LK-Abitur 2010-II, Topic 2: „School fails child­ren by tea­ching them to par­rot, not to think. Do you agree?“.

Auf­satz mei­nes LK-Schü­lers Axel Gan­zert.

Memorize Me

Does school prepa­re child­ren for real life? What is requi­red of a stu­dent to achie­ve good gra­des? It seems that the focus has shifted from being able to think on your own to being able to memo­ri­ze a lot of infor­ma­ti­on. This par­ro­ting might work in school but once con­fron­ted with new pro­blems, stu­dents will have a much har­der time hand­ling them, becau­se they were not taught how to think by themselves.

Child­ren should be taught cer­tain pat­terns to sol­ve pro­blems. This can be done by prac­ti­cing simi­lar things, giving them an approach to mul­ti­ple tasks which can­not be achie­ved through simp­le memorization.

A lot of stu­dents have adopted a wrong way of lear­ning. In most cases ever­y­thing is revi­sed the week befo­re a test and the result of this is that things are not stu­di­ed to be remem­be­red, but rather to be repro­du­ced. The pro­blem is that ever­y­thing is for­got­ten again in a mat­ter of days and is the­r­e­fo­re of vir­tual­ly no use.

Final­ly most child­ren are unfort­u­na­te­ly moti­va­ted by gra­des and not the pro­cess of lear­ning its­elf.  They are rare­ly asked what they lear­ned when they get home from a day of school. It’s usual­ly only the gra­des that count. This gives the impres­si­on that it’s not at all important what one is inte­res­ted in, only what has been achie­ved. The result is a vicious cir­cle of demotivation.

School will always have to be revi­sed and adapt­ed so that child­ren are able to use their acqui­red know­ledge best in adult­hood. The­re is pro­ba­b­ly no per­fect solu­ti­on, but tea­ching child­ren to par­rot and not to think is defi­ni­te­ly the wrong approach.