Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Learning to love to learn.
Today, Stephanie brought up the interesting point that we all could use some work on "learning to learn" which allowed us to decipher the modern education system and its restrictions to our leisure and ultimate fulfillment. It reminds me of a large dilemma my high school came across which was along these lines: obtaining in class for a grade versus the knowledge for the sake of learning. Taking tests and receiving grades are our societies' measuring stick for obtained knowledge in a given subject. However, we have all seen grades lie: depending on variables out of our control (harder or easier teachers, biased tests focused heavily on one part of a subject, getting graded for reasons other than the actual subject such as participation), we may get a grade that does not truly reflect our actual obtainment of the knowledge. In addition, grades have seen to become more important than the actual knowledge since employers will look at your GPA before hiring you. My question: have any of you felt that learning purely for receiving a grade has caused you to care less about the actual knowledge gained but rather more on receiving an A at any cost? What could we do to get back to loving to learn?
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I would have to agree with you Denis, I believe today we "learn" in order to get good grades. In high school we all had one goal, to get into college. In order to get into a good university good grades are needed. Now that we are in college we still need those good grades in order to get a good job and be successful. Because there is such an emphasis on the necessity of good grades from outside sources, we lose the ability to love learning. If I could learn about anything I wanted to and didn't have to worry about the stress of getting good grades, I believe I would be able to truly appreciate the knowledge that I would be receiving. However, even when I do not excel in a particular class, if I am interested in that particular class, I still enjoy learning about those topics. I don't believe we can take away the necessity to achieve academically. However, I believe that we all can love learning in areas that interest us, regardless of whether or not we receive good grades. Yes, good grades do make certain classes seem more appealing, but so does the success of understanding your mistakes.
ReplyDelete• I think this is such a common question with our education system. I remember my AP Psych teacher always tell us “Good luck memorizing for the test tomorrow!” because he knows that the majority of what students do is memorize what they need to know in order to get a good grade on a test and once the test is over they forget all about it. I think it is absolutely true that since we place all of our focus on obtaining the grade we often forget to focus on the information we are learning. However, I have noticed that for me personally it depends on the subject. I think with classes we are less passionate about (core classes, for example) there may be more of a tendency for people to care more about the letter grade than the knowledge, BUT if the subject is something a person cares about (classes for a major) then it is easier to enjoy the acquisition of knowledge while still focusing on getting the desired letter grade.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything said regarding this post and the comments above. Our society has changed the meaning of learning and I've had teachers in the past that are so oblivious to this fact. No longer does society want us to learn for the sake of learning, they want us to think of learning as something of a stepping stone. High school grades are important to get into college, college grades are important when applying for jobs or graduate school, as Amanda said. Even still, graduate school can dictate the next step of one's life, deciding where a doctor may set up his practice if at all and it is similar in other grad schools I'm sure. I know I fell subject to this often in high school, taking required courses that did not interest me and only working to get the good grade and not actually to learn the material and appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what everyone said. I also think an interesting turn that society has made is that most professionals feel as though they have to not only receive their BA, but their MA as well. Although many people may not want to go through more schooling and spend more time on their education, it has almost become a requirement in society that people continue to further their education in order to get a job. Although many people attend graduate school to further their education and to learn more, many people are now doing it so they can get better jobs and be competitors for higher paying jobs.
ReplyDeleteWould you say that the need to get a good GPA is a result of our own natural sense of competition? I think — and I would think most of you would agree — it's perfectly natural for us to try and do as well or better than our peers as long as it doesn't negatively affect other aspects of our life (For example, when studying interferes with the time you would usually spend eating or being a dick about trying to be better interferes with your relationships). This need to be better causes us to assign values to tangible things (i.e. people) socially constructed things (i.e. GPA). These assigned "values" are what lead companies to hire people with better GPAs to higher degrees of education. I totally agree that assigning these values are wrong, whether assigned prematurely or at all. I think we can't really blame anyone but ourselves for the situation you guys are talking about because we all share the driving force of it to a certain extent. I think for us to truly "overcome" it is to reconsider how we treat others and even ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think that learning and grades are necessarily connected. There is a difference between trying to do well in school and trying to expand your knowledge to better yourself. Doing both is very difficult, especially when you need certain grades to get into a good college and then get a good job after college. I think that furthering your education after you have a steady job is the only way to feel fully enriched by your education. Because you need to be a “free man”, perhaps you need to be free of other life constraints? I know that my grandparents, who have both retire, take college courses for enrichment and they love expanding their knowledge in a relaxed manner. But I would find this impossible at this stressful time in my life as a college student.
ReplyDeleteTo answer Denis's question, yes, I have felt that I have taken classes purely to get an A rather than to receive the knowledge that the class could give me. These class never truly reflect whether or not a person has gained any knowledge. My English teacher in high school always told his students that "B students study the subject, while A students study the teacher". This shows that society really only cares about this letter grade. This is why I am not a fan of the standardized tests because one could study for these or get tips to maximize one's score without learning about it.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that today people get too caught up on getting an A that actually learning the material and knowing how to put it to effective use in life becomes less of a priority. In high school my physics teacher was a strong advocate against students worrying so much about grades that they did not get as much from the class as they should. This teacher proposed an alternative way of giving grades for his class. He would give us tests throughout the year and we could get graded on them, but if the grade you received on the final exam was significantly higher than the grades you got during the class he would reward you by replacing your current test average with your final grade. Many students loved this method, but others were strongly against it. I found this method was effective because it still forced students to try and do well all year long, because there was no guarantee one would ace the final and receive an A. It also allowed students to grow and prove that they did indeed learn the material, for if you struggled all year and aced the final because you finally understood all the material, and learned it you could still receive the A. Taking a class just for the sake of getting the A does not promote educational growth. Students should love the subject they’re studying, want to do the work, and want to learn the material, and it often becomes true that grades cause us to end up discouraged and against a class we might have loved if it were not for the grading system.
