Math goals (DLR Fall 10)
Idealistic statement
"The goal of teachers, like that of parents, should be to make our students, like our children, independent of us."
Other information
Research, some of it my own, shows that the retention a year later of much course material "successfully mastered" by students is a great deal more limited than (some) teachers would like to believe.--Draulston 10:16, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Comments/Implications
If retention of information is limited, then the teaching style should either emphasize the basics to ingrain them, increasing the chances that they will be remembered (this choice would make for a boring class), or to accept that most of what is taught will be forgotten quickly and just assume that the students will need a refresher for old material being reintroduced. Even if students will forget what they are taught, the next time they see it they will remember it faster than when they learned it for the first time.
In order to satisfy the first assertion, making students independent of our teachers, it is not important whether or not students can retain material from year to year. The important part is the process- that way students will be able to come up with answers independently of their teachers. This class is so specific that the retention of the material is not as important as the processes taken to come up with the answers.--Swise 12:58, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
In order to understand this statement, one must first understand the definition of "teaching" and the role of a teacher. The teacher in question is much more than a source of knowledge, the teacher is a pathway, a means to an end, of bringing about knowledge in a student. This is much different than wantonly espousing facts and trivia: the teacher is trying to bring about independent thought and knowledge within a student, not make sure the student memorizes meaningless facts and methods. Teaching, in this since, is closely related to the Socratic Method: every student inherently knows the information; it is the instructor's job to show to the students that they themselves know it.
Thus if the goal of teaching is to make the student independent then it is logical to assume that it matters not if the student retains the memory so much as he/she knows innately how to reduplicate the information. Scholarly independence, in other words, is not the ability for the student to retain specific details or material but to have such an intimate knowledge of the subject of interest to intrinsically know the nature of the information: to know what it means, how to derive/use such information, and the implications of it. If a student can do these things, then he/she is truly independent of his/her teacher.--Zlong 22:52, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Even though some people will forget the basic concepts taught in math classes, I don't think it matters very much. Everyone who retains the information have a reason to; they will most likely either go into higher levels of math that build on this prior knowledge or they will actually apply the mathematical concepts in their later life, career, etc. The people who forget the information probably just don't care because they will never use this math ever again. This math may not be helpful to their later lives so they have little motivation to retain the information. --Amai 13:00, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Perhaps the best solution to the retention problem is to focus more on the reasoning of the proofs and making them so easy to understand and obvious that students can come up with them on our own. -Deanna
It is often unnecessary to retain much of the information learned in school, because much of it is too specific and detailed to be relevant in life. What is important is learning how to think in order to reach a solution, which can be learned through gaining specific knowledge at school, but is not lost when the specific knowledge is lost. Therefore, the lack of retention of information should not be a major concern in making children independent of their parents and teachers. However, if your priority in making children independent is information retention, repetition is probably the best way to increase the percentage of information that is retained. --Kzhu 13:24, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
If the goal of teachers is to make students independent, then just the mastery of a concept can be seen as an indication of success. Being able to learn independently is more important than retaining the actual course material learned. The information learned may be relevant to only one field of study, while the ability to learn independently can be applied to all subjects. Even if a specific concept is forgotten, students should be able to re-learn it on their own. --Awang 13:36, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Although it is important for students to retain information, retention is not the key to independence. The information learned in previous classes paves the way to independent thinking, but ultimately, it is more important that the students are able to think through a problem and then solve it, rather than memorizing ways to solve it. However, it is important that they learn key concepts in their classes in order to be able to think through the problem, so the basics should probably be repeated each year in order for students to retain them.--Sheinle 13:45, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
It is true that many students have difficulty retaining information which they learned in a course the year before. However, this is not very important unless the student is planning to go into a career which is relevant to that course. It is more important that the student learns how to approach problems independently rather than memorizing facts and formulas.--Yarefeen 13:50, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
