(no subject)
Oct. 11th, 2007 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leia131 I know most, or all, of you are going to disagree with this, but, to be both honest and nasty, I don't really care. I'm angry, this is my journal, and I'm going to type it out.
dl:dr
I'm so sick to death of this new-age wishy-washy teaching crap. You are the teacher, you tell us the requirements, and then we do them. It's as simple as that. If you give college students the opportunity to generate their own system of how they'll be evaluated, they're going to come up with the system that gets them the highest grade with the least amount of work.
And that means group projects. And I HATE group projects. But that's neither here nor there.
Let me tell you, dear teachers, how school works:
- You write what we're supposed to know on the board
- I copy it down
- You give me a test, on a prearranged day, on the things you wrote on the board, and ONLY the things you wrote on the board. Nothing we didn't go over in class, nothing purely from the book. If you didn't write it up there (see, TEACH IT), I shouldn't have to know it.
- I answer the test questions, based on my notes, which are based on what you wrote on the board. I have studied my notes extensively, and so my answers are 90-100% right.
- You grade the test and give me my A.
That's it. It's very simple, it applies to almost all subjects and everyone goes away happy.
Let me be clear: I'm very rarely in a class to actually learn. I just want my A, I want to fufill my graduation requirements, and get on with the rest of my life. I don't care about Organic Chemistry. I will never ever use what I'm "learning" right now ever again. (I do however care about Botany, and I want to actually learn that stuff. But classes we want to be in are not what this rant is about.)
I especially don't care about Christian Ethics. I'm taking this class to get my religion credit in, and all I want is an A. I don't care about understanding the material, I don't care about remembering it, I don't care about applying it to my life. You tell me what I need to know, I memorize it for long enough to pass the class, and then I forget all of it and use my brain for important things.
As I told Father Mac today, you can't measure our understanding of anything. You can only measure our ability to spit it back at you.
I can tell you that a covalent bond is a sharing of electrons, but do I honestly understand what that means? Do I have any mental picture of what an electron even is, much less a shared one? No. And can you ever measure that? No. But if you ask me what a covalent bond is, I can tell you. And you can grade me on my answer.
If you teach me how to say the words, I can read you a sentence in Chinese. But I won't understand it, and you can't make me. Even if you translate it, will I really understand it?
Gah. I've fallen too far into philosophy now to keep going. I'm sure this was all very controversial and incendiary. But it's just my opinion. And I was angry when I started, so... Yeah.
And that means group projects. And I HATE group projects. But that's neither here nor there.
Let me tell you, dear teachers, how school works:
- You write what we're supposed to know on the board
- I copy it down
- You give me a test, on a prearranged day, on the things you wrote on the board, and ONLY the things you wrote on the board. Nothing we didn't go over in class, nothing purely from the book. If you didn't write it up there (see, TEACH IT), I shouldn't have to know it.
- I answer the test questions, based on my notes, which are based on what you wrote on the board. I have studied my notes extensively, and so my answers are 90-100% right.
- You grade the test and give me my A.
That's it. It's very simple, it applies to almost all subjects and everyone goes away happy.
Let me be clear: I'm very rarely in a class to actually learn. I just want my A, I want to fufill my graduation requirements, and get on with the rest of my life. I don't care about Organic Chemistry. I will never ever use what I'm "learning" right now ever again. (I do however care about Botany, and I want to actually learn that stuff. But classes we want to be in are not what this rant is about.)
I especially don't care about Christian Ethics. I'm taking this class to get my religion credit in, and all I want is an A. I don't care about understanding the material, I don't care about remembering it, I don't care about applying it to my life. You tell me what I need to know, I memorize it for long enough to pass the class, and then I forget all of it and use my brain for important things.
As I told Father Mac today, you can't measure our understanding of anything. You can only measure our ability to spit it back at you.
I can tell you that a covalent bond is a sharing of electrons, but do I honestly understand what that means? Do I have any mental picture of what an electron even is, much less a shared one? No. And can you ever measure that? No. But if you ask me what a covalent bond is, I can tell you. And you can grade me on my answer.
If you teach me how to say the words, I can read you a sentence in Chinese. But I won't understand it, and you can't make me. Even if you translate it, will I really understand it?
Gah. I've fallen too far into philosophy now to keep going. I'm sure this was all very controversial and incendiary. But it's just my opinion. And I was angry when I started, so... Yeah.
dl:dr
