Memorization In The Classroom

Beginning in kindergarten, most students quickly realize that all they have to do to get through school is recall facts for test day, and simply forget them when they go home. Although young children are trained to sing the alphabet forwards and backwards with no struggle, concepts such as the Pythagorean Theorem cannot just be memorized, but instead must be strongly understood. Since the start of the new century, schooling in the United States has started to level off, especially in math and reading, due to the loss of critical thinking skills. Not only does regurgitating details show a shortfall in students, but in the quality of teachers in this generation. The lack of dedication from teachers to make sure students actually grasp knowledge …show more content…
For most students getting through classes each day is a struggle, so they resort to new ways to receive good grades on tests and assignments. Teachers make exams a basic competition between who is capable of recalling the most amount of material, not about critical thinking. If memorizing works successfully for pupils from the beginning of kindergarten, they will not be inclined to change their study habits by college. Many schools do not reinforce study techniques to help their undergraduates grasp and apply the information. Only one teacher in my past has truly made me understand the fundamentals of the subject for problem solving. In calculus class my senior year of high school, I struggled the first month because I could not do math without memorizing the steps of each problem. If I did not learn to think about each step critically and implement what we learned in class, I would not have passed. Teachers need to focus on making sure students grasp the material, so students can be strong in the classroom and in the …show more content…
The tests show no relevance to the classroom if every child in America is taking the same test, but may have not learned the same material. Studying to understand the material and studying to memorize take two different skills; it takes time to fully develop the brain to take each problem step by step and analyze the outcome. If students had more time to spend on each topic, the results would be different. The government should stop this action by stepping up its emphasize on critical thinking and application of knowledge. No funds are needed to fix this current problem, the government has to train teachers in ways that help students understand. The United States Department of Education seems to focus on how this country compares in test results to other nations, but China 's scores are significantly higher because the concentration of knowledge on specific skills to prepare students for the future