After the second day of classes, I am giving even further thought to dropping my education degree. Even though I am quite close to completing the required courses for the B.A., I just don’t know if I can handle the banality any longer. Paradoxically, the entire School of Education claims to focus on critical thinking, yet during class, critical thinking skills serves as nothing more than an aloof theory; it is rarely put into practice.
As a primary Psychology major, I do not need to have Bloom’s Taxonomy drilled into my head any more often. I don’t mind hearing about it within the psych courses because at least there is some type of application or analysis therein. However, within the education courses, it is simply mentioned and remains theoretical. I believe that juxtaposing the education and psych classes is a primary part of the problem. Maybe if I didn’t observe higher-level thinking in undergraduate courses, I would merely attribute it to ‘playing the game that is college.’ However, that is not the case, but rather a flaw within the schema of the School of Education.
The education classes are so routine and devoid of critical thought that they could be easily compared to ineffective parenting. Imagine, briefly, that you have a new toddler and (s)he has a ‘shape sorting’ block toy. If you hold the child’s hand and continuously guide his or her hand to the appropriate hole, (s)he has learned nothing at all. If you firstly introduce the concept to the child, and then allow the boy or girl to experiment independently, the child has acquired an understanding that wasn’t previously there. The Ed. classes are similar to the initial part of the metaphor, as the psych classes are to the latter.
I guess for now, I’ll stick to it and play the game. I’m just not sure how long I can stomach the Scantronesque mentality and methodology. In the spirit of the Education Department, though, I’ll leave you to fill in the title for this entry–please do so in the space provided and marked “Insert title here.”
|:| Zach |:|
