I think that 'finding some use for them' is an ultimately doomed approach, if only because each student is going to have different ways in which they want to us

I think that 'finding some use for them' is an ultimately doomed approach, if only because each student is going to have different ways in which they want to use the mathematical tools with which they are presented. My father, who is an 'educator', seems to think that the best way to learn trigonometry is to use it to teach carpentry, but I can't think of anything that would be more dull, for several reasons. One, because I imagine that well less than half of the class would have a genuine interest in carpentry; and Two, because building things with wood requires very little trigonometric calculation, so nearly all of the examples would be highly contrived.