Education (And You)
December 14th, 2008 by Rico Penguin
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Loading ...Introduction
We’ll start off with introductions. I owe it to anyone reading this and I imagine it is something of a courtesy that is overlooked much in today’s written world. I am nobody, in the most glamorous of senses, my name is Michael Walker and I am a borderline average student with average traits and a self destructive personality.
Why am I telling you this? Well it’s quite simple, I feel anyone reading this is smart enough to understand it. I am a kid who scratched by in school with such poor performance for most of my life that I’m quite amazed I didn’t end up in special education. So it startles me to a level that is almost movie worthy that I am the one bringing up the points following this introduction. These are things that all of you educated, driven, and remarkable people should have been forcing down the colleges throat. For that matter it is something the university faculty should have been either demanding or performing.
I believe as it stands the academic system is built upon a foundation that is riddled with cracks. The common solution to this problem is merely to build another floor upon the building. It is as if we feel this new floor will help draw people’s eyes away from what is a terribly constructed foundation, something that not one person here would place a real house upon. We put so much thought into the cars we buy, into the idols we vote for, into the games that we play. We devise stategies, read reviews, and we listen with the most intent of ears to make sure that our decisions benefit us the most. We see immediate returns upon these decisions and it furthers our desire to commit to them more, but in that same breath we look at all the troubles in our lives and we chalk those up to ‘life’. This is just how ‘life’ is, it can’t be helped, it’s better to just beat the system than to rewrite it.
I strongly disagree.
I also feel that the argument of “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” does not apply here. Because it is indeed broken, there is absolutely no reason that others should be in the straights that I am in. I shouldn’t be hearing others telling me mirror images of my story. They are not me, they are better than me. It is because of this fact that I’ve done what (at least I feel) I do best. I’ve devised a system, I even went through the small bit of work to use reason behind it. This is not a dashing of darts at a board blindfolded, as the current system appears, it is a strategic and prepared strike upon that wonderous bullseye (or even that 20×3 slot I hear so much about).
Behavior
We are all relatively simple creatures at least in a sense. We perform activities and assess their results. The sooner their results the more we value those activities. For those of us who merely live within the most immediate of activities we tend to label ‘Impulsive’. For those of us who look towards the future for those larger eventual goals we tend to label ‘Self Controlling’. But we have to ask ourselves what lengthy activities are inherently lengthy and which are merely artificially lengthy.
Working out is incredibly difficult for most people. The only real immediate results are the flow of Endorphins and the resulting Euphoria and perhaps a sense of accomplishment. The actual visible signs don’t show up for quite some time (results may very). Education is much like working out. However in that same breath one can and should ask why.
We perform activities in a repetetive manner in hopes that we will engorge our minds with information that’ll help better us for the future. That is the fluffiest of ways to look at it. I find now that people do not go to college in the majority to learn but instead to prepare for a job. This to me is a very dark reasoning but that is a lecture for another day. I do feel however that the spirit of education has been lost long ago and replaced with a very beastly creature hiding behind the concept of ‘Self Control’.
We expect people to fight their very natures in all fascets of life. We expect people to act in ways that literally conflict with their own natural instincts and this causes a disconnect. The decisions become grey and confusing and confusion is a very dangerous thing. It almost feels like the Educational system has intentionally complicated itself in many ways that it need not. It has intentionally set up walls in a room that was once an open playground and created a Labrynth that no man, let alone a minotaur, could escape.
I ask why? I wonder with every passing day what benefit there is to gain from this. I see only two at this point in my life and both are equally distressing. Either those in charge are just entirely ignorant of all people around them and their own persons, or it is just a matter of creating the largest money sink one can devise. The latter is a tactic popular across the online gaming community, which is why it comes to light as many tactics I see at this (and most) Universities seem to be timesinks for the sake of “extending subscription time”.
