I'm starting to learn a lot about what's lacking in the educational system here, almost enough to come up with some very real conclusions.
I was in my extra session today, telling the few students who arrived that I would only answer specific questions, and not "I don't understand...genetics", for example. So we sat and stared at each other for a while, they being completely at a loss as to how to ask a specific question on material they were pretty sure they understood and me struggling to NOT try and explain everything all over again, knowing that it would just reinforce memorizing my explanation.
So we sat and sat, and eventually after much prodding and impatience from the students, they asked about a homework assignment that I had given them. It read, "Which codon controls the color brown?" Now, I was doing an exercise in using the genetic code that was not all that scientifically accurate, but useful to introduce the necessary concepts. But I didn't think it would be an exercise in basic education.
I said, "Let's start with the question. What is the question asking for?" I gave them examples of what I meant, writing the question, "What is the capital of the USA?" on the board and asked if "In the capital is where the President is located" is an appropriate response. They recognized that it wasn't appropriate but didn't really know why. I explained that the question is asking for a city. I gave more scientific examples of these questions, making special note of the key words in the questions. After about 10-15 minutes, they understood that the homework was asking for codons and after that, the assignment was trivial. But the reason I receive ridiculous responses that have nothing to do with the question, is because they don't know how to read a question properly. They've never been TAUGHT how to read a question. Never. My lesson on responding properly was probably the first time, and the glow on their faces afterwards confirmed it.
So what happens when they don't know how to read the question? They match it up with the information that's closest to it and just repeat the information, hoping (often correctly) for a good answer to the question. But the way I write questions, they're screwed if they don't know how to read a question AND think about and internalize the information in order to be able to apply it. So the kids who can do all of that get close to perfect (or perfect) scores, ones who can do half of it get decent scores, ones who haven't tried to learn outside of the system fail miserably.
But can they really learn how to read a question in 10th grade? Granted, it's better than the 8th grade struggles. I asked today where the blood goes after leaving the heart, aside from the body, and they rightly said the lungs. I asked them what happens in the lungs, and since they had already stuck themselves onto the definition for the circulation between the heart and lungs, I got, "The blood returns to the heart." It had nothing to do with the question.
So I asked some students what their names were, how old they were, where were they born, etc. They, of course, answered these questions fine, so I pointed out that since they were listening to the questions I was asking now, I'd try again. They got it and I think realized their mistake, but I pointed out that they can't just read the definition. The 10th graders have this down pretty well after a while in my lessons, but it's incredibly frustrating to deal with just the basic listening skills when you're also working with thinking skills.
Sometimes I wish I didn't even have a curriculum so I could teach the most basic concepts just to actually teach basic learning skills (though in a sense, I'm actually doing that). It's frustrating because I think they actually want to understand for the sake of understanding and I just can't spend the class time on what they really need.
But it's clear to me that skills like summarizing, choosing the main idea, concept association, etc., are so foreign that students as old as these can only treat the skills as something else to memorize - and when I don't give them the opportunity to memorize, they freak out. Well, little by little.
Peace
John
