The Educational Shift: From Thinking to Reciting

Modern-day education suffers from a failure to teach students to think. We rather seem to be attempting to teach kids what to think. As a result, the extent of a student's knowledge becomes directly correlated with their ability to recite information. We are not teaching them how to think, how to use the information they receive to create real knowledge.

A big downside to social media is that it amplifies opinions that would otherwise not even have to be addressed. You find thoughts that are so stupid, someone can't help but share and put up an argument against it. Some onus has to be on the reader here. Be a better steward of your time. If it's not worth your time, don't engage with it.

My son, who is currently in the 5th grade, has a reading curriculum which prioritizes listening over reading the books. He continually tells me that they listened to a "group read" of a certain book on YouTube. Additionally, I've seen assignments from the school be described as, "Chapter 10 in [some book]. Listen to the chapter or read from the book."

How can children develop an adequate vocabulary by simply listening to a book? It denies them a chance to study the book, to study the words surrounding one they do not understand. It's this understanding that is the important aspect of reading. How to Read a Book tells us this.

I believe this habit of simply allowing students to listen to books will result in an even greater abundance of poorly-read students. How are these students then expected to navigate a world where opinion is increasingly shareable and widely-ranged if they are not able to form their own? Are we preparing students to properly engage with ideas or are we teaching them to simply adopt another's views?

But is this true? How does the tradition of oral storytelling fit in here? Still, the act of reading seems superior, as seen by the poor information recall coming from simply listening.