Two Points to Think About

Anthony was a good friend of mine when I was in college 30 years ago. He came from an all boys Catholic high school in New Jersey. Anthony was very bright, but not so motivated to work and study. At the end of his freshmen year, Anthony was asked by the college to leave for poor grades, but convinced them to give him another chance. He spent the summer taking three classes he had failed over again. After much hard work and a changed attitude, Anthony was able to catch up to his classmates and graduate on time. He now owns a small business back in his home town, has a family, and does quite well for himself.
When he purchased the business, the previous owner promised to train him on the equipment used and help get him started. The previous owner was from a foreign country and, as soon as the papers were signed, left, never to return and provide the promised training. Needless to say this left Anthony in quite a fix; his life savings used to purchase the business, but no way to use it to make a living.
Later he told me that he decided not to let this ruin his dream. “I graduated college.” he said “I can read.” So he picked up the owners manual that was left with the equipment and trained himself.
This little anecdote illustrates my first point-- If you can read you can learn anything.
One of the ways southern plantation owners tried to keep their slaves ignorant was to make it illegal to allow slaves to have books. It is rather sad that if the slaves had the attitude of present day high school students, it would not have been necessary to keep books from them in order to keep them ignorant.
A few years ago, one of my advanced placement students came to see me after school. I had assigned a section of the text book to read; there would be a quiz the next day. This student asked if I would “explain” what was in the section—not because they read it and didn’t understand, but because they didn’t have time to read it. I said no, and told them to read the assignment. The student was quite mad at me and accused me of not “teaching” the material. Apparently I “only” teach when I lecture.
This anecdote illustrates my second point – If I tell you to read it, I have taught it.
Imagine a real life situation where your boss hands you a file and tells you to “Read this and tell me what you think.” Would your response be, “I don’t have time to read it, could you assign someone to tell me what is says?”
The, “I don’t have time to read it”, excuse is a lie, and most students know it. They are incompetent at learning by reading because no one ever requires them to do it.
When we try to make them read the students do poorly on the exam, and we resort to “spoon feeding” to get them through the material. This makes them look like good students; us look like good teachers, and everyone more stupid.