“I decided we would do an oral exam* because it’s a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren’t just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers.”
Yeah and it’s also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn’t possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This “gotcha” style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I’ll ask a professor something and they’ll be like “I’ll have to look that up later and get back to you.” Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don’t do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
The only thing that school taught me is how to withstand constant immense suffering. Most of anything useful, I learned on my own terms.
Work on the other hand is pretty easy, mainly because no matter how shit the workday is:
I get to go home and not care about it at all
I get something in return for my suffering
I know what I am doing is not completely pointless, because someone has decided to pay me for it
So I guess thank you school, for making the most shit material conditions seem like a blessing in comparison.
Under capitalism, education, particularly elementary, middle and highschool, are mostly set up to teach you how to be a good little obedient worker accept your exploitation under capitalism. It also makes people associate learning or doing anything outside their “place” with horrible times. Works a treat.
Did you not get to go home after school?
In my experience a lot of people find work liberating compared to school because the school kept them stressed out all the time after class is over. You’re supposed to do work on your own and prepare to perform well, you can’t forget about school after you’re out of school. This can indeed happen with work but it is more widely recognised as abusive, while it is absolutely normalized with school
Edit : network problem, posted it twice
homework
In my experience a lot of people find work liberating compared to school because the school kept them stressed out all the time after class is over. You’re supposed to do work on your own and prepare to perform well, you can’t forget about school after you’re out of school. This can indeed happen with work but it is more widely recognised as abusive, while it is absolutely normalized with school