Students are supposed to learn, right? And learning results in passing exams, right? That means that a good student, knowing enough to pass exams, has a good level of intelligence, right?
Maybe not. The mentality of passing exams hampers one's ability to think, apparently, if the Secret Teacher's article is to be believed.
Secret Teacher found that students had difficulty thinking things out for themselves. Thinking is a strenuous exercise. They need guidance to think - how big to draw a diagram, what words to use in a sentence, what conclusion should they arrive at, what are the correct answers, how many examples to give, etc ... what will show up in the exams - as they see their goal is to accomplish what is required for the grading tasks, in order to receive good grades.
The objective of actually learning something is not present in their thoughts. Thoughts are distractions. Showing the marker what he wants to see in order to be deemed worthy of good grades is the actual goal. Figuring it out for one's self isn't.
Do you see this kind of mindset in students today? Or is Secret Teacher's observation not universal?
I think that to a degree, Higher Education does not want students to think. They want students to gather thoughts from other "experts" as they need to read up many references and quote them in essays. Research is mostly repeating laboratory exercises and quoting from other people's work. The only time when students get to do any real thinking is when they are working towards their Ph D, but even then, much of the work is in consultation with other "experts" in the field, as they gather information through readings and discussions.
To have a thought to abstract is probably "wrong". Thinking is good, but it needs to be verified.
What do you think? How should one think? According to the norms that society and the education system tells us to? Or may one think more independantly?
Who is to guide, if the instructors are wrong?
Can one really discern right from wrong? How? Is education the answer?
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