The phrase that unites all of my lecture classes the past few semesters has been, “Will this be on the exam?” Variations come from professors and students alike.
When this phrase plagues our classrooms, I know we have missed the point. Me, you, our teachers. It is not the sole fault of students nor professors or administrators. It is a university-wide forgetting of the goal of an undergraduate education.
The diploma is not the end. The foundation of lifelong learning is.
The goal of a class is not to pass. It is to learn the material and discover new problem-solving strategies. Here, passing means doing well enough on exams, homework and discussions.
Success on these trivial markers supposedly stands in for a more internal process that I can only call education. In my view, education is the process of digesting and assimilating material such that one can both regurgitate and apply what one has learned.
Success on an examination most often equates to the ability to regurgitate and employ test-taking strategies. One must be able to work independently, under a time constraint, to answer multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank and essay questions from material one recently saw. Each of these types of questions have their own strategies that one may use to maximize one’s chances of success.
In most cases, it is not difficult for one to have a surface level understanding of material and get a good enough grade, even an A. Learning the material is a separate issue, one that I am not sure can be tested.
Will you be able to apply research skills three years down the line? How about order food for yourself in Spanish when abroad?
Students can pass a class without learning the material because our education has become a numbers game.
Students, myself included, calculate how many points we must score to get the overall grade we want. Studying becomes a matter of getting the desired number, the sought-after percent. Yet, grades become meaningless if they are not tied to the foundation of learning.
Employers should not care if I got an A in calculus if I cannot do a derivative. As statistical concerns replace educational concerns, we set ourselves back when it comes to entering graduate school and the workforce.
But what is the root of the issue?
Part of the problem is that professors do not challenge students enough, and we become complacent, not asking more of our teachers. As students, we want to learn for ourselves, our future careers and for our fellow citizens, the people with whom we make our world. Yet, we get stuck in a culture of competition and numbers games.
Another issue is that our professors are not teachers first. They are researchers, department heads, committee members, and, on top of all of that, teachers. Professors wear too many hats. They do not have the time and energy to teach good classes.
Finally, there are some students who really do just want to get their diploma and get out. These students, unfortunately, are not few and far between. They are also not unreasonable because much of the current workforce expects us to have a college diploma. These students should not be the ones that the University of Minnesota caters to the most, as it does now. The University should strive to convert these indifferent, apathetic students into lovers of learning.
We need a better culture of education rather than a culture of competition. This culture will only come from devoted students, professors and administrators.
At the undergraduate level, the University has become a diploma mill. The value of my education is on a downward spiral. Real learning is out there somewhere, but it is hard to come by here, at school, when the only thing I am expected to care about is my grade.
We must strive to learn, not for school, but for life.
Emma Bourne is a senior studying plant and microbial biology and an alumna of Deep Springs College. She is the founder of the UMN Luddite Club.
