Shabab Diaries: Reflection on Classroom Interactions in Comparative Settings
30 Jan 2008 in Education
Abdullah Al Thawr is the Youth Programs Officer for the Democracy School, Sana'a, Yemen and the MEYI Youth Ambassador.
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Memorization versus thinking and reasoning subjects is the constant issue found in school curriculums of countries in the Middle East, while the latter (critical thinking topics) is still struggling to find a place in the information crammed books. Yet with constant appeals and criticism by prominent thinkers and educators through the media to improve the curriculums, school students still have to memorize text book math examples to barely make it through a test.
In another post I wrote a piece titled "Pay It Forward", I described a movie that I invited readers to watch. While watching this movie, I recalled a personal experience worth sharing with you, related to the style of education, and particularly the way the teacher was teaching that social studies class in the movie.
The movie started with a scene in the social studies class room with the teacher introducing the new subject to the students. My attention was grabbed by the teacher of that class and by his style of teaching. He started describing to the students how Social Studies is the students’ way of interacting with the world. What does the world expect from them [the students], and what do they expect from the world? He asked them to think what kids in the seventh grade can give to the world, as he assigned to them an assignment of thinking of an idea that can change the world and putting it into action. The teaching style was engaging and thought-provoking.
On the contrary, let me share with you how Social Studies is taught in my country:
I remember when I was in middle school and high school, how we used to dislike Social Studies and History classes. We even used to search for any silly excuse to skip out. Our Social Study or History class was simply as follows:
- Teacher enters class and shouts: "open your books to page XXX"
[Pages flipping, small side talks and chattering fading away] - Teacher takes pen and writes on board 4-5 short sentences which are the sub-topics of today's lesson.
- Teacher asks students to read aloud out of the book today's lesson in turns.
[One student is reading aloud, the students are yawning, teacher is busy with his mobile] - Teacher shouts "Take your pens and let's mark the answers of the textbook questions in today's lesson. These questions will be in the exam"
- Teacher shouts "I want to see these questions and answers written in your copybook by next class, or you will lose marks"
[Students object to writing all the questions and answer and argue that it is the same as in the book. Teacher refuses to listen. - Bell rings.
- Teacher leaves, students come back to life.]
As you can see in my simple description of a Social Studies class, there is no mention of a student discussing something about the lesson, nor are they asked to use their critical thinking and reasoning skills. Instead, the lesson is about memorizing and writing questions found in the book as homework. So it doesn't matter if a student attended the class or not, because the exam will come from only the book and he can read it on the night of the exam.
For example, in the ninth grade examinations, (which are offered by the Ministry of Education for the whole country instead of the school individually), the Social Studies/Geography/History “same day test” is considered the biggest cause of anxiety for ninth graders as they have to 'memorize' six books that have been taught all year (each book is about 100-150+ pages) for a test of one day. Moreover, the test given is considered very easy for students who memorized the books well, as it gives easy questions with some asking specific details to test if you memorized well, rather than test if you think well. Test makers argue that they make the test easy to reduce the pressure on the students during the examinations period. Wouldn't reducing the study load be easier than making the test easy and uncompetitive for students who drained themselves while memorizing tons of information just to write one page of short answers?
Dr. Djavad also talks about similar testing methods in Iran in two posted entries. Click here (first article) or here (second article) to read about it.
A US educator, Diane Ravitch, once said, "The person who knows "how" will always have a job. The person who knows "why" will always be his boss."*
Arab countries are in desperate need of leaders and innovators, and specifically the people who know "why". Isn't it time for us to change the quality of our education and teach the "how" and the "why" together instead of just teaching "what will the test questions be"?
*Source: Microsoft Encarta Premium 'Quotations'
From Al Gassim Sharafuddin on 4 March 2008, 14:30
As I was reading your post, you mentioned the movie “Pay It Forward” which I always found a very interesting movie. In the movie, When Trevor did the assignment he used Imagination then started thinking, reasoning, and then started his plan. His plan is not only a smart plan but also an intelligent plan from a seven grader. He came up with this idea because he used his brain and not only one part of it “Memorizing” as we do in our education.
As a U.S. film producer and animator said, “If you can dream it you can do it.”*
A Student should not only use the left cortex that deals with logic, words, numbers, and reasoning in contrary should not only use the right cortex that deals with images, imagination, and patterns only. A student should use both cortexes, and this helps on memorizing and expanding the information a student have. Schools should also help a student use both cortexes, by changing the way of teaching to better by involving work of both cortexes.
Students always have and had this thought “How am I going to study?” Most people might tell you just memorize and understand. Although this question that always face students and they always get the same answer “memorize and understand” while most students skip the understand part , which we cannot blame them for that because they are not thinking and reasoning at school to understand, and they are not given time to do that at home either.
There are many ways a student can use to study smarter. For example, I would like to share my humble experience, am a student at 9th grade and I have taken two lecture’s of how to study smarter they are very helpful, but I don’t find enough support or maybe no support at all from the school itself. Moreover, School makes me hate studying, makes me more nervous about everything, and also forget why am I actually studying-sometimes-. At the first week of school I had this motivation to study and be as I recalled “Organized,” the first problem I faced was that the school did not give us a Timetable, and two of our teachers did not come for the first two weeks. Anyways, I became careless from time to time.
When is our education and schools going to be better and add all new important techniques of teaching, studying…etc into practice and not only watching other country’s do them!
If you want to learn how to study smarter try to find out where they make lectures for that near you, or go to: http://www.studygs.net.
*Source Microsoft Encarta 2008