In this my short time in college it has already come to my attention the fact that classes in college have something very different from classes at any other level. Thus, I set myself to think about what is it that makes classes in a college different from any other classes. The conclusion that I reached was that classes in college actually make you think. Already deeply divagating in some place other than earth, I started to wonder why was it that most students have troubling answering "critical thinking" questions which are very much the bread and butter of college. The answer was simple, most of us were taught to repeat and not to think.
As hard to believe as this may be, i is in fact difficult to contradict. Think about it for a second and try to remember just how many times your told in, say, history classes in high school to memorize when Franklin D. Roosevelt became President of the US. Do you, at this moment in time, remember the date? I throw not. Such is the case of most of the education we were taught in high school; information which has little to no practical use for other than history majors (and even some may not care about it!).
Dates and the alike make up for awesome test questions, but they give, most of them that is, no real enlightening value to the students. This example is not limited to history. Now, imagine if you will a reality where you were asked on a test, not dates and people, but rather their contributions to society and how their actions shaped the lives of the world. Tests would in fact be more difficult, but, GBW, we should get used to it and the net gain of such tests would be, I believe, better than a useless date. Let me not be misunderstood; there are some dates that are imperative to know like December 7, 1941 or significant dates like that one. Again, this example is not limited to history alone. Math: learning the "Mean Value Theorem" is useless if you don't know when or how to apply it; Chemistry: memorizing every aspect of every element of the periodic table when most likely, you'll have one wherever you go, etc.
However, education must focus on critical learning, not on "copy-paste" learning since, much like the computer function being refer to, the knowledge of such things quickly goes away.
2 comments:
This is a stark generalization. Not everyone's high school experience was memorizing things but those are just building blocks so you can do some serious thinking when it becomes relevant for you to seriously think. In elementary school did you ever wonder why 2 + 2 = 4? Was it relevant knowledge?
In response to your exercise regarding the date which FDR was sworn in, my ap us hist teacher never asked me to memorize that, nor did my ap us gov teacher because the actual date he was sworn in really doesn't matter. You must have had a teacher who really loved FDR. However knowing that he was 32nd president who served for four terms, I'd say he was sworn into office in 1932. I think that is right although I haven't checked, please correct me if I'm wrong.
You also do not have to attend Mickey Mouse classes in high schools as most offer AP and dual credit classes for you to do some real thinking. Every class I had during my senior year was AP and I came to UTEP having done a lot of thinking and earned a lot of credits.
Great thinking, I mean I have thought about this concept a few too many times this semester but I didn’t question it, because I am one of those victims of repeat and not think. I hope to overcome this situation that I have been herded into. Good topic.
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