I cheated on a Physics 101 exam during my junior year of high school and all I got was a C+. My friend Jack who had taken the test earlier in the day walked me step-by-step through the main problem focused on the Doppler effect. Though I tried to memorize what he showed me, I ultimately failed to grasp the underlying principles and when the exam was placed in front of me, I drew a blank. The only thing I remembered from my secret meeting with Jack was the answer. This and only this I wrote down, which was probably a bad idea because there was no way I could have come up with it on my own without writing out my work. My professor looked at me with an air of disappointment for the rest of the term.
Students ten years from now might not be able to appreciate how many hours my peers and I spent cramming, the term for trying to memorize obscure facts and dates and formulas before a test just to forget them minutes later.
My experience highlights the peculiar core of our current educational system, which is still largely rooted in the Prussian model. Designed in the 19th century to produce disciplined, obedient workers for an industrializing economy, this model prizes standardized testing and rote memorization over more holistic, creative modes of learning.
It wasn’t always like this: in Ancient Greek city states like Athens, there were no standardized examinations, formal exams, or grading systems. There was an emphasis on critical thinking, ethics, and the arts. If we look at these three disciplines, we can see a common goal: discovering oneself through interaction with the outside world. In critical thinking, students sharpen their own ideas through dialogue/debate with others; in ethics, they learn a method to discover their own unique virtues; and in the arts they create works and observe their impact on the world.
This is actually how the human nervous system learns: it interacts with the world, observes the response, and then either strengthens or weakens specific neural connections through a process called long-term potentiation or depression. While memorization of obscure facts and logic has its place in certain professions, I think we’ll come to see these past centuries of the Prussian model as a detour from the way we were meant to learn: through experience.
My prediction for how future students will learn can be distilled to the following:
“One does not become a scientist by learning scientific facts. One becomes a scientist by practicing the scientific method” - Jordan Peterson.
I think there will be a return to nurturing the spark of curiosity within each student and giving them space to explore different ways of being in this world, becoming changed through every interaction they have.
I’d love for my children to live in a world where the Doppler effect elicits curiosity instead of angst.