Why Students Hate School: Part 2
I want to dive right into today’s topic, which is how exams and useless lessons play a role in students’ dislike of school.
Exams
Starting with exams. If you are here to read that exams are useless, and that they should not exist, then I am afraid I will disappoint you. I believe in exams, not to the extent that everything should be based on them, but they are useful. I have already talked about stress in regards to homework, and methods to reduce that stress, so I will not be talking about that today. Instead I will talk about how exams are useful, which will hopefully allow you to see that they are, and respond to exams in a different way.
Exams come in two forms: regular tests and big exams.
Tests
Tests. Why are tests important? I mean they don’t account for our grade or anything, they only make us panic and add more work to what we already have, right? Well I’m going to just say what I think and say that tests are probably the most useful things to getting a good grade in the big, important exam. Taking tests is one of the best ways of revising, in fact if you search up the best ways to revise, I promise you testing yourself, in one form or another, will come up.
It may seem that tests are there because one school decided to put tests, so everyone else just followed, and maybe that is the reason. But that does not mean tests are bad. Testing yourself requires you to revise for the test, and learn the material. If the revision is done well, then it is more likely that you will remember what you have learnt.
A strong motivator for revision are compulsory tests.
In addition to this, tests help bring all of the things you have learnt together. I have talked about chunking before, and tests help turn everything into a single chunk. Before tests, you would have the sub topics of that one area in different chunks, but tests often allow you to link all of those individual chunks, and turn them into one. This will be useful for that big exam later on, since you will already know the big picture of the topic so it will be easier to decide your study plan and recall information.
“Big” exams
So this big exam comes up a lot, and perhaps it seems as though it is the only reason you go to school. However, school should be to learn. Yes the circumstances and the controlled environment may drain that want to learn out of you, but it is a privilege to be able to get an education. That strict and controlled environment teaches you discipline, how to follow the rules, but still allows you to play with your friends and meet them everyday.
That exam that you have can be very important for many things, but the main one should be that it brings together everything you have learnt, just like tests, and puts them into a chunk.
Why do we need that information in a chunk though? Because it shows your strengths, it shows what you are good at and what you enjoyed the most. Later on it will help you decide what subjects you may choose for IGCSE, A Levels, university and even what job you will take.
Exams are not everything of course, however that revision you do for it, it can show a number of things. The more effort you put into a subject often means you enjoy it and how well you do on a subject often reflects how much you enjoy it as well.
Both of these things are good reference points for whatever your next point in life is, whether it is choosing your major in university, or your future job.
Just because you have an exam or test certainly does not mean that your whole life has to get away from you, and I am some proof of that. I get homework, I have several tests next week, but I still talk to my friends multiple times a day. I still have time to sketch, which is something I enjoy, watch football, and even write blogs despite the fact that I have started IGCSEs! Exams are merely reference points for you, and for universities.
Useless subjects
I bet a lot of people can relate to feeling as though so much of what we learn is completely useless to our lives. I think that it can be agreed that maths is the subject most people are thinking of. If you did not think maths, then I didn’t either to be honest, but multiple researches show that it is the common opinion, as well as social media.
Again if you are here to listen to me say yes you are correct and we should totally get rid of maths, then once again I am afraid to have to disappoint you.
Before getting into the benefits of maths, I would like to say that this section is as factual as possible because I personally do enjoy maths. However, I have tried my best to not be biased, because it is true that maths is an especially hard subject and we often do not like what we are not good at. My intent is to give you guys some motivation to do well in maths, as it can benefit us. It is not to make you love maths, by saying maths is the best subject in the world because even I find it boring sometimes.
Benefits of Maths
- Decision making skills
Dr. Tanya Evans from Stanford university actually did research on the benefits of maths, and one of her findings was that people who were better in maths actually have better decision making skills. If you think about it, this makes sense. The analytical skills we gain from maths should help us in decision making. We get a problem, break it down and solve it in the most rational way possible.
2. Explanations
This relates to the breaking down of problems and then solving them. We can explain things much better thanks to maths, as we are able to break it down into parts. In addition to this, the use of algebraic proof to show why there is a rule can also help us to come up with an explanation.
3. A part of the Future
Maths is increasingly becoming part of many industries, whether we like it or not. Journalism requires analytical skills of numbers. The medical industry relies more and more on the support of technology and numbers. Business of course requires mathematical skills to handle the financial issues that could arise.
These three reasons I hope will help to motivate you to engage in class, or at least in maths. Although I have put in the third point, not all areas of maths are useful for the last point. In IGCSE we get to choose if we want to do core maths or extended. Core maths is when you do not learn everything in maths, but only skills we will need for subjects or paths that do not require a lot of maths. However, you can only get a C grade in maths if you take core. Extended is learning everything, which most people in my year group have chosen.
I am aware that in Nepali schools this choice does not exist, but rather than focusing on that, it would be better to focus on all those skills you can gain from maths. You may think, easy enough for you to say, you have that option and you even like maths, but I am only saying this so that you can have a better experience in class.
If math is not one of your strongest areas, then it is important to remember that you are not born with talent. If you work hard, then you can develop your skills in an area. All those people who dropped out of school, Markus Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, not one of them dropped out because they already had talent. They dropped out and they worked hard to get to where they are. School did not give them the things they needed for what they wanted to do. They did not drop out and sit around and watch Netflix, play COD. They put effort into their work and still learnt, they just did not do that in school.
This wraps up the two part series of why students hate school. A lot of what has been talked about is to give you motivation to put in the work to do better in these areas, and to help you not hate school. Hopefully reading the blog has helped with exactly that, and you have more insight on why school is important. If you do not see a reason for anything, then it will feel useless so out of meaning in school. Think about how it can benefit you. All those subjects that feel useless to you, may feel like the most important thing to someone else, and that is why you learn about so many subjects when you’re younger. Because it can help everyone with choices they have to make later in life.
If there was anything you didn’t understand let me know and please do tell me if you wish I could do something better. Thank you and I hope you continue to learn with me.
