Today while listening to our guests, I was very
interested in the discussion of creativity that occurred when talking about the
Asian view on learning. Our guest mentioned that she felt that Asian students
were very good at memorizing information, yet they had not been taught how to
think. I too have seen this occur in my own experiences. I worked at a Kumon
center and at that center our students were mostly from Eastern Asia and India;
the very program was created by a Japanese man. The program stresses route
memorization of doing math with very little or no explanation as to why the
equation or idea worked. The students themselves didn’t seem to care whether
they understand why they were doing what they were doing- they just wanted to
pass the test and move onto the next level of work. I feel that this same drive
to find the most concise, least creative, fastest way of accomplishing the task
of education is bring promoting in schools to teach more in a shorter amount of
time to prepare for testing. While this may work to improve test scores and
promote the feeling of awe at the effectiveness of students, I really think it
ends up being a detriment to the actual learning of a child. What our guest
said I think is true: while our products may be created in Asian countries, the
people who create these ideas are those who have been allowed to be creative
and express themselves. We try to compare ourselves to these other countries
but I think that if we became exactly like them in regards to our educational
system, we would lose what it means to be American. I found an article from
Australia that spoke to why not all countries should try to model the Asian way
of education because it doesn’t work for all cultures. [http://theconversation.com/learning-by-rote-why-australia-should-not-follow-the-asian-model-of-education-5698]
I think that comparing our scores to the Asian test scores is really comparing
apples to oranges; we learn and stress different things that make our societies
different and both unique.
This is a fantastic point! I was really intrigued with the comment our guest speaker made as well. I had never thought about how different the way the two countries learn. I really wonder what made people think that their way of learning was the better way. I hope that we soon realize how important creativity is in our world.
ReplyDelete