lsquared on project based learning

I just had an epiphany. I think I get where these project based peoploe are coming from. When kids complain about learning something hard, and what the kids say is "when am I going to need this in the real world" these people believe that the kids are really articulating what the problem is. Wow.

In my experience (and I know there are teachers who agree with me, as well as others who don't) the complaint "when am I going to need this in the real world"" is secret code for "I don't want to sound stupid, or like this might be my fault, but I don't understand this". I have found that if you attack the not-understanding, the complaining tends to go away. I know from sad experience, that if you attack the "real world" part of the complaint without addressing the not-understanding (and while keeping the same content), the complaints do not go away.

I think the project based people may have come up with a third alternative: if you both address the "real world" part, and you seriously reduce the content, then all the kids who tend to complain cease complaining. Whadaya think?