When I was in elementary and secondary school, I was good at school, and there were some classes I liked more than others, but overall, school seemed to be about reading boring books and doing boring homework. It was a chore. I did a lot of reading and writing on my own, but for the most part, the things I did for school were things I would not have done if I didn't have to.
Then I got to college and it was fun. I felt like, "In all those years I've been in school, why didn't anybody ever tell us learning could be fun?" I could take whatever courses I wanted to. (There were some requirements, but taking whatever I wanted to take resulted in the requirements being fulfilled, so I didn't have to worry about them much.) In my free time, I had conversations with other students about the interesting ideas I was studying in class.
Now it's even more that way. Now that I have my degree, I don't have to ever take another course or get another degree unless I want to. And I have wanted to. Since finishing my bachelor's, I did get another degree and also took some nondegree courses and some training classes.
For me, the change from school being something I wanted to do rather than something I had to do took place when I started college. I know that some people had more positive pre-college experiences than I did. Those were generally people who went to private or magnet schools, or were homeschooled.
There are also people in college who look at school more as a chore imposed on them than as an opportunity to learn. When it's like that, it's not fun for the students or for the professor. Professors want to teach students who are interested in learning. They know they have a responsibility to make the material interesting and relevant for the students, but they can only go so far. Professors have to spend far too much time dealing things like cheating. You would think that a student caught cheating would be ashamed and accept the penalty, but all too often, they spend a lot of time arguing with the professor, acting indignant that the professor would accuse them, even when their guilt is clear. Also, students come to professors begging for higher grades. They say they need to pass the course in order to graduate, or to maintain a certain GPA in order to keep their financial aid. They think that the professor ought to increase the grade for that reason, that any decent person would. I just don't get why it doesn't occur to them that it's the student's responsibility to earn good grades, not the professor's responsibility to give good grades to anyone who asks for them.
The problem here is that for students, the goal of education is to get good grades and a degree, rather than to learn. The students want a degree because that is what will allow them to get a good job. It's very sensible for students to care more about the degree and grades than about learning, because that is the way the system is set up.
However, there are alternatives. Sudbury schools (named after the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts) are elementary and high schools in which students can learn whatever they want to learn. In that respect, it's somewhat similar to my experience in college, and even more so to my experience now as an adult who already has a college degree. I learn things that are useful to me to learn. I don't worry about degrees or grades.
Why can't all education be like that? I think the reason is because employers want to be sure that particular degrees represent particular knowledge. The current system is supposed to ensure that, though I'm not sure how well it does. I know some smart people who got bad grades and/or failed to graduate. And sometimes people graduate without knowing as much as they should. I guess employers should not rely on degrees as the sole indicator of knowledge, but they can use it as one clue.
I think schools believe there is certain information that students should know, whether it is for employment or for being a well-educated citizen of the world. Therefore, schools impose certain requirements. These requirements don't necessarily match what students are interested in learning. Therefore, we end up with students who are just trying to graduate but aren't particularly interested in mastering the material. I think it's true that there are certain areas of knowledge that people should know, so I don't know if there's really any way around this.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Presenting material in a way that makes sense to students
Once you have mastered something, it often seems pretty easy and obvious. Teachers need to remember what it's like to not already know the material they are teaching. They have to constantly remember to put themselves in the shoes of the students. They need to listen to students in order to understand where there are gaps in the students' knowledge, and then they need to present the material needed to fill that gap.
When a teacher does present material in such a way that it makes sense, we may be tempted to take it for granted, but it actually can take considerable effort and skill to put the material together that way. Although I'm not currently a student, people do sometimes try to explain to me how to do things, and sometimes it's frustrating trying to make sense out of their explanations. It's as if someone is giving you directions to get somewhere, and they say, "Turn right at the McDonald's. Three miles before that, bear right at the fork in the road. Before you leave, make sure you bring cash with you because the destination you are going to doesn't take credit cards. After the fork but before the McDonald's, take a left at the third traffic light."
Usually people do give driving directions in order, but when people try to explain other things to me, sometimes I find it as jumbled as this example.
It's a lot easier to understand things if we have a framework to fit them into. I'm bad at understanding mechanical things. Because I can't visualize how the whole thing works, when I learn one piece, it tends to fall out of my brain very quickly because there is no hook to hang it on. In contrast, it's easy for me to visualize connections between people. I am above average at remembering facts about the friends or relatives of people I know because I can envision how those people are connected, and then I can hang the facts on that framework.
When presenting new material, it is helpful for the teacher to present a framework for the information. A single piece of information will make more sense and be easier to remember if the student knows how it fits in to the big picture. It can be a challenge though. The way to help students understand bits of information is to first show them the big picture that it fits into, but the way to help students understand the big picture is to show them the bits which together form the big picture. I think it can be done though. You can start by giving them a general idea of the big picture, and then as you teach each bit, you can talk about how that bit fits with the big picture and with the bits that have been learned before.
When a teacher does present material in such a way that it makes sense, we may be tempted to take it for granted, but it actually can take considerable effort and skill to put the material together that way. Although I'm not currently a student, people do sometimes try to explain to me how to do things, and sometimes it's frustrating trying to make sense out of their explanations. It's as if someone is giving you directions to get somewhere, and they say, "Turn right at the McDonald's. Three miles before that, bear right at the fork in the road. Before you leave, make sure you bring cash with you because the destination you are going to doesn't take credit cards. After the fork but before the McDonald's, take a left at the third traffic light."
Usually people do give driving directions in order, but when people try to explain other things to me, sometimes I find it as jumbled as this example.
It's a lot easier to understand things if we have a framework to fit them into. I'm bad at understanding mechanical things. Because I can't visualize how the whole thing works, when I learn one piece, it tends to fall out of my brain very quickly because there is no hook to hang it on. In contrast, it's easy for me to visualize connections between people. I am above average at remembering facts about the friends or relatives of people I know because I can envision how those people are connected, and then I can hang the facts on that framework.
When presenting new material, it is helpful for the teacher to present a framework for the information. A single piece of information will make more sense and be easier to remember if the student knows how it fits in to the big picture. It can be a challenge though. The way to help students understand bits of information is to first show them the big picture that it fits into, but the way to help students understand the big picture is to show them the bits which together form the big picture. I think it can be done though. You can start by giving them a general idea of the big picture, and then as you teach each bit, you can talk about how that bit fits with the big picture and with the bits that have been learned before.
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