Thursday, September 23, 2010

Communication

So, we all have issues with the way that things are happening in our classes, on our campus and in our society...but we aren't going to solve anything just complaining about it. We don't associate the classroom with learning (as we stated in class today) and we want "kindergarten" back, but still want to be treated like adults....

Our professors (Dr. Borders not included) are teaching the way they were taught. They teach the way they were taught how to teach. They are teaching the way college classes around the world are generally taught. They don't know they're doing anything wrong.

If we don't tell them that we aren't learning in the classroom they won't ever understand it. Learning is in the hands of the student. Professors can't force knowledge into our brains. I honestly don't think the solution to our issues are that huge...we just need to communicate our desires for classroom environments to our professors.

In science it's easy to do an experiment or observe something in order to understand the topic of discussion. In psychology we can study real people's behaviors. In english we can act out stories, or write our own versions. In religion we exegete, discuss, and pretend to be Romans and Zealots. In business classes we can make our own "businesses" and apply what we learn to them as if they were real; or maybe students could create actual businesses that provide services or supplies to other students. It's not that hard to think of ways to make classrooms more like "kindergarten" with hands-on learning, we just have to help our professors get a little creative.

1 comment:

  1. My internet is pretty bad right now so I could not load the youtube video, but as far as your writing is concerned I think you are somewhat correct. I do think that coming up with ways to make class more like kindergarten would not be that hard, but getting to the level where teachers would be willing to put in the extra work could be difficult. Lectures are the way to go these days as far as education is concerned and to simply change that fact would be a lot harder than I think most people realize. I love your ideas about what different classes could do to engage the students, I just think that simply letting the professors know about our issue would not do the trick. I think this process will take a lot of time and will be a slow developing thing...but lets start working on it now instead of just accepting that this is how it is.

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