Learning about teaching

11-6-13

I am slowly picking up the teaching styles of instructors and learning habits of my students.

It seems what we call teachers are really lecturers here. Their job is to give assignments and write or dictate the lesson material on the board. It is the student’s job to understand the material and not the lecture’s job.

Testing is a means to determine how well the student understands the material and is not a measure of how well the lecturer presented it. If a student does poorly, it is because the student is at fault for not studying hard enough.

Many tests are made extremely difficult, way beyond the student’s and the school’s capabilities and resources. A person looking at the tests gets a different opinion than what is actually happening. Understandably tests that reflect what the student actually knows can be an extreme embarrassment on the educational system. This creates a system where a 50% score is considered good or the resent example here where every student taking the college entrance exam failed.

One of the Peace Corps teachers here gave an assignment to write a report about a type of rock. A student turned in a long paper about cabbage. It seems that many teachers use reports as busy work without actually reading what the students write.

In all fairness, education involves three parties: the student, the teacher, and the school system. Here, like in the States, the critical question of just what the educational objective of each of the parties is never addressed, let alone how to achieve them.

As for my objective, I would like the students to appreciate and walk away with a little knowledge of the wonders of the human body. Maybe their objective is to get a good grade and move on. As for the university’s objective, I would bet it involves money and job security.