Rant #1: Learning By Heart

I try to avoid ranting too much on this blog – I like it to be a more positive experience than most other blogs at the moment! This rants going to be about pupils learning by heart without really understanding the concepts behind problems. I’m not one of those people who thinks that exams used to be harder, but I do think that exams today have become so predictable that students know the best way to get a good mark is to learn things off by heart.

The problem is that when you just learn something off by heart for an exam you generally don’t get the deep level of understanding that you otherwise would. I’d love to see a system where pupils were encouraged to really understand something and got the best marks for having a good idea how to apply their knowledge to different situations.

I don’t blame students or teachers for learning things off by heart – it’s definitely the most efficient way of passing exams. The problem is that the exam system really isn’t good enough and needs to be overhauled in a way that still rewards hard work but focuses more on someone’s understanding. This could easily be achieved by writing exam questions in a way that meant pupils had to apply their knowledge to situations that they probably wouldn’t have encountered before. Exam papers should definitely be drastically different each year too – otherwise pupils just learn to previous questions and answers!