Grade: A+ Graduates-Educated or Ignorant? In classrooms across America, students are taught in an environment that does not stimulate thought. On the contrary, it encourages the regurgitation of ideas presented to them by a so-called well-educated person. The typical educational setting consists of an instructor at the front of the classroom dictating ideas to students sitting in a military-like fashion. The desks are normally set up in rows facing an instructor who is responsible for giving a numeric grade for how well the student can reproduce that particular instructor’s thoughts. This format does not provoke class discussion, but in this type of environment, there would be no need to encourage discussion because the instructor is considered the only knowledgeable person in the class. This rigid format produces students filled with useless facts that they just learn for the sake of taking an exam and not truly because they care about the topic. They are not taught to think for themselves or even interpret information. They simply believe what they are told and do not question. Socrates himself stated that the only way to reach "truth" is through questioning. Is that not what education is intended to achieve? Therefore, instead of continuing on with traditions that, according to Patrick McCauley, started in the 1920’s, Americans should rethink the way in which children are taught as well as how they are encouraged to learn. The grading system in the majority of the public schools in the United States measures the amount of information that a student can memorize at a given time. For instance, if a student is told that they will have an exam on a particular chapter of a text, they read the text, memorize it, and then answer the questions on the exam. If they have successfully been able to memorize the information, it is almost guaranteed that they will do well on a given exam whether or not they understand the information. This method does not teach students the importance or the reason for which they are told to acquire the information. As a result it causes students to become uninterested in and bored with learning. So there they are, being forced to learn a subject that does not seem interesting. A better grading system would one where an instructor evaluates a student not in a qualitative method. For instance, in a small private school in Pennsylvania, The School in Rose Valley, students are evaluated not by what they know, but on how well they are able to progress in the classroom. At the end of the marking period, teachers sit down with both the student and his or her parent to discuss the student’s improvement in tasks such as reading, writing, communication, and interaction with peers. The students are not forced to learn in this environment. Rather, they are encouraged and therefore, learn because they want to, not because they are receiving a grade. The ultimate gratification should be the knowledge gained at the end of the school year, not the grade received in the class. It should not be about the quality of the grade, but instead, the quality of the knowledge acquired. Another beneficial change to the classroom setting would to change the seating arrangement. The traditional classroom should be rearranged in such a way that provokes thought and questions the information being presented by the professor. Instructor’s, in many cases, have this egotistical mentality that they are the only people who can present information to a class. However, it is this superiority that is suppressing students from becoming great thinkers. Like it was said it class, "great things are lost to arrogance." Since students cannot question, or even come up with there own conclusions about things, they are not going to learn more than what they are being taught to memorize. By simply changing the seating arrangement into a circle for example, everyone in the classroom becomes an equal. Every student has an equal place in the room, including the instructor. For, an instructor should be humble and a facilitator for learning, but at the same time respected by his or her pupils. It must not be forgotten that instructors too can learn from their pupils. An example of this was seen in a Philosophy class when students were apprehensive. They were either scared of or not interested in participating. As soon as the class was put into a circle, conversation sparked and students were learning about each other, history, religion, philosophy, current events, and other cultures. If the students were simply being taught that Plato was Socrates student, the students would be bored and in comparison to the Socratic style of teaching, would not learn any "useful" information. They could of course, would be able to pass an exam. However, would they really have learned anything that would help them in the so-called real world? If the purpose of going to school, regardless of the person’s age is to get an education and prepare students to become active members of the community, then why do we continue to spoon feed them information? Instructors should encourage people to explore the world, not tell them what it is like. Works Cited McCoughly, Patrick. 30 June 2003. Philosophy. Summer Session 2 - 2003. |