Science Forums 2

[alexander]

I am, or was (i guess i am technically a college drop out, for the time being) in no way the best student. I only mentally attended a class to the level of my interest in it. If i really didn't care, grade certainly reflected it, on the other hand if i was interested and learned something i actually wanted to learn, then the grade reflected that too (ofcourse there are always exceptions, high school physics for example, it took me a whole quarter to understand the grading system, and i dropped to a lower level, and then when i finally figured out the system, i got straight A's for the rest of the year, and wanted to go back up to AP) Anyhow, i digress.

So to the reason why i dropped out, upon my endless analysis of this world, it came to my attention that for a while, my school provided no usable knowledge or information. Upon my study of the time spent in school, or doing school work, it occurred to me that i was learning more outside of school opting out of school work then i did in school, in class or out, doing school work and supposedly "learning". That coupled with the time it took to do school work, coupled with the time it took to make the money to pay for school work, all together did not seem to make the school an investment of interest. And really, its not that i dont like school, i love learning, but if learning is something they tell you you are supposed to do and you dont actually end up doing, then school ends up influencing you in some other direction. IMHO, as opposed to giving you knowledge, school educates you more on how to learn, and introduces you to topics you have perhaps not looked at that might be of interest to you, so you learn more about them. That said, i think the tried and true method of teaching needs to change. Directly giving knowledge works till you are out of high school, higher education needs to adapt, to not give kids knowledge, but to give them direction to self-improve through doing their own studying to solve a problem at hand. I mean there should still be a level of giving new knowledge, a more concise and down to the point level of "Here are facts, this is how we got the facts, now research them and apply them to solve this problem". It's kind of like math teaching goes, but it should be the case for the other subjects as well. Also the schools classes often dont debate anything. But if there is one thing that was taught by Hypo is that it's the debate, the need to prove a point that pushes one to investigate and learn new things to be able to use them in the current debates. And that is something that is missing from the schools curriculum, having even a small debate, every 2 classes would raise the interest, outline those who clearly show knowledge in the subject, and perhaps even teach teachers a thing or two.

I'll end with a story of a slightly different kind. I have argued with teachers and proven them wrong, i have opted out and saved my breat at other times (all depending on situation), but this is not a story of an argument, but a story of a respected and respectful teachers that are interested in the subject they teach. I had a history teacher in college, and i mean he basically taught a class of people that really didn't care much for the subject, except for a few people, an older gent and a lady and myself. We used to stay after sometimes and discuss the topic of that day, present new facts, sometimes correct the teacher's notes, sometimes ours. He seemed to be pretty receptive to teaching the right facts. He briefly touched on the 18th century europe, mentioned he got a great book on Peter I of Russia and mentioned some things he read out of the book. We then had to write some sort of an essay on the topics, to which i opted to teach the teacher and wrote a fairly lengthy essay on Peterist Russia, Peter himself as the person, calling on well-known historians with little known facts. We had a lengthy discussion about the essay and my teacher actually really appreciated the information he learned from my essay and the research that went behind it. So, i learned and researched, he learned, mutual plus, and we were both happy to learn. That is how school should work, passionate teachers presenting a subject well, create passionate students that will sometimes go beyone the course agenda to learn about something they were shown why they want to learn about a particular matter...