Extra Credit: 45% Of Students Don't Learn Much In College

I don't know what many students do during college, but I don't feel like I'm not learning more at college. I feel like I've learned far more information being at college than I ever did in high school. Even in classes like my Survey of Biology, which was a large, lecture class, I feel like I learned a lot and retained a lot of information, far more than I ever did in my Biology class in high school. I also feel that I read a lot of pages of reading a week, that could be because I'm in English major, but I feel like if I had more pages of homework, I wouldn't learn more, I'd just feel more stressed out and probably wouldn't finish all of my homework. True, I don't write as many papers, but I feel like papers are just grades. I feel like, even if I wrote more papers, I wouldn't learn more than what I was already learning in class. Usually students tend to write papers on what they already know, this way they know what they're talking about. If we had to write more papers, I don't think it would boost the amount of information we learn or the amount we retain. I think it would be a waste of time. Some students do choose classes that are easier, but that's usually only when they have to take gen ed classes. With majors and minors, you tend to have to take requirements, so there is no way around having harder classes.

What I think needs to happen is that the teachers need to teach more. I feel like some teachers tend to just follow the books they teach from and read from them, word for word, instead of thinking of new ways and new, interesting information they want to teach their students. If you want your students to learn more, have the teachers teach more. Have them teach from other sources, not just textbooks, or have them create their own words from the textbook rather than reading word for word. Also, it would be nice if some teachers actually cared about teaching. With many teachers you can tell they don't care, they don't care if you learn or what you learn, they just want to get through the day. When teachers are passionate about what they're doing and truly passionate about having their students understand what they're teaching, you can tell. You can tell by the way they act with their students, by what they say, by all of the help they give to their students. If all teachers were this way, more students would learn and retain what they learn.