UNINTENDED LEARNING

The purpose of education

A while ago, I was thinking about the purpose of education and how we are dealing with this issue in our schools. If you ask a wide number of people (teachers included) about what is the purpose of education the common answer will be: "to learn". If this is the case then why is our school system designed, not to learn, but to pass.

Learning in schools follows the following pattern. During school hours information is passed from the teacher to the student (in the best case scenario, the student is also involved in this transfer. In a worst case scenario, the student is just a passive recipient of the information given by the teacher). After, the student goes home and studies the material. After memorizing, the student returns to school the next day take a test on the information that was studied last night.

Here it gets interesting though...
If the student passes the test, there is no problem. He or she managed to memorize the material and hopefully it stays there for a long time (at least until the final exam). On the other hand, if the student doesn´t pass the test, he gets a low grade, doesn´t pass and... ... ... nothing... absolutely nothing happens. The student didn´t memorize the material and gets a bad grade, but s/he is not motivated in any way to revise the material and actually learn, which is... remember THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION.

Instead the student goes on accumulating study material that is not processed and in the end...surprise, surprise...the student fails the final exam and the whole cycle starts again.

So, what could be a solution? Well, one way to go would be to make the student restudy the materials and take the test over and over again, until s/he passes and actually has processed the information so s/he can move to the next step. Would this take more work for the teachers? Of course, as they have to correct tests several times. On the other hand, I think the system would auto regulate itself for most students as - in my opinion - they would get sick of studying the material over and over again...

Or maybe not...