Reality
The reality to me of the situation is that it needs to change, all things change. Mountains erode, seas rise and fall, organisms evolve, adapt, and eventually go extinct, stars are born from massive clouds and even the most powerful eventually collapse into a singularity that seemingly nothing can escape (certain theories not withstanding). Why do we as humans change so slowly in the face of existance soaring right past us? We act as if a few years is nothing when looking at the big picture, every person reading this likely has less than a century to live, that is a spanse of time that is so infinitely small that I can think of nearly nothing in the cosmos that would recognize it.
Those people you see driving drunk, waging wars, marketing trash, and postulating means to take your money and run. All of them went to school and it’s quite likely that many of them went to and finished college. A degree is meaningless if all it proves is that you can ‘set it and forget it’ for each exam. It’s meaningless for us to study learning and behavior if we are never going to use the information we gain.
This is what makes me most angry. This frivolous pursuit of knowledge for no sake other than to collect it. If we aren’t going to apply our discoveries then the act of discovering is meaningless. So with all that aside I’m going to dive into a few things I think colleges (well frankly all levels of education) need to change or deal with.
Testing
It’s relatively common knowledge that testing is a subjective means to acquire an objective score. It’s something I think many people have come to terms with. This is not inherently a problem, it is however a major problem when put into context with the system I see it most used in.
Tests cannot be a test of ‘self control’. They cannot constantly be hiding in the fog of the future all this does is set up people for failure. Much like traffic tickets do not lead to reductions of problems on the roads, spacing tests does not lead to more efficient testing.
The first test of any class is twofold. A student is firstly examing their own study habits and they are secondly examing how this particular professor paints their examinary canvas. Unfortunately this is also where upwards of 30% of their grade is also painted. Considering that I’ve only had two professors that tested in anything even remotely similar in the year+ that I’ve been here (and easily including both years of community college) I feel that this must change.
I have had one professor who gave weekly exams. Her name was Diane Johnson, she is a Classical Studies professor at this very university. If you’ve ever been interested in the topic I highly suggest you take a course with her, she is easily the best professor I’ve ever had. You will find few people that can take a topic and bring it to life like she does, and the topics are incredibly plentiful.
She tested us every single Monday during the summer, the material was plentiful and it was deep. However where a class with the same amount of reading during a normal quarter I would find myself struggling with I found myself enjoying (and recieving an A) in this one. It was a very simple formula that I feel any professor could learn from.
Exams should be once a week (or at most every other week). This has many different advantageous results. First it provides students with a constant feedback from their course, something that takes an intangable situation and suddenly makes it tangible. It also provides the student with an environment that is less about not failing and more about learning. That last part is very important, this is where education has failed, because as far as I can tell for most people it is not a matter of learning in most courses it is a matter of not failing. This is also apparently not unique to our school as it is a situation that is addressed in a fine textbook available at this very bookstore.*
This also gives immediacy to the reading. There is absolutely no incentive to read material on the dates that it is due. Even students who are doing well in a course are hard pressed to recite anything from the text at any point until 24 hours before the exam. The average student asks a question once every six hours**. In most of my courses I find that the average is likely very far from the mode, considering that in many courses there are 3 students who ask about 20 questions a day and the rest of the students sit dormant in their chairs the only hint that they are alive being the occasional blink.
If you are a professor reading this ask your class if they would prefer weekly exams. In the one course that I’ve had a professor actually ask every student raised there hand (that was awake). If people are uncertain remind them of the benefits. For instance the fact that the exams will be smaller and more to the point. That with their newfound plethoration they will no longer be ‘make or break’ from the shoots but instead checkpoints along the journey of knowledge. Students will get a taste of how the professor tests and they will be able to modify their behaviors to perform at their utmost peak. If the professor changes their testing style it will not destroy the students performance but merely raise another challenge. It will even remind the student that they are worth it, that their dollars are not merely being spent on a gamble. That there is no reason to fear taking new professors in the next quarter.
This would make finals week far more reasonable as well. Considering I have never taken a course where the final was ‘larger’ to justify the two hour block we can assume that most professors do not. Because of this exams for all courses could be on the times the course is scheduled. Professors who indeed want to have a larger exam could even split it between two classes. Having the most recent information on the first day and a cumulative of the entire quarter on the next. Why they would do that is beyond me but I do feel there is an inkling that without stress a course has no meaning. At least that’s the only way I can see the current examination system and understand it.
