“If you are ready to be challenged — to grow, to change and to learn . . . then UW-Madison is for you,” boasts the university’s literature for prospective students. It may as well have been from any institution of higher education in the country; everyone bills college as a time of epiphany for the student, a blossoming of the brain and fertile soil for greater self-understanding.
They certainly sold me. Unfortunately, like most college students in the country, I was ripped off.
It was not a case of technical fraud: I have grown, changed and learned since I came to college. But with a few notable exceptions, it was not in the classroom.
Instead of soaking in the knowledge of professors in lecture, I mindlessly took notes. Instead of becoming deeply involved in readings and connecting them to my own life, I scanned them looking for important-looking stuff to highlight for the mid-term. Instead of taking classes in subjects I really enjoyed, I took what the university required. Instead of taking time to meet a wide variety of people and get away from the school atmosphere, I just tried to keep pace with my classes.
The only epiphany I have come to understand is the same one recognized by thousands of students: “College is great, except for the classes.” But it doesn’t have to be that way — and it cannot, if universities truly strive to live up to their billing.
The undue emphasis on exams does not stimulate students to find a connection with the material, to relate it to their own lives and become affected by it. In most cases, exams only stimulate students to regurgitate their professors’ connection with the material. They do not measure true knowledge; rather, they measure how well you take the test. For science students, this means getting lucky on what part of the immense material they have time to study. For humanities students, it means how good they are at reading the professors’ minds.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. The university could urge professors to de-emphasize exams, making them more problem-based and more grounded in reality, instead of requiring that students vomit everything the professor has said onto paper. Professors could instead make grade-determining assessments more project-oriented, a system that would make for more individualized learning, far more motivation and grading that rewards effort and initiative rather than memorization and luck.
In fact, the whole concept of grades themselves serves to detract from true growth, change and learning. Grades do not serve as motivation for learning, but motivation for doing just well enough on tests to survive; they do not instigate positive change or growth, but stress and bitterness.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. I do understand the desire for grades as a measuring stick for potential graduate students or those entering certain vocational fields, but they shouldn’t be required for everyone in every class. Why not allow students to take all their courses pass/fail if they want to? Wouldn’t eliminating the stress and tunnel vision of grades promote the kind of broad experience university leaders say they want for their students?
Instead of encouraging broad learning in this sense, universities merely tend to increase the number of requirements for a degree. Though the motives behind these efforts are beneficent, the results generally serve only to dampen the kind of student enlightenment they seek. Many humanities majors have no interest in the sciences, while many science majors don’t want to take classes in literature. I spent a semester in “Weather and Climate,” a semester that might have been interesting had I really cared about it. But I didn’t, and instead I just wasted three credits on a subject I didn’t want to learn about instead of one I might have wanted.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Why should there be any requirements outside of your major? After all, most students are paying for the opportunity to learn. Shouldn’t we be given the freedom to choose what we want to learn about?
All of these ideals might seem like a pipe dream for students trying to free themselves from the paternal grasp of the education system. But there are universities that do this, with leaders that trust the students to determine their own education and give them the freedom to decide their own best interests in learning.
The New Curriculum, or “Brown Curriculum,” named after the university of its origin, became popular in the ’60s and has been inappropriately labeled as politically “liberal,” perhaps because Brown implements other liberal ideas such as optional-clothing dorms. But the curriculum itself is not political in nature; it merely empowers students to take an active role in their own education. This individual tailoring breeds student motivation, responsibility and, ultimately, real education. Only when students pursue and feel motivation from their own deep interests can they truly discover themselves.
It would take guts for university administrations to abandon any part of their traditional diet of exams, grades and requirements. But others have shown this courage before. If they truly want to live up to their promise of growth, change and learning through education, they must encourage it through individuality and responsibility of their students — not conforming them through requirements and exams.
If not, when the alumni associations call me someday, asking for donations for the school that helped me “grow, change and learn,” I will only be able to respond with a question:
“What school is that?”
