My Reaction to Elena's Blog: "Blog #5- Education in the United States"

I totally get what you said about standardized courses. Last year I took AP Chemistry, and the teacher admitted that the goal of the class was to prepare us to do well on the AP exam. His strategies for teaching the class were then based off this. It’s kind of sad that the purpose of that class was to do well on a test, rather than simply learn chemistry. I learned a lot in that class, but I’ve forgotten most of it since I took the exam. It really did feel like we memorized stuff just in order to “spill it all out on a test.”

I think that this problem with learning is related to what Ken Bain wrote about in What the Best College Students Do. Sometimes, schooling requires you to take a “surface” approach to learning, where you simply memorize stuff in order to do well on a test. What students should try to do is learn “deeply,” where you think critically and take away some deep understanding of a subject that you can use later in your life. I like that we have the opportunity to do that a lot in the Honors College; in this class we have discussion questions, blogs, and essays in which we can develop our thoughts and develop a more solid, deep understanding of the topics about which we write.

(http://elenalatinamerica.blogspot.com/2014/02/blog-5-education-in-united-states.html?showComment=1391906077794#!/2014/02/blog-5-education-in-united-states.html)