There has only been one quarter that I remember great deals of information from. It was this last summer quarter. While only one of my two classes had weekly tests I still performed well in the other. The reason there being incredible consistency, she taught on what she was going to test on, and tested in the same consistent manner every single time. Every other professor I’ve had has not done this, if you think you do and I have had you for a course, you don’t (Dr. Johnson excluded). As for Classical Studies, it was the most information I’ve ever had to read and yet it was the easiest to acquire. Not simply because of the material nor the writing style of the textbook it was because of the reason I was reading. I read because of the constant immediacy of the exams, because of the results I was consistently getting from the exams, this reinforcement left me participating more and more in class I was even reading wikipedia and other sources for even further information outside of class. I found myself engaged and I was getting nothing but moreso as the quarter transgressed. I do feel this spilled over into my other course. While I hate to make this sound like a miracle cure it even gave me energy, I found myself actually waking up in the mornings. I had the single most damning thing in my educational career crippled merely by giving it less power.
As it stands I have heard a few complaints about this system. The first is that it will kill an entire class period. This is incorrect for obvious reasons, exams would be smaller if they are weekly and if they are not so then the professor should examine their testing style. If a professor feels that they cannot create smaller exams then it is likely they are not thinking about their material in a manner that is functional or reasonable. You can acquire great wealths of information from students in a very short period of time with very few questions. While I will admit at this very moment that with budget cuts larger classes (those over 30 students) couldn’t currently manage weekly exams this is moreso for the higher level courses. Short answer and essay questions can tell you a lot about a students understanding of material. With smaller exams comes more room for more creative and in debth essay questions that will in turn cause the students to think more critically about their material.
Likewise there is absolutely no reason that the rest of the class period could not be used. We already have time limits on tests (the class period). So for smaller exams you would give them a portion of the class period. Smaller exams require less cognitive stress and shouldn’t leave students in a daze for the actual course. If they are in a daze one might examine their teaching style, in my life I’ve had teachers that made it impossible to nod off. It wasn’t a matter of embarrasing or punishing students it was a matter of showing your passion. Students can tell when a professor is passionate and it is as contagious as happiness. Passion for learning is something that should be spilling out of every window of this campus. On the bus I should not hear “Hey did you study yet?” “Nah. I better do that tonight.” Or “Have you finished the paper for econ?” “Nope.” “Me neither!” School shouldn’t come off as a secondary and it damn sure should not be a burden. There are kids at this school that will have paid for an entire hummer (with automatic transmission even) by the time they finish. For many of them this is just to get a good job but times have been changing. Getting a good job has become harder and harder and as far as I’ve seen the average college student is making less and less with each graduating class. College is becomming the new high school and the quality of it is showing.
The last complaint would be the extra workload. While I would never consider those I help to be a burden or a job I understand that some do. It is unfortunately not up to me how much professors get paid. If I ran payroll for the country sports stars would get a teachers wage and a teacher would get a sports stars wage. In one case you have people playing a kids game and in another you have people setting up the very future of this world. I don’t feel that a bunch of smaller exams are any more work than a few huge ones, but then again that’s another illusion we seem to see. Humans have trouble comparing a collection of small time investments with a single massive one, in many cases people lose a lot by overlooking the benefit of small things. We do it for so long that we lose out on so many simple joys and that’s unfortunate. I’m quite certain if necessary the top students in any division would be willing to volunteer to help grade exams, this participation could be another way to get referalls for moving on to graduates school or for applying for the desired job.
Prereqs: The Imaginary Walls
I realize that the quality of a college is directly related to the amount of health and mental troubles it can cause to its student body. I’m well aware that the worth of a campus is positively corrolated with the amount of imaginary walls standing between someone and their dreams. It’s painfully obvious and I’m pretty sure few people actually don’t see it (considering how few go “I never noticed” when I bring it up).
