Comprehending and Memorizing: Where’s the line?

Albert Einstein once said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” When in school, it is a single student’s responsibility to listen to what their teachers have to say and receive something from it, as an education.  Most students focus more on memorizing the information that they learn in class. As far as getting educated  from what they learn in class, just learning off of memory does not give a student the best education compared to taking the time to understand what is being taught.

Comprehending with what teacher is teaching is the majority of the battle in school. According to reading-tutors.com, a teacher should integrate aspects of teaching into their own methods to keep students interested. These may include: making predictions about the content. Whether the prediction is wrong or right, it will cause discussion.

The biggest reason why many kids perform poorly in school is because they do not see any relevance, and/or cannot find an interest in any certain subject. “I make it real for the students. In DECA, we do a lot of hands-on content. I also try to make the learning real for students so they can relate to it,” said Ms. Kreutzer.  Another Way to help students gain an interest in a class is to give student’s a visual of what they read or learn. Most kids learn best when they see what is happening in a given situation. “I don’t always just ‘do’ my homework to do it, but I actually use it as practice. Instead of spending a few minutes to get it done, I take my time to truly understand what I am learning,” said Sierra Newby (’14).

While there are a large number of ways teachers can help kids get a quality education, students need to bare their own weight as well. It is always helpful to ask questions, for both students and teachers, because it gets students thinking about their response. Students get under a great deal of stress in a school year, so it is also important to keep those levels under control.

Just having an understanding of content is temporary and won’t help be successful when taking a test. To understand what one is learning is to have a general understanding and to memorize the content learned is to, by definition, know what it says.

Story By: Chase Brown