Learning

Tori is taking her first psychology class and so far she digs it. Last night she came home and talked about how her class discussed the way a person learns. The best way I can explain what she said is that people learn more from experience and story and pictures than they do from lists and outlines.

Personally I remember more about high school biology than I remember about high school geography. Why? My high school biology teacher ditched the textbook and lectured about biology. She told stories that related to biology and made biology practical. On top of that we had labs to complete where we experienced biology first hand. We watched her pet snake kill and eat a mouse – how cool is that? The day that she started the unit on reproductive studies she came to class with a bag on her head acting as if she was embarrassed to teach such a taboo subject.

On the other hand I had a geography teacher that taught China was on the other side of the world and had billions of people and the capital was Beijing. Now memorize it and repeat it on a test. Geography could have been such a good class but sadly even though I passed I didn’t learn much about geography.

I am reading a book by Fareed Zakaria called The Post American World. It is a very good book and I highly recommend it for a hopeful perspective of the world we live in. He had a couple of quotes about education that I thought were interesting.

Zakaria talks about how America has fallen behind some of the world in test scores in science and math (especially Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore) and how the statistics that are often quoted are a bit misleading. He recalls growing up in India where memorization was valued and students were taught to memorize huge amounts of information and the recall it on a test (then promptly forget it after the test was taken). During college he came to America and the educational system was a bit more relaxed than what he was used to, but it valued “developing the critical faculties of the mind, which is needed to succeed in life”.

Here are some of Zakaria’s quotes:

“Other systems teach you to take tests; American systems teach you how to think.”

“…there are parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well – like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure and ambition …” (from a Singaporean teacher observing American students)

“While America marvels at Asia’s test taking skills, Asian countries come to America to figure out how to get their kids to think.”

As our kids grow, I think it is more important for them to think critically and to think for themselves than to remember the capital of Uzbekistan or score well on the TAKS test (or whatever standard assessment is used this year). I want my kids to challenge basic assumptions, be creative, have a curiosity about the world around them, make good decisions and be ambitious. I believe those qualities will help them become people who live life well. I believe those qualities will give them an advantage in a world that is shrinking where competition is global. Hopefully their parents and teachers are steering them that direction, especially since this year for Jakeb and Anna their parents and teachers are one in the same.