However I do feel there should be some changes to the system for prerequirements as well as your good ole regular requirements. Any and all courses are welcome to have these two wonderful little beauties as long as it makes sense. I’ve taken courses now that as far as I can tell refered to absolutely nothing in the course I took to get into them. The information seemed to not truly grow off of anything and at best it was merely a rehashing of the same course but with an extra paragraph slapped on the end. I’ve yet to take a class that I felt a student would bomb at if they didn’t have the requirements. I realize there are such courses and I respect that, I just haven’t taken any.
If a course reaches the first day of class and it is not full I believe anyone who wants to take the course should be able to. With the assumption that we have weekly or biweekly tests they’ll be able to immediately examine their abilities in relation to the course and they’ll be able to make an educated decision as to wether or not this is something they can feasibly accomplish. They can then drop the course and see if there is anything else more suitable for their level of understanding. Seeing as the course was not full anyways they have not harmed anyones chances at taking the class and seeing as every class I’ve ever taken did not stay full through to completion it will not hinder anyone who needs to take the course.
This provides the school with extra funding, professors with more students to educate and perhaps learn from themselves, and it provides the student with a chance to shine. We rise to the level that is set for us, if the bar is placed at our ankles we can do little but be offended.
To all the ‘committees’ across the campus I assure you that allowing people to try will not make you look less prestigious. The other bigger colleges and committees will not make fun of you and call you an ugly face. I will however address the fact that the very computer you are looking at at this very moment would not be what it is if Bill Gates hadn’t been allowed to walk freely amongst campus and examine different courses regardless of requirement. If he had not slipped into a Calligraphy course to see the intricasies of writing we would not be looking at fonts as we do today. In history many great people benefited from the very things that modern day education prohibits I’m not entirely sure if I should but I do find it ironic. Perhaps if I and others had the same luxuries as scholars of the past the word ironic would not be abused as much as it is in modern day.
The little things
In life it is the little things that keep us moving. In fact if it were not for little things none of us would be reading this at all. Our own lives begin at a size initially too small to be observed with the naked eye. Yet upon this small foundation we grow into complex structures that are able to move mountains and escape the very gravity of our Earth by using a small fleshy clump in our skulls and applying it to the inconcievably large universe that surrounds us.
If someone performs exceptionally well leave them a smiley face on their paper. Congratulate them after class. Likewise if a professor is blowing you away, thank them. Tell them that it is people like them that make this world a better place. Happiness is truly contagious and it is unfortunate that it falls amongst all other contagious things in the land of undesirable. If you are willing to spot 25 cents go get a page of shiny stars stickers to plop on papers. The average student will print 20 pages that will never escape the printing room, I’m quite certain that the page of stars you buy will make a more lasting mark than that damned paper (pollution aside).
It may seem childish. But so is all of this. We know that behaviors are strengthened or weakened by the immediacy of their returns. If you wish to punish a behavior you must do so immediately after the action, if you wish to bolster it you must reinforce it immediately. We know this and yet we do not use it and I find that almost insulting. How can I sit in a course and read an entire chapter on the simple reasons that the education system is so convoluted and have a professor lecture on those reasons and a month later find myself doing the very things that lecture told me shouldn’t be done.
I thought and behavior were a string of christmas lights from my childhood every single one of them wouldn’t be lighting up. Somewhere along the line there is certainly a disconnect and because of it this tree stands unlit amidst a plethora of trinkets meant to accentuate what is really left. A dying fir tree atop a shakey red metal foundation.
In Closing
This could have probably been written better there are things I forgot that should have been said and things that were said that could have been said better. But I’m just your average bupkis, I was on academic probation and I even found myself removed from college for the summer. This is not something that I should be bringing up in the first place. It will not be a biological or nuclear weapon that fells mankind, it will be apathy. While that apathy may inevitably lead to those things it is in the end apathy that will be the utter undoing of us all. For an organism that is so wonderfully built to learn I find it unfortunate that these days learning is nothing more than a stepping stone to working and that anything not directly related to said job is merely fat for the trimmin when mealtime hits.
*Introduction to learning and Behavior (Third Edition) by Powell * Symbaluk * Honey
**One of these days I’m going to go through and collect all the case studies that state this. It’s a very popular statistic.
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