One thing that I found valuable in the book “Little Soldiers” by Lenora Chu is her retelling of a conversation with a Chinese professor who explains why the American education system often fails to instill a deep understanding of such subjects as mathematics. He doesn’t put it this way, but the fear of inconveniencing the perennially sore and over-inflamed ego of the students makes learning hard. The idea that you’re supposed to be constantly entertained and fed a steady diet of positive “experiences” is antagonistic to learning.
When learning actually happens in American education is at those times when the teachers find the strength to go against the constant badgering to avoid lecturing, memorization, and rote learning. Also, there is no learning without hierarchy, and this comes into a conflict with the Western obsession with eliminating every hierarchy that has already created a lot of unpleasant effects.
I am tired of hearing our administrators chirp excitedly about “experiential learning” because it’s not learning at all. It’s entertainment. Education doesn’t need more technology, more money, or more freedom. It needs more memorization, writing down notes by hand, studying those notes repeatedly, and getting rid of the ridiculous ideas of flipped classrooms and student-centered learning.
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