That's funny, but not really an apt depiction. Professors aren't really there to modify the affective value of the student. Rather, learning is the burden of the student. Both, the tutor and professor prioritize, with the former prioritizing to the needs of the individual student and the latter prioritizing to the needs of the class. Unless you're naive, affective aspect of education is the last thing they care about.
You are talking college. At that point, I agree that self-study and motivation should be a larger role of the student. But students shouldn't be learning basic math and science that late in life, nor should they be expected to be total self-starters at ages before college. Students should grasp basic algebra before middle school, rudimentary trig before high school and basic calculus before college, regardless of their self-starting nature.
This can be done through mindless repetition (although long term retention will be very low), or it can be done through the student taking a vested interest in the material. Making it a piece of story is one way, as are student teacher programs, where the student teaches or helps younger students with the material.
Instead, we give the kid a lesson plan or selected reading to do, come up with a dozen questions about that reading that are simply memory recall, then move on to the next lesson with little overlap or correlation. This is as true as it is for math as it is for science, history or language arts. The difference is that connecting the dots in history is relatively simple, since it is one larger piece of narrative. And reading/writing are skikls we use daily, so any lessons we learn are inherently seen in everyday interactions. One of my weirdest experiences was studying both infinite verbs in English and Spanish class at the same time, though I could barely put together a sentence in Spanish but was fluent in English.
Simply put, the entire education system is built around the idea of education (and the body of knowledge needed to be considered educated) was vastly different in the 18th and 19th century, when public education first truly entered into the world stage. Then, knowing history, reading/writing, basic addition/multiplication for accounting and liberal arts topics such as philosophy, humanities and classic literature was considered worldly. These are all topics that can be taught fairly well in the method of education we see today.
Yet more and more, math, science, problem solving and communication skills are much more relevant skills for students to be learning. But the form of teaching we used two hundred years ago breaks down in these disciplines for all but the most natural students and quickest learners. These students would be the type to go out and learn on their own anyway, so an education system does not need to do much to engage and demonstrate worth for them to take interest and soak the information in.
We need to find ways to make STEM studies as interesting to middle schoolers as pogs and Stretch Armstrong... or whatever the kids are into these days.
Retour en haut