Deconstruct #3 - Week of 1/17

So I'm sitting in my local coffee shop working this week. It was Monday, MLK day. Across from me is a high school age girl concentrating with stacks of index size cards spread out all around her. The girl is ferocously trying to memorize things. I see her picking up a card, then closing her eyes and reciting something quietly to herself. my mind wanders...back to MY high school and college days where someone could have found me in the campus library with a similar set up. I reflect back to what I might have been studying. I remember, I was a bit older than this girl but I was studying for my CPA exam which I took right out of college. The hardest I have ever studied in my life. I locked myself in a hotel room for a week prior to my exam so I could eat, sleep and drink accounting so that I would pass the reknown test. The test that 70% of people all fail the first time they take it. I took review classes that told us what would be on the test and drilled question after question which were to be similar to the questions on the test. So I ask myself, did I really "learn"? Learn in the way I know the word now? What do I remember? and other similar questions. Although I do have to say I do remember some of what I studied, but is this the most effective way to learn something? I don't think so. It was the age old drill and test method. I spent every waking moment trying to learn this information. The amount of information covered in the 4 tests was enormous. In comparison to the information I can now recall is minimal. In fact, the information I can recall is directly related to the information I used shortly after and therefore constructed knowledge.

I look back at the girl in the coffee shop working so hard to memorize facts and I think of "The Big Picture". I wonder if she is studying something she is passionate about? I know the answer, because she wouldn't be forcing herself to memorize. I wonder if she could be learning anything, what it would be? how would someone this far down the road of our "defunct traditional education system" do if we provided her with an opportunity to learn whatever they wanted? I think she would respond simlarily to how I feel. Somehow it almost seems too good to be true. You mean we can learn what we want, what we are interested in? That seems easy? Could school really be about what we want it to be, defined by the student? To me it almost seems like a euphoric idea, although I know how beneficial for the student it would be. I only hope I can somehow provide an environment like this for my children so they don' thave to be exposed to the warped system I did. So they won't be tainted like I am about "What they SHOULD learn."