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.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m a “crazy leftist” who occasionally comments on your blog, and I agree with this post almost 100%. I’m so tired of all of the talk of experiential learning at my small, public university. Also, as an undergraduate, some of my favorite classes were straight lectures, delivered by professors who were great at lecturing.
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We had this hilarious moment at the meeting recently where Dean was screeching loudly about how horrible lectures are because they don’t work. An older professor said, “Of course lectures work. They produced you and me, didn’t they?”
I haven’t been able to get the anti-lecture people to explain to me why professors are needed at all with their method. They seem to believe that students should self-educate using digital textbooks and AI and then come to class and discuss what they have learned outside of the classroom in small groups. The only role a professor has in the setup is to facilitate these group discussions, but you don’t need a person with a PhD for that. Pretty much anybody can do it.
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And by the way, I truly appreciate the open-mindedness it takes to stick around if you are a leftist. That’s impressive.
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“Pretty much anybody can do it.”
No idea why anybody would bother with college if you can get the same thing by reading it on your own and discussing it on the internet… which everybody does anyway.
ethyl
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A part of the problem is that many children today are not even taught to write by hand anymore. I am lucky that my child’s private school is big on handwriting in cursive, it was one of the main selling points for me. However, some of the parents were grumbling a lot about that and were telling me they would prefer the kids learn to type instead…
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Current debate in my country is about how high school students and university students (even teaching students) are using AI to write their exam papers. One of the teachers quoted said they couldn’t do anything about it until a tech company came up with a software solution that could spot AI.
Thirty years ago my teacher insisted half my class papers were handwritten, so I would be able to hand in a handwritten exam. It seems like the easy solution to all the tech-cheating, but no mention of this ancient practice was made.
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