Today at around 1:15 PM, I got a cup of iced coffee and sat down at a table outside the cafe, ready to study for the quiz in my next class.
I realized, by the time I found the materials and finished my coffee, that I only had 15 minutes left to study for my weekly quiz. I started taking notes out of the textbook, scrawling the most important points.
"Ch. 10
Act politically: know limits of your authority and stakeholders interests and power networks in your org. in order to forge alliances w/ ppl who will support you, defuse opposition and const. criticism
-expand your informal authority
*strengthen realtionships
*early wins
*address interests that don't have to do w/ the adaptive challenge
*see small pieces of your ideas
-stay connected to position
-find allies
-manage authority figures
-take responsibility
-protect voices of dissent"
As I finished writing and read over my notes, I realized I had no idea what any of it meant. I thought about reading the text more in depth, but I stopped myself. It was a waste of time, to be honest. I knew that the quiz was based only on what was in the textbook, word for word. It did not matter whether you understood what you were writing, you just had to write down what you had memorized.
I quickly committed the notes to memory and speed-walked to my class. As the professor handed out the quiz, I read the first question and froze.
"How does this chapter of the textbook pertain to you, personally?"
What the heck? This was not anything like the past few quizzes we had taken. The other questions had all been definitions, lists, or true/false. So I skipped the first question and answered the other questions which were straight out of the text. By the time I got back to the first question, my mind was more clear. I quickly scribbled out an answer, got up and handed the paper to the professor.
As we began going over the quiz, like we always do, I realized I had gotten an 80%. Every answer was correct, except question number one.
I had been conditioned to memorize and regurgitate information so often that when I was requested to think for myself, I could not.
So what does this say about the American school system? It says that students are taught to idolize a grade instead of knowledge. We crave the letter A more than we desire new information. We would rather have a 100% than necessary intellect. We hope for a 4.0 instead of becoming smarter.
The thing is, it is easy to have an exam based on memorization than to test overall knowledge.
But, it is time for all that to change.