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe that everyone at some point or another have taken a class purely for the easy A. There are two possible ways to get to the point where we love learning again. One way, is to remove the importance of the grade. Classes where the teacher doesn't care about grades and focuses purely on the subject are the ones, in my experience, where learning is fun and it is something to look forward to, while not having to worry about the grade because they are usually A's. Like all solutions though, it is not perfect because there will be students who just skip these classes because they know they will get an A, they have been too focused on the necessity of grades and lose the passion for the knowledge. The other solution is for teachers to give multiple assessments with little point value. In these cases, the student is forced to focus on the knowledge because they want the A. This however, doesn't let the student to enjoy the information, although they do obtain the knowledge of the subject. The real change must come from the business world where employers focus less on the GPA and more on the raw knowledge of the potential employee.
ReplyDeleteI think we definitely try to take easier classes sometimes just to receive and easy A and make our GPAs better which we do because we want to have a good GPA in order to get a good job. I have also heard about teachers who use the same tests every year even though they know that the students are cheating and memorizing the old tests from their older friends just because they know they will get good reviews from the students and will be a popular teacher, therefore they will keep their job. It goes both ways-with students in school and in the job force. Though I think everyone takes easy classes for this reason, they also take the classes they need to take and want to take for their interests, like for their majors. I'm not sure what this means but I know that people take courses just to enrich their knowledge. I think it all depends on people's mentality and the reason for why they go to school. If someone truly wants to succeed, they want to enrich their knowledge in certain areas so that they can do so.
ReplyDeleteI agree that I have become so stressed and worried about my grades that I tend to go take classes that I know I have a pretty good hold on. Having said that I still love to learn. But I find that I enjoy class more when I actually get what is going on and it makes sense to me. I think when it comes to loving to learn it all has to do with the individual. No one can force you to love something. It's your choice at the end of the day and college can be very stressful. Making it harder to love the learning aspect of certain classes that you take. But when you work hard and do well, I find that I enjoy and appreciate the given subject more.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting to read the comments here about how college is a common goal for all and that high school is just a stepping stone to get there, college is another stepping stone, etc... And how the ultimate goal is to get a job. Not just any job, but a well paying one at that. And not just a job that is also well paying but ALSO one that maybe we can enjoy sometimes, too. Perhaps not in that priority order.
ReplyDeleteOne incredible thing is that even though we are all here at Villanova getting what most would consider an excellent education, so are many, many other students our age. College used to be a somewhat elite group of young adults (mostly men) who had an uncommon opportunity to pursue their educations, and if any of you speak to your parents about this I can nearly guarantee that they got mostly C's and the occasional B+ or just barely scraping by on a D. Overall, it seems like everyone expects their kids to go to college today as a given, and it not only has gotten easier to get in but it has also gotten easier to just skate by doing the bare minimum and somehow accomplishing undeserved A's.
On top of this, our society is supposed to be structured like a pyramid. Most of the jobs and skill-sets should be towards the bottom levels of society, the tough physical labor jobs, the jobs that are very technical but not necessarily challenging, the jobs that most people would rather not do but which are necessary to keep the machine going... Well, now we have somewhat of an upside-down pyramid. An immense amount of young adults our age are entering this system with what used to be considered advanced degrees and as a result many have to accept jobs they are simply overqualified for because there is nothing else available.
I believe education has lost a lot of value, and this is why people feel they need to go one step further to grad school etc, just to stand out in an unbalanced crowd... Perhaps there needs to be a re-evaluation of how to properly fill our work quota via the education system.
While I truly believe everyone should learn how to love to learn, I think that doesn’t mean it is always going to be easy. Learning often can be a challenge and you have to push yourself sometime out of your comfort zone and to think in new ways. Challenging yourself is not always fun or easy. Same with learning. It is like when you work out. If you want to grow stronger and become more athletic you are going to have to accept the fact that your muscles are going to be soar the next day. If you want to become more fit and healthy you have to accept the fact that you are going to be in pain. While there is a certain pain you should endure, the same idea applies to learning. The brain is a muscle too. In order to keep it growing and to expand your knowledge that mean you constantly have to train it every day. Grades are often one way teachers try to evaluate how students are doing and to see if they are really retaining anything. While I do understand the idea of grades and why they are in place and agree that teachers should benchmark their students, I do not think grades accurately reflect how much knowledge is retained. People today can often have the idea that knowledge is fixed, that we are only going to ever reach a certain IQ or level or knowledge. However, people can grow and learn. Therefore, while someone has an A in a class this semester there is a pretty good chance they will not remember anything they learned in the next years if they never keep looking at the information. Our culture in the States relies so much on short term memory. Also, people can become very fixated on the idea that they have to get good grades to get a good job, while that is true, your gpa only really matters for your first job. After that you will be hired or fired based on your experiences and your character.
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