Memorizing for the GRADE

 On Monday of this week, I re-published a article that at FOX News online about employers not wanting to hire college grads.

For three years prior to y retirement in 2015, I taught business classes at a university here in TN.  My students told me they remembered nothing from the previous class because all they did was memorize for the grade.

This incorrect thought process started back in the 1980s/1990s, I believe, when school officials wanted to increase test scores in high school.  The teachers taught the students only what was going to be on the test in the hopes of improving scores.

Students got smart and realized that HIGH GRADES would get them into the best colleges and LOW GRADES would get them into the least desirable colleges.

SO THEY BEGAN MEMORIZING.

IT WORKED...

SO THEY MEMORIZED IN COLLEGE.

When one forces oneself to memorize, then before anything else can be memorized, the student must do a BRAIN DUMP...

I experienced this first hand when I was studying for my NETWORK + exam at CompTIA.  I only missed one question... but, I remembered very little which was the whole point because I took the exam so I could teach another class at ITT Technical Institute.

I earned an MBA in 1981 and taught business classes from 2011 to 2014 and remembered so much that I hardly ever had to open the textbook to prepare for class.  I HAD RETAINED THE DAMN INFORMATION...

I am also sure that you realize that because employers were hot to trot for college grads, they put them in jobs that high school graduates were formally doing.  And if you got a Masters then you would be put into a job that formally was done by bachelor degreed employes.

The thinking was that if you were more education you had better people skills, better communications skills, better writing skills, better team work skills, better problem solving skills, and could see the forest instead of the trees.

EMPLOYERS SOON DISCOVERED THAT COLLEGE GRADUATES DID NOT POSSESS THOSE SKILLS...

I taught juniors and seniors.  They had very minor problem solving skills, they had entry level high school communication skills, they had piss poor presentation skills and they wanted to be told exactly what to do instead of having the ability to figure it out themselves.

They never read the textbook.  Never did their homework.  I know because I gave them pop quizzes and they all failed.  They did not know how to present a business paper nor did they know how to write a business letter.

I WOULD HAVE HIRED NONE OF MY STUDENTS WHEN THEY GRADUATED and I used to do lots of hiring and firing throughout my 45 year career.