The Way Education Works

This week for my IS class we were supposed to read a piece written by Barry Schwartz. He talked about how much harder people will work at certain things if they know that there is a reward or some kind of feedback in the end. Some teachers have tried doing experiments on this exact idea by telling their students on the very first day of class that they will get a B in the class no matter what. They could be handing in A+ work but would not recieve that grade. They didn't have to show up to class at all if they didn't want to and they would still obtain the B grade. This experiment showed that people are more obsessed with their "grade" than what they are actually learning and obtaining. Another study was conducted by telling young students that they would recieve a prize if they read the most books out of their class so of course the children started reading non-stop. However, when one of the mothers recieved a compliment about how much her child was reading, she responded by explaining how her daughter has now started picking out the shortest books possible with the largest print and she most likely isn't retaining a thing she is reading because all she is concerned about is completing this book to move onto the next so she can win the prize. I feel that this analogy is sadly correct. I enjoy learning. Yes there are days that I dread going to class but overall I like acquiring new information. I can't deny though that all through my years of schooling I have been more focused on recieving the "good grade". My grades and grade point average meant alot to me especially in high school when I was involved in sports and starting to apply to colleges and for scholarships. They, along with my parents and teachers, put sooo much emphasis on getting good grades. In a way I think that kids are almost brainwashed into thinking that having a good grade reflects on how much you have learned. Although this may be true in some cases, I also believe that it is ficticious. In my anatomy classes in high school, we basically took notes (which were definitions of certain body parts and processes that occurred throughout the body) along with a few random point outs over certain systems of the human body. I rocked at this class. I was good at memorizing definitions. I would study the night before the test, go to school the next day, ace the test, and then I would forget the information until the semester test came. Then I would rememorize the vocabulary and ace the semester. Granted I didn't forget all of the information. A good majority of it stuck but my point is alot of students just memorize what they need to for the time being and forget it when it doesn't seem important to them. This isn't the way education should be portrayed.