Schools that think, Nations that learn
It’s the day before the test. You’re struggling to soak up every single bit of information into your head in order to Ace your test. Well, sorry to break it off to you but you may have accomplished to know the material by heart but you didn’t actually learn. Students should think, not memorize. Let me further enlighten you about the aforesaid statement. To commence, when you meditate on the subject matter, you get to fully understand the material, making it easier for you to complete every task about such subject.
On the other hand, when you are memorizing, we are ignoring the reasons behind the “why” and the “how” about every fact we attain while reading. Therefore, when asked to explain what you have learned, you won’t be able to do so since you really didn’t take the time to analyze the given information. However, many institutions, teachers, and students are not hooked in providing knowledge since they go for the easy way out by overwhelming the students or themselves with loads of work that causes them stress, anxiety, and depression instead of raising their education. The benefits of sacrificing your spare time to actually learn are quite abundant. You will find yourself able to enjoy the class since you will understand the purpose of why you are learning the corresponding subject. Likewise, you will certainly become more adroit in a wide variety of aspects of your daily life when you learn, capable of understanding the past, how does it affect the present, and what may the future bring.
This way you learn to relate ideas and concepts together rather than committing the mistake of misjudging everything as logical calculus instead of gathering further information as when you opt to memorize. I admonish students that rely on memorization since they will forget in the long run all the information they absorbed in a short period of time. Just like when you are trying to lose weight, memorization can be compared as starving since they both offer the shortest and easiest solution in reaching the goal, without providing the right nutrients and life-time healthiness to your body, while a proper diet and exercise plan means commitment and stick-to-evenness with amazing results for the rest of your life. Students find themselves compelled to absorb the information robotically because they have a vague knowledge about the concept of what is coming in the designated test. When thinking about an example of this controversy of memorizing vs. learning in EIS, what pops in my mind is the class of Historia de Honduras.
Without any aim of criticizing or belittling the class, I consider their teaching method quite dull since we are constantly assigned to complete guides to study them later on for the test. We do not apprentice thoroughly about such history because we are just focused on answering the direct questions to the point straight out from the book, without any reasoning. The teacher shouldn’t be oblivious to the fact that our country’s history is pretty relevant and she must cover it from A to Z. Researchers in the late 1800’s derived that the skill to bear in mind facts does not necessarily connote the understanding of a concept. As a matter of fact, the learners should be able to use their wisdom in a practical way to qualify as understanding something, or expressing their concepts in their own words without the need of referring to any textbooks.
If you are one of those persons who strongly believe in learning and not memorizing, you should focus on altering the activities and learning methods. A highly effective strategy to arouse an interest among the students is to direct a big, interesting question that focuses more on the real-world, thereby will make the students assimilate and brainstorm a certain situation that enables them to understand the subject you are trying to make them comprehend. This way, the students will consider many options and points of views, fully sympathizing and grasping what is being tried to imply. When taking notes in the class, most of the students simply copy the words straight from how it is phrased by the teacher’s presentations while their minds are wandering over unrelated things, such as daydreaming over petty things, with the result that they don’t even perceive what they are writing down in their notebooks. The solution to this issue is within the reach of the teacher because they should be aware that the students find it boring and monotonous that they only are bombarded with long-informational speeches that you carry out. Furthermore, getting your students involved into fun-learning activities will keep them inadvertently entertained and concentrated at the activity’s purposes and objectives.
Asking the students to research about a subject and then having to explain it to the class, it’s a highly efficacious strategy for the student to learn. Among other useful dynamic activities we can mention games like jeopardy, trivia, crossword puzzles, group projects, etc. The key is to try to find a point of interest among the students as to contrive to seize their attention. As this plight continues to prevail the education worldwide, organizations should take action by striving to increase the discipline and number of solutions in their institutions for the benefit of preparing the future generations that will be in charge of our world. They should take with forethought the pros and cons about memorization vs.
learning and ponder on how this process of memorization will affect the upcoming generations. If the people continue this way without reforming their learning methods, we cannot expect less than a society with a lack of leadership qualities and ability to govern themselves. We must continue to promote the education of students for their own personal growth and brilliant years to come in order for them to be able to sustain themselves both economically and psychologically with the right nutrients to sate their cognitive perceptions.
