remember relationships. The problem arises when remembering becomes the destination.

A student may know that tangent involves the opposite and adjacent sides without understanding why those two sides are connected to the angle. That is where a teacher’s questions can make a difference. Instead of asking only, ‘Which formula will you use?’, we might ask, ‘ What do you know?

What are you trying to find? Which sides are changing? What does this angle tell you? Why does this ratio help you? These questions slow Maths down just enough for thinking to enter. When students begin to see that a trigonometric ratio expresses a relationship rather than merely a rule to be remembered, the subject starts to become less mysterious.

A right-angled triangle can also teach us something about perspective. Imagine looking at the same building from two different positions. Move farther away and the angle of elevation changes. Move closer, and it changes again.

The farther the line of sight, the smaller the angle of elevation. The closer the line of sight, the larger the angle of elevation. Our position affects what we see. Yet mathematics helps us interpret that changing perspective precisely.

This is a subtle but valuable idea for students. Maths does not simply tell us what to observe; it teaches us to examine how we are observing. The same principle appears throughout mathematics. A graph can look different depending on its scale.

A geometric figure can appear different when viewed from another angle. A statistical average can conceal the differences within a group. When students discover this, the values are no longer arbitrary numbers that appeared mysteriously in a table.

The values have a story-a square, an equilateral triangle, Pythagoras, and finally the ratios. They are consequences of geometric relationships. And that is a different kind of learning. There is a difference between remembering that something is true and understanding why it is true.

Perhaps, the real question is not ‘Why do I need trigonometry?’ When a student asks, ‘Why do we need to learn this?’, it is tempting to respond with a list of careers that use Maths: Engineering, Architecture, Surveying, Astronomy and Technology.

Those answers are valid. But perhaps, there is another answer. We learn trigonometry because Maths teaches us to look at relationships that are not immediately visible. It teaches us that distance and angle are connected.

It teaches us that something inaccessible can still be measured. It teaches us that changing our position can change what we observe. And it teaches us that behind a formula there is often an idea waiting to be understood.

Perhaps, the teacher’s role is not always to make Maths easier; sometimes it is to make it visible. A tree outside the classroom can become a trigonometric problem. A shadow can become an angle. When the height of a tree equals the length of its shadow, the tree, its shadow, and the line from the tip of the shadow to the top of the tree form a 45°–45°–90° triangle ( a right-angled isosceles triangle with angle of elevation as 450 ).

This is lovely because the learner can see 45° in nature before learning the trigonometric ratio for 45°. A building can become a right-angled triangle. A student’s question can become the beginning of an investigation. And a formula that once seemed frightening can become a concise way of expressing a relationship the student has...