Academic race leaves learning in the dust

Our university’s new tagline states, “There is no
typical UCLA student or faculty member. The only common denominator
is an appetite for excellence.”

I beg to differ. What the phrase could say instead is this:
“The only common denominator among students is a penchant for
procrastination and an attitude for apathy.”

Consider third-year mathematics student Aaron Pereyda, who
“once took over 10 caffeine pills in one night to cram for a
midterm the next day.” This time of the quarter,
Aaron’s confession seems more like the rule rather than the
exception. Just last week, I myself struggled to catch up on more
than 400 pages of reading.

Aaron was unimpressed with my feat. His raised eyebrow and
flippant smile told me that I should not be so eager to boast in
the presence of a true procrastination master. Then he squinted his
eyes and told me the secret to cramming: “Anything that
isn’t going to be on the test should go straight out the
window.”

Aaron isn’t the only one who lives by this credo.
Especially during midterms and finals, campus is abuzz with
students seeking to learn all the right answers ““ and nothing
more. Fallen by the wayside are the loftier goals of higher
education: critical and analytical thinking.

The loss seems almost inevitable if you remember the college
application process. Deeper thinking and true interest in knowledge
had long been traded in for superficial learning and an obsession
with grades.

During the time I was applying to colleges, one of my teachers
jokingly said that grades were more important to me than my mother,
when I tried to argue a test up from an A-minus to an A. “Is
it only about points?” he asked. I mused to myself,
“Only if you want to get into a decent college.”

In truth, it is a numbers game ““ one that is primarily
based on your GPA and SAT scores. According to the Princeton
Review, the current high school GPA upon admission to UCLA is 4.12.
Such high criteria cannot be possible without some degree of
fixation on grades.

Since we’ve were taught to embrace this mentality during
high school, is it any surprise that it has carried over to
college? We’ve been trained to value memorization over
thinking and regurgitation over analysis. It is no surprise that
every quarter, students ask professors, “Exactly what will I
need to know for the test?”

This mentality is so strongly imbued in our way of learning that
the slightest change causes friction. Psychology Professor Philip
Kellman has found that merely assigning textbook chapters out of
sequence leads to disgruntled students.

Kellman laments this decreasing tolerance in the education
process. “Students want learning to be reduced to very clear,
digestible chunks. They don’t want to hear about concepts
that are fuzzy or hard to fathom the first time they hear them. The
thing is, some complicated ideas do have to sink in and take a
while to understand,” he said.

This trend is alarming because there are many concepts in the
intellectual world that require abstract exploration. It may feel
safe to stay within the realm of right and wrong answers, but no
subject can be mastered with that kind of thinking. Being deterred
by initial confusion is unfortunate because it causes us to slam
the door in the face of a more meaningful learning experience.

Carole Delavault, a lecturer in the French and Francophone
studies department, has also run into this problem with students
and even teaching assistants. One quarter, a TA urged her to change
the format of an exam after she tried to make it more challenging
by adding essay questions. The TA’s reasoning was that
students would be confused unless the questions were more
direct.

Delavault did not make any changes. She said, “In the
language program, we’re really trying to have the students
move from just answering precise questions and filling in the
blanks to becoming more flexible and independent
thinkers.”

According to a study done by psychologist and UCLA alumna Lisa
Tsui, universities can foster critical-thinking skills in their
undergraduates through “emphasizing analysis over recall,
promoting active learning methods, encouraging collaborative
exploration of knowledge, and setting students to work on questions
and problems with no known or verifiable answers and
solutions.”

At an overpopulated university such as UCLA, Tsui’s
stipulations may seem impossible to abide by. For instance, in
classes of over 300 students, multiple-choice tests are the norm
because essay exams, though better assessors of critical thinking,
would require an enormous amount of time to grade. As a result,
students are encouraged only to spit answers back out.

But there are ways to alleviate this problem. In his Gerontology
M140 course, “Introduction to Study of Aging,”
psychology Professor Larry Butcher assigns a group project in which
a controversial issue regarding the elderly is debated before the
entire class.

While Butcher’s multiple-choice midterm and final test
factual knowledge, the debates necessitate active learning through
research and analysis.

Kellman thinks that the online discussion board, a function of
class Web sites, is one good answer to the problems inflicted by
large class sizes. He even promises to be awake at 1:30 in the
morning to go online and answer students’ questions.

“You can have great discussions on the Web, and at its
best, it’s not just a discussion about what’s going to
be on the test. It’s a discussion about the ideas and the
material,” he said.

UCLA should have done more research before advertising the new
catchphrase. An “appetite for excellence” would push
individuals to go above and beyond the average. An appetite for
excellence would drive students to move beyond recitation and
regurgitation of information. It would lead them to think about
ideas in a deep, analytical and original manner.

For the phrase to be true, professors and students need to work
together. Professors should challenge students through more
thought-provoking activities and fewer straightforward methods of
assessment. Students in turn, should accept that challenge.

If you read this column and somehow didn’t come to the
conclusion that Tao is a total nerd, e-mail her at
atao@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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