Cramming

Three Hundred Fifty Eighth Post: Cramming

Once a teacher ask me if a would rather learn one subject really well or be more diverse and study many subjects briefly. What he meant was if I would rather be specialized in one job or have a broader, but less descriptive, knowledge in order to decide what I would like to do in life. He was talking about grades 9 through 12th .

I told him that I would pick a specialized curriculum because I was a Senior. He thought that I would pick a more diverse classes. His reasoning was to find what the student wants to do in life. I saw his point. His way would be a good way to learn. However when you start to find out what you want to study in school, military, or job after high school, I believe the time has come to concentrate on becoming an expert in your field.

But we cram all the knowledge of a job into 4 years or even months. The truth is you don’t become an expert overnight. You can study for months but the little things are learned over time. For example learning to use an advanced, graphing calculator overnight is a difficult task. But over the course of the semester, the student learns it gradually in increments will completing the assignments.

In math and science classes it is clearly visible that the amount of knowledge is too vast for any one student to learn. The answer to this problem is to teach problem solving skills. If the student doesn’t know the answer they research it. And if it is unknown they experiment.

I like that about the maths and sciences. Some disciplines look at math and science as uncreative and mostly being book work. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There is an art form to math and science because not ever answer is written down. The answer has to be found. That is the creative side of math and science. The fact that the answers are not given is what fosters creativity.

Now what other discipline has as much creativity by lack of answers or at least a brief description of the end result. After thinking for a while I would say... would say... “art.”

May the Creative Force be with You