Education isn’t failing us, our memories are
A while ago, I stumbled onto an Associated Press story about a then-recent study that showed most American high school students could not locate Iraq on a map specifically of the Middle East. The story went on to list other countries and U.S. states that were troublesome for our nation’s youth.
I was neither shocked nor offended to learn of such statistics. As an aspiring art teacher, this lack of concern might seem contradictory initially, but let me elaborate.
“Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” exemplifies my point. If you are unaware, the game show tests the contestant’s knowledge against that of a group of 5th graders.
The question-base covers simple things that everyone was once taught. Though most people I know wouldn’t have trouble answering a majority of the questions, what the show teaches is that we humans simply forget things after time.
To me, high school students not being able to locate Iraq has more to do with the fact that we Americans don’t carry a world atlas in our back pockets.
In a sense, unless you’ve traveled to other countries or know someone in them, they are largely abstract thoughts that you’ve never touched or experienced. And not everyone is a spatial/visual learner.
Not everyone will excel at permanently memorizing the placement of a shape or image in congruence to other shapes.
Since I hope to teach art as well as coach, I would never diminish the importance of any educational subject in elementary and high school education, since the arts and physical education are the most neglected areas in our school systems. However, in time, we will permanently remember only what knowledge areas we are required to use during the course of our lives.
For example, in junior high school, I just missed the cut to be in the most advanced math classes. When I took my ACT’s as a junior, I was only at an Algebra II level, (at least a year behind most everyone else who tested) but I still scored in the 80th percentile.
Great for me, right? Not exactly. I did Post Secondary Education Option my senior year and didn’t take a math class.
When I got to NDSU, I failed the math placement test, not necessarily because I was weak in math, but because I hadn’t done it in over a year.
Also, other than some vague abstract concepts, I hardly remember anything from my first semester at NDSU, even though I made the Dean’s List.
The great part is that someday soon, I’ll have the pleasure of paying for all that schooling that I can’t remember.
The point I want to make here is that there is a lot of social babble about how our nation’s education system is supposedly falling behind others. This makes us feel inferior so we decided to test the snot out of our children and make it so prospective art teachers need to take math classes.
Though it would be wonderful if everyone could know everything, please realize that we don’t live in a space-aged society. Not everyone needs to understand rocket science. Besides, being intelligent is different than possessing knowledge.
Maybe Japanese students do understand Pythagorean Theorem at age 5. Who cares? I don’t. Sometimes in the end, the human brain falls back on the Theory of Relevance, which states that we permanently learn only that which we find relevant.
Erich is a senior studying art.
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum