Saturday, February 18

Memorizing for the Grade


 Judi Dench, British actress who appeared in many James Bond movies, revealed recently that she can no longer read lines and memorize...  she says she used to have a photographic memory...


Memorizing lines, I suppose is neccessary for an actor or an actress and is probably a useful tool to have in other professions as well, but for college students it is not the approach to learning that they should be taking.   Unfortunately, memorizing is exactly what they are doing.


The last 3 years of full time employment was spent teaching classes at a local university.  I taught 5 classes a semester and a couple of classes during the summer semesters.  When I retired in 2015, I continued to teach classes on a parttime basis for 5 years at another local university.


In both those situations, I would ask my students what they remembered from the classes they just finished the previous semester and they replied NOTHING...   when I asked why, they replied that they memorized for the test, then forgot.  They all got "As" and "Bs".


These classes they were talking about were not electives but their businesses classes which information they would need after graduation in their business degree related jobs and profession.


These students who have GPAs of 3.5 and 4.0 will obviously get jobs but it is doubtful that they will be able to use the knowledge that they did not learn.  However, most of the business world does not rely on college business classes to run their businesses.  And therein lies the other problem.  If they actually used the knowledge from college, their businesses would operate better and more efficiently and effectively...  BUT THEY DON'T...  and, these new graduates are not bothered by what they have not learned.


How far do you think our businesses are going to go with that as their basic operating principles?


I would suspect not far...  but if they did manage to survive, it would be just marginally.

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