Daily Archives: April 28, 2003

Incompetency of School Curricula

There are two underlying issues in the incompetency of the current school curricula. One: not using failure as a learning tool. Two: the emphasis on memorization over application.

Almost everything in school is one shot, and that’s it. In games, there’s a certain amount of trial and error going on. It’s okay to be bad when first starting. It’s okay to fail a level, and retry. It’s okay to repeat an RPG from the beginning, learning from previous mistakes. A writer never has the first draft as a finished product. So, why should timed writes be so emphasized. There’s no time to edit them at all. They have to be organized perfectly at first.

There’s only one try for a homework assignment or test, and then it’s graded. Kaput. This keeps a standard of perfection that no student can achieve 100% of the time. Thus, the standards are lowered so that more students can meet them. Lower expectations begets lower achievements.

If schools allow students to fail, but learn from failures without great consequences, the bar could be raised without fear of stragglers. The stragglers don’t stay behind; they’re allowed to try again. This will makes students more willing to try. School should be for learning. They should learn their limits and adapt themselves. However, if they’re afraid to try, they will never achieve anything.

Memorization hardly achieves anything. I’m near the memorization of 100 decimal places of pi. Where will the get me? If I don’t practice, the skill begins to deteriorate and I can quickly shift back 50 decimal places. Likewise, kids are learning facts in school. Let’s say, the French Revolution. They memorize all these facts for the test. What happens after the test? Go ask the students and see what they remember.

With application, skills build on each other, such as in math. You have to remember your algebra if you want to do calculus. If students didn’t need algebra for calculus, they wouldn’t remember it.

If students can’t critically apply information, then what good is it? So, let’s say you know all the facts about criminals and the jail system in your county… What are you going to do about it? Shouldn’t school emphasize actions?

As I said yesterday, memorization is useless because when faced with variations, students cannot adapt. If they truly understood the concept, they would be able to use and apply it.

Schools should place more emphasis on the why’s and how’s of situations. This truly leads to understanding the topic. It’s said that he who doesn’t know his history is condemned to repeat it. So, are you less likely to repeat history if a) you understand Hitler’s intentions, or b) you memorize which dates certain battles in World War II took place. I’m going with A.

Together, these concepts could work wonders. Think about science. A hypothesis is not always right. Students should be able to form their own hypothesis, and not be afraid to be wrong. Sometimes you learn more from being wrong, than from being right.