If only the concepts of a certain subject are taught in school, then the educators have not done their job properly. The job of teachers is not to tell the students what to do when they are given a problem, but also to help the students learn to think independently and figure out how to do the problem on their own. After a year is over students may not be able to retain all of the concepts taught throughout the year but they should be able to approach a problem from many different angles and figure it out by themselves, despite whether or not they know the exact method most commonly used for the problem. As students work problems a year after they learned the information, they should be able to remember some of the forgotten information that they were taught. --Mhansen 13:51, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Although students usually forget whatever they learn in a course within the next year, their forgetfulness does not have lasting implications. Unless they forget how to do basic math or read, they will probably turn out fine later on in life. It won't matter what the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill is or what the Animal Phyla are. However, what students do learn in school is how to learn. They learn problem-solving skills that will serve them later in life. Using these skills, students will (hopefully) no longer be reliant on a teacher to explain a concept to them; they will be able to reason through it themselves. --
Although retention may not be exact, students use the foundations from what they do retain in previous classes to excel in classes currently taking. The specifics details from a history course may go forgotten, but when a student develops their argumentative writing skills, it sticks with them. In math, one thing I've definitely learned from taking the honors math classes is how to apply what I've learned in class to learn something new independently. Independent learning is key to success and helps students develop. --Alandrum 14:24, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Although some teachers emphasize the importance of retaining information such as definitions and formulas,most students fail to retain so much information after a year-long course. Being able to memorize such things is not important; what matters is the ability to understand the concepts taught in class and being able to apply them in different situations. Thoroughly understanding math concepts allows students to figure out problems even though they may not have all the formulas memorized. --Areyes 14:27, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
The things we learn in school are very important and make us sound smart when we talk to people. --Kwong 14:28, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Although teachers attempt to teach students what they need to know in order to become independent, students usually look at classes with the wrong outlook. They only see the class as a way to get either a good or a bad grade that can help them get into a good college or into a good job, rather than a way to absorb information that could potentially be useful in the future. They do not learn the real use of education until they are older and realize that instead of having to relearn what they learned in Middle School and High School, they could have learned the information taught to them for the sake of learning. --Mmucasey 14:39, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
Teachers provide information. We, the students, decide whether or not we want to learn the information. If we do learn the information, it may be something that we dislike immensely which could lead to unhappiness or depression during the learning process. If we don't learn the information, we may face the consequence of receiving a bad grade which would cause us to fail high school. Then your parents will kick you out of their house and you will have to work at a local burger king so you won't starve to death. Then one day, you will accidentally spill some fries and you will knock over a bunch of napkins onto a nearby stove. The napkins will catch on fire and burn down the entire burger king which will get you fired immediately. The manager will demand you to pay for the burger king so you will spend all your life savings (which you have been saving up since you got kicked out of your house) to pay for the burnt down burger king. You will then be reduced to homelessness and you will scavenge the streets for bits of food. You will sleep under highway 59 and you will become addicted to drugs. Then one night you run out of money for more drugs and when you are lying in a ditch muttering about nothing at all, you will look back and think "Gee, I wish I learned how to do derivatives in high school."
--Syu 14:40, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
The goal of students is to appreciate graciously the efforts of our teachers to instill in us a sense of preparedness and self-confidence, not only to tackle difficult quandaries academically, but also in life in general. Though it is true students ultimately retain very little of the details of each class, I've found that I've taken away much more useful skills from my classes than being able to name the molecular structure of every polyatomic ion known to man, which I will (hopefully) never need again after passing Chemistry sophomore year. Classes that toss you into straight deep waters not only force you to learn, but also force you to learn how to learn. After all, it wouldn't be a DLR class without a little bit of drowning, right? But no one's died yet, and apparently all we have to do in life is die, so I'd say we're faring pretty well.
--Myuan 21:20, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
I would just like to point out that if the material is "successfully mastered," then we wouldn't have this retention problem, would we? I believe that if one has truly "mastered" something, he/she has the capability to recall that information. Maybe some enlightenment is needed to remind us of the thoughts, but we should still be able to dig out what we have learned. While I do agree with the idealistic statement stated above, (seeing as it isn't possible for us to ask for help on every little issue we have) we do have to consider that when we're learning something that we have no prior knowledge of, asking questions is probably the most efficient method for clearing the confusion in our minds. Even though qualities such as self-reliability and confidence are important attributes that we need for our lives ahead of us, learning something new requires some guidance so that we know we're headed in the right direction. In other words, we can't learn to fly by ourselves if we don't even know how to flap our wings.
--Patrick Wu----Pwu 22:14, 17 September 2010 (CDT)
