--Originally published at Mental Droppings of a Tired Student
Sean was giving me life when he mentioned the problem with the all lives matter argument.
In general I agree with everything he said from then onward, I don’t think I was biased he just made some really good points. I never realised the flaws of instructional learning/ teaching. I suppose it’s good for cooking, like following a recipe and things that require a process. I like instructions when I plan on following them once and only once and then moving on with my life. However, as a method to teach students about what they will be doing the rest of their lives? Not such a great method.
When I was in high school I would tune out in class until the teacher finally began giving instructions, or showing us the cookie-cutter recipe to solve a problem. After all that is what they were evaluating, how well you could memorize and perform instructions, or how alike the student’s behaviour is to a machine. And I was an excellent machine, which is why I always got the best grades and realized my life and achievements were a lie when I started university.
Personalized learning became a myth to me in elementary school. I had an English professor who was incapable of keeping control of his 5th grade class and spent most of the class scolding other students or reading out loud and threatening to send you to the principal if you interrupted him. I’m big on multitasking, and I found sitting still and listening to someone read a story really difficult. So I started drawing while I listened. Boy did that get me in trouble. The professor ripped off the page I was drawing in, assuming I wasn’t able to pay attention to his lecture and draw at the
I’ve never had respect for people who follow rules blindly, because “those are the rules”. I find it very hard to comply if I think the rules are unnecessary, a trait that often got me in trouble as a child. One time I was denied access to school because I wasn’t wearing entirely white sneakers with my gym class uniform (they were white, but they had 3 pink stripes on the sides). As if the color of my sneakers would affect my learning. I tried to explain this to the teacher who supervised this preposterously rigid dress code, but her argument was that “rules are rules”. I had no cellphone at the time and my parents lived 40 minutes away, not to mention I would get yelled at back home if I dared call them and ask them to drive back down there to pick me up. So I simply left and sat outside all day. As an adult I realize now how irresponsible the staff were, a child alone outside all day… many things could have gone wrong.
I have many more horror stories like these,which are kind of like fun scars you get when you act rationally and not out of learned compulsion. This is why Sean’s entire talk really hit home with me, even some of the texts he quoted were so accurate. I think all teachers should hear what he has to say.
