“In less then a year dear, you’ll be on your own without mommy or daddy to hold your hand. Start preparing”.
dagosa–I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, in too many classes today (and this includes college courses), there is too much memorization required with little application. I have had students ask “What should we memorize for the test?” My answer to this: “You will see problems on the test that you didn’t see in class. If you have kept up with the outside work, you should be able to do these problems”. What I found disturbing, particularly in my last ten years of teaching, is that I had younger colleagues who never picked up assignments. One colleague complained to me that his linear algebra students, when asked if any had questions over the assigned work, none had a question. Yet, when it came to a test, these students did poorly. I asked him if he picked up the assignments and the answer was NO. He didn’t think that one should have to pick up and grade assignments.
In my last years of teaching, our classrooms were equipped with digital camera devices. We could place an object under the camera and it would be projected on a screen. One of the funny, but sad experiences I had was just before class started, a group of students were snickering and one told me that I wasn’t teaching the way I should. I asked how I was supposed to teach. The student responded, “You are supposed to project the textbook onto the screen and read it to us. That is what our other professors do”. I responded, “I’m not your other professors. I think you are all able to read for yourselves”. During a free period, I walked down the hall and I had colleagues that were teaching just the way the students described. My students weren’t really critical of me–they knew what a couple of other faculty were doing was a joke.
There is a book that came out a year ago titled “Academically Adrift–Limited Learning on College Campuses”. Roughly 4000 students were tested in critical thinking, problem solving and writing skills on 20 different college campuses. The conclusion was that students were making little or no gains in their first two years of college. As a nation, we are going through the mortgage crisis. I am afraid that the next big hit will be public higher education. With college loan debt exceeding credit card debt and many college graduates not employable, there is a big problem on the horizon.