Tuesday, February 14, 2012
As I sit here struggling to prepare for my arduous subject matter for my engineering classes, I am somewhat frustrated by my inability to grasp simple concepts that others seemed to easily relate to. Has our generation declined to the point where we have no hope of obtaining jobs in professions that hire the most gifted minds attainable? As an aspiring neurologists, I seek to understand everything about human intelligence, and how we learn most efficiently. The fact of the matter is, there is soemthing missing in our educational system, it is up to the students to discover the missing variable, and fix it before we fall to far behind in world innovation. Being a scholar is not tied to being a good student by any stretch of the imagination! Scholars read books , analyze them, ask teachers and others to aid them in their quest for knowledge, do personal research about topics they are truly interested in, and ask thoughtful questions about the world around them. Excellent students tend to pay attention in class, understand the taught subject matter, and ace the tests, right? In my opinion, I think students are striving to be the latter more so than the former, and it is ruining our educational system. We have seen perceptiveness and speed of brilliant students like Jeremy Jones, and Christina Hwang, who seemed to pull out A's without much effort. If we strive to be like those gifted "students" we have neglected to build prowess in a field of our own: curiosity. The effects of becoming a scholar rather than just a gifted student will not see to make a gargantuous difference within the first year of schooling, but your academic performance should improve substantially in future courses just by thinking like a "scholar". Think about it.
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Before assuming that something is missing or broken in our schooling system, you should first try to understand what has happened during the "decline" in student understanding. Most people work with technology and games on a regular basis so they see gaming develop at the same rate as education is falling apart. While there is a certain amount of fact about the relation to how long children play video games and their grade, there is a much greater component that is directly involved with the grades students get. Recently schools have introduced newer learning programs that are more rigorous and cover more difficult to learn concepts. John-Tyler classes, for example, are LITERALLY college level classes that are taught at a higher level or difficulty. Students who get straight 'A's normally find these classes more challenging are unable to get by with their previous level of study. Even the classes that are required are more difficult then ever before. Until recently, students would not see calculus level math until college. In english classes, they would only be asked to compare books that were assigned or summarize the book in a long book report. Now students must deduce the purpose for how the author wrote the story or what significance a vague line the author did not clarify has to the tone of the book. True, playing video games does have an impact on focus and depth of thought, but harder curriculums will cause grades to drop. Sometimes when you hear people say something is harder then it was 20 years ago, it really did change.
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