There is a video that's been going around Facebook lately, from a young Brit named Suli Breaks who is "an educated man" speaking out against school, in favor of education. It's titled, "I will not let an exam result decide my fate." You can watch it below:
Today, I want to give a teacher's response: mine.
I thought about putting on my hoody and shooting a video in front of the Rotunda at UVA, but decided I didn't really have the film crew and editing skills to make the video as slick and polished as Suli's. Not to mention, I don't have a British accent so it probably wouldn't sound as cool either. (But if there are any locals out there who'd like to help with this, I'm game to do it!)
I will not let the system take over my profession.
I can relate to Suli's experience as a student, but he's only told you half the story. One side. I'm going to tell you the rest of the story: the teacher's perspective. But first, let me tell you a bit about me and how I got here.
When I was little, I loved problem solving. Now, I didn't call it that then, I called it "figuring stuff out" or "taking stuff apart and then trying to put it back together again", but it was problem solving nonetheless and I LOVED it. Loved. It. A lot. The thing was, I didn't really get to do it in school. I did it on my own, in my room, out in the woods, or with my family & friends. My parents have all kinds of stories of me "doing stuff", but I don't think my teachers had any.
Despite this, I liked school. I liked learning stuff, being around other people, and, for the most part, I liked my teachers. My plan was always to go to college, but initially I wanted to be an engineer: an aerospace engineer in fact, and I wanted to go to Embry-Riddle. Why? Because it was the best and that's what I wanted to be.
But I didn't go to Embry-Riddle and I didn't become an engineer. Why? A teacher's influence. Well, a teacher's influence and a realization that I had a knack for explaining things to people so they understood it (often for the first time). The end result? I became a teacher. I majored in mathematics instead of engineering as an undergraduate, then sought out advanced degree programs that focused on both knowing how to do math AND knowing how to teach math. I've been teaching for the last 25 years or so and I still love that moment when a student "gets it" and the light goes on.
But you want to know what I don't love? What I hate, in fact? I hate that our educational system is obsessed with the silver bullet notion of learning: the myth that there is one thing that can "fix" everything that's wrong. I hate that universities are run like corporations focused on the bottom line rather than what is being taught. I hate that the students I see in my classrooms today are NOT as curious, interested, or personally equipped to learn than the students I saw 25 years ago. Yes, they have smarter devices, but they are no smarter about using them. They still think that if it's in Wikipedia it must be true. They still have no idea how to find out what they need to know in order to solve an open-ended, non-traditional problem. In fact, in many ways, I think they are less capable of thinking on their own than their predecessors from a few decades ago. Just to be clear, my students are adults, so please spare me the excuses about how they just haven't learned those skills yet. These are products of our K12 system I'm talking about!
There are so many days I feel like I'm the only one in the student-teacher partnership who's actually TRYING. My students come to class having done nothing, NO-THING, to prepare to learn. They constantly ask for "extra" credit when they've earned no initial credit to begin with. They, like the system, want the "quick fix": "Just tell me the answer" they beg, thinking that it is the only one they'll ever need. Not realizing that the question changes and therefore the answer I give them today is completely useless for tomorrow's problem.
What Suli and every other student out there needs to hear is that there are teachers out here like me who don't give a damn about your exam results. We care about whether you know how to THINK. We care about the kind of people you are becoming. We care that you learn how to get along, to be kind, to learn, and to have the default setting that if you want something, you need to work for it rather than sitting and waiting for someone to hand it to you. I need you all to know that exam results can't measure what is really important BUT, and this is key, they CAN show that you can perform some tasks, that you have some foundational knowledge, and that you have the ability to succeed even when the circumstances are not ideal to do so.
References:
Original video on "Why I hate School, but Love Education"
The University of Suli Breaks Tumblr site
The Solver Blog
Author: Dr. Diana S. Perdue