Edumacation- Who’s to blame?

If don’t know already, I’m 20 years old, and I go to college. I never thought of myself as a genius, but in junior high school and high school I always did my homework, classwork, did well on tests, got E’s (Excellent- equivalent to a 95) and some G’s (Good- equivalent to an 85) on my report cards (I never went to schools where there gave out As, Bs, and Cs). I always felt that high school and junior high school were easy and I never knew why. My mom told me that she spoke to her friends and their kids always got a ton of homework and their grades were always lower that mine. I spoke to my friends in junior high and high school and they were always amazed that I had a 93 avg. Their averages ranged from a 60 to a 75. I was equally surprised that they weren’t performing better while getting such easy work. My mom, like any good mom, always told me I’m so smart, and I’m this and that and I always thought she was just trying to be nice and give me a confidence boost.

So in my first year of college, I expected to be challenged a bit more. I go to a private university. Before I started attending, I was accepted into the honors program so I was very pleased about that. In my first semester, I got 3 A’s and 2 A-’s. After 3 semesters, my GPA was a 3.72. I don’t want to sound like I’m showing off, but I’m very proud of myself and a bit surprised actually. The classes are harder than in j.h.s. and h.s. but still manageble. I used to hear stories of people not having any time for anything except homework in college and I always thought my life was going to be over. I even heard stories of people committing suicide because of all the work and pressure that was put on their shoulders. That amazed and scared me all at once. I knew deep down there is no situation in which I would kill myself, no matter what, but that’s for another blog post.

So this year, last month actually, I began tutoring a young girl in mathematics. She is in 4th or 5th grade (based on the work she’s getting, that’s just an approximation.) It’s actually very sad, but when I started tutoring this girl, I quickly understood, she can’t multiply. And not huge numbers- she can’t multiply 3 x 7 without using her fingers. We were going over an algebraic equation that required her to multiply 3 by 7, and she did it out loud, also being assisted by 7 of her 10 fingers. First, she multiplied 2 by 7 and came up with 14, and then she added, one by one, 7 more to that answer. I’m not even exaggerating. She physically counted 7 more fingers on 2 hands. Later on, we were going over another equation and she had to multiply 2 by 3. Sadly, it took her several seconds to come up with the answer. I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say. I told her she needed to work on her multiplication tables, and she answered, “Oh, that’s not on the test.” Apparently her teacher gives the class a short quiz each friday.

I came back to tutor her on another day. This time I made up an example for her that had pi in it. I asked her if she knew what pi was, and she said of course she knew. She assured me that we needn’t go over it. So as she was doing the problem, I realized she may have heard of pi but she didn’t know what it was. I told her I could quickly explain it, and once again, she answered, “It’s not on the test.” She still didn’t know how to multiply at this point.

What I go from my experience is this: The teachers go in everyday teaching one thing and telling the students it will be on the test. The students don’t have any initiative to maybe learn about things that won’t be on the test on their own. If it isn’t on the test, then the student thinks they shouldn’t learn it. Well, why should they, after all, they aren’t being tested on it. It’s not as if any of this stuff can come in handy in the future! But students in junior high schools don’t realize that what they’re learning is the basis of everything they will be working on in high school and college, and possibly even at their jobs. And the thing is, after their test, the students just forget everything they learned that week, and begin preparing for next week’s test. I don’t understand. If the teacher sees that the student, in this case the girl I tutor, isn’t doing well on tests or can’t multiply single digit numbers, why doesn’t the teacher talk to the parents. I remember learning the multiplication tables with my mom in like 4th grade. I would follow my mom around and she would shoot out numbers, “6×7″, “42″, she says “7×4″ I say “28″ and so on. I knew the multiplication table up to 12 within 2 weeks.

Either kids these days are like drones, just learning things that willbe tested, only to forget them after the exam, or these kids just don’t want to learn anymore. Your thoughts?

Web max-whatsonmymind.blogspot.com

Table Tennis

One game I can actively partake in during any part of any day is ping pong. So since I don’t have a ping pong table at home, I do the next best thing- play on the internets!! Miniclip gave me some code to paste so it might have an ad in it somewhere. Enjoy it though. It’s really fun once you get the hang of it.

Table Tennis Amazingly realistic table tennis game!

Play this free game now!!

Web max-whatsonmymind.blogspot.com