Want to Learn Something? Teach it to someone else!
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007According to William Glasser, we learn “10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, 70% of what is discussed with others, 80% of what is experienced personally, and 95% of what we teach to someone else.”
Think about traditional school teaching methods in this sense. Are we leaving knowledge out of our brains because reading in a textbook and hearing a lecture are only scratching the surface of our capacity to learn? My design history midterms the last few days have increased my level of frustration with the way things are taught – not because I did badly – but because I did well without really learning anything I’ll rememeber next week.
This brings me to the bigger questions I’ve been asking myself since I returned from a few weeks off in Australia:
Is my college education preparing me for the “real” world?
Am I learning the skills I need to solve the problems we are facing in our time?
My gut reaction to these questions is no – that the most important lessons I’ve learned while in college have been learned outside the classroom, through my own explorations and the influence of good friends and unusually interesting professors. But maybe that’s the purpose of college – to provide an atmosphere that’s safe, slightly sheltered, and away from the resposibilities of the working world to allow those kinds of experiences to happen. I just wish they happened in the classroom a bit more.
