Week 7: Has your education failed you?

I was taught from a very young age that as a student, success looks like good grades, and quick
responses with correct answers. After all, no kid ever wants to have the worst grade in the class,
or to be the last one to find the answer, and that seems to be the biggest theme of my entire
childhood experience. Starting elementary school at the age of five, I feel as though I was a very
excited student, eager to learn as much as possible. From what I remember, I had an amazing time
succeeding throughout these years, and I remember the contentment I would feel as I would be the
first one to finish a test, the first one to get the answer right in front of the whole class, and even to
be the student that finished early and got to help out other students afterwards. At this age, I had an
older sister at home who I got to see do her homework and succeed in school, which ultimately
motivated me to do the same. In addition, from the time before I had even begun school, my mom
would always bring home “fun activity” books and every single night we would work together to
learn a new skill before I had the opportunity to learn that skill in the classroom. Quickly, I found
school to almost be “too easy” because I already knew about the majority of the lessons my teachers
were teaching, which allowed me to never have to study, or to even schedule more than twenty
minutes to do my homework outside of school. After being labeled as “gifted” and receiving a
variety of awards for being “such a great student” I felt as though the whole learning process took
little to no effort. 

Walking into sixth grade, I was rudely awakened by the fact that I had to actually pay attention and work at understanding new lessons in school, and at receiving good grades since I no longer wanted to spend my time outside of school listening to my mother teach me things that I was eventually going to learn anyway. However, when I was really trying to succeed at this level, I caught on to the idea that middle and high schools only really care about your grades, not about how much you know as a student. Soon, no one cared about how fast I could answer a question in class, and they really only wanted to know what score I received on the latest test. Furthermore, I realized that all I had to do was memorize facts, and be obedient in order to be viewed as “smart” and to “succeed” with good grades. At this time all throughout middle and high school, I just made sure that I completed all of my homework assignments (sometimes even cheating by using the internet), and memorized the study guide the night before a test or quiz, and this process really honestly worked for me as a student. I felt as though I was receiving the grades I desired, thus making my parents, teachers,  and everyone else around me proud. While I enjoyed the social aspect of middle and high school as well as playing plenty of sports, I feel as though little to none of my teachers taught because they cared or wanted their students to really learn for a bigger purpose, or because they were super passionate about a specific subject, which is something that really took away from my overall experience as a student.

Now, as a college student aspiring to be a teacher, I feel almost as if I have been betrayed by the school system, and I want to change the aspect of memorization and testing that seems to be so highly valued in classrooms today. I want my elementary students to feel as confident as I did in elementary school not because they are getting the answers right the fastest and acing their quizzes, but because they’re asking good questions, learning how to study ideas that they may not have any background knowledge on, and/or because their answer today has improved from yesterday, even if it still isn’t all of the way there. Overall, I want the classroom to be a place where teachers are passionate, and students are able to learn how to actually learn.

Isidore Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize for physics, was once asked why he became a scientist. He replied: "My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, 'What did you learn today?' But my mother used to say, 'Izzy, did you ask a good question today?' That made the difference. Asking good questions made me into a scientist."