How do students best learn? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
It was in my Greek class a few semesters ago, which I did just fine in, that i started thinking about the education system. I remembered that before a test, I had been looking at the paradigms. I could recognize them, but when it came to writing them down, my mind went to a blank.
I have a good relationship with my professor so I saw him in his office after and showed him Parson’s Greek Tutor on my laptop. I went to the section that mirrored what we just studied and showed him how effortlessly I was able to recognize the paradigms. He understood and upped my grade some. I likened it to that if I am playing a game on my Switch or Playstation and you join in and ask me what button I push to do an action, I have to look and see what button I am pushing, even though I push it regularly on instinct.
This got me pondering about why it is that this was not working for me in Greek. If anything, Parson’s Tutor was an excellent program for me. I am currently trying to talk to some Greek experts to see if they would be willing to have some students make a Greek indie game so that students could better learn Greek.
Quick. Write down what slope-intercept form is.
When did the Battle of the Bulge take place?
What exactly is mitosis?
What is included in the definition of velocity?
Who crossed the Alps with elephants to attack Rome?
What is a gerund?
What is included in the 7th amendment?
Some of you may know some of these things. A lot of you are probably going to Google right now and looking them up. My point in asking these questions is that at some point, you likely did know what these are and you forgot them. Why? You learned them for a test in school to pass a subject. After that, you never used them again and they bore no relevance, so you forgot them.
Now think about these other kinds of questions.
What is the Konami code?
What are the stats on your favorite sports team?
When was your favorite TV show on the air?
How many songs can you sing by your favorite artist by heart?
Give me twenty people at Hogwart’s from the Harry Potter franchise.
Tell me ten planets in the Star Wars universe.
If I ask you about these kinds of things and they are things you care about, you know them like that. I could easily tell you the Konami code, a lot of students and faculty at Hogwart’s, and I can tell you most anything you want to know about Smallville. The last one I knew so well I could have easily fact-checked the magazine I used to read.
Notice this also. Many of these things you know, you learned without having to intentionally study for them or take tests on them. It was never the case that you said “I’d better bone up on my favorite football team statistics because my friends are going to quiz me when we get together.” You likely never stayed up all night memorizing all the lyrics to every Weird Al Yankovic song you could. (Not that that would be a waste of time if you did.) You learned these because they were presented in a way that engaged you and were relevant to you.
When students in school ask “What’s the point?” or “When am I ever going to use this?”, if we can’t answer those questions, they won’t likely take the material being learned seriously.
To compare when I was in this class, I had Nintendo Switch online and went through the original Legend of Zelda, both quests, and A Link to the Past. I never did formal study on these games and even though it had been years since my last playthrough, I could still go and find everything in them and finish them. You can say it’s useless knowledge, but the point is I learned it and I learned it because for me, it was relevant to me. Being good at games mattered to me. It still does.
It is my personal theory that if we want students to learn material, we need to make it engaging for them. That’s one reason I love the pop culture and philosophy series. I could introduce you to philosophy with a textbook that will likely bore you to tears, or I could introduce you by having you read something like Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul. If you are a Batman fan, then you are going to see philosophy in a way relevant to one of your favorite superheroes.
It’s also worthwhile to point out that we talk about that a professor gives in a classroom as a lecture. When we go to church, we hear a sermon. On their own, neither of those are positive terms. We tell people we don’t need a lecture or a sermon and not to preach at us.
This also has relevance to how we even spread the gospel.
But that is what I plan on for tomorrow.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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