During my teaching days I became more and more miserably frustrated trying to teach. The problem was very simple. Today's average student, at leas the ones in my old school, had no study skills.
They acted like all they needed to do was to touch a page with the information and the knowledge would beam into their brains. They had never been taught to sit and work and do homework and listen etc.
I'm sure that many had been raised on their fathers' stories:
"I never went to class, just crammed before the bagrut. And I did fine."
I have no doubt that their fathers exaggerated, but at least their fathers had a basic foundation in studying. They had been trained when young to sit, listen, copy from the board, write sentences etc. Today's kids play. Elementary school classrooms are full of stimuli, distractions. Kids are walking around, talking, or sitting in groups ignoring the teacher. They "learn from" workbooks and circle the correct answer.
By the time I got them in high school, they were culturally learning disabled.
I know that the chareidi educational system hasn't adopted the new methods. So I'm not surprised to hear that its graduates succeed beyond all predictions when they have to learn totally new material to pass pre-university exams.
Not surprising. Many people I know don't bother doing their homework or studying enough for a test, and then they wonder why they do poorly.
ReplyDeleteLearning is a skill which takes practice. You're right.
ReplyDelete