As we discussed in class, it seems that today’s educations system tends to focus primarily on L-Directed thinking. We are forced to sit and memorize so much information that a large percentage of students will give up on their education. That is one of the reasons I believe we have so many high school dropouts. They are feel so much strain in their education that they feel they cannot or will not continue with it. Memorization and regurgitation is a tedious task for anyone, and sadly, that is what much of high school is based on. We are taught to learn important dates in history, memorize patriotic documents, practice our multiplication tables, spit back mathematic equations, and of course remember how to spell. This inundation of information is what leads many young people into special needs education programs.

Maybe if we did not concentrate so much on the mundane, L-Directed tasks, youth would not feel so burnt out. In class, some people brought up the idea how some people say they “are not _____ people.” You could put math in that blank or any number of other subjects. Some people do not excel at reading comprehension, memorization, synthesization, or any number of other skills. This is just how some people are made. Their brains are wired differently from other people. These students may excel at more hands on tasks such as experimentation or manipulation of objects. This is a known fact that I have heard many times in the classroom. People study differently. Some people find the use of flash cards essential for their learning. Others need to read the textbook to glean all the information they can. I tend to just read over my notes many times until I begin to grasp the information. Flash cards and the reading of text usually do not benefit me as much as they do other people.

My point is that people learn differently, and they should be given an opportunity to learn in the way that they are most comfortable. I am a science major and my line of study is very interactive. I am constantly performing experiments to reinforce what I learn in class. This type of activity reinforces what I learn much better than if I was only sitting in a classroom. My high school was very limited in its science department. I did not have any sort of laboratory experience until I was a freshman in college. In high school, I took chemistry and learned from a book. I never actually saw any chemical reactions taking place. When I got to General Chemistry in college, I was a little lost in the laboratory setting. After a few sessions, I began to feel more at ease with the procedures and found that I learned much more than if I was reading from a book or listening to a lecture.

In my high school Biology classes, we tended to look at pictures of anatomical differences in a book rather than actually having a specimen in front of us. A picture can only take a person so far in his or her learning. I took a biology class last semester that involved a great deal of dissection. We would have pictures to look at in an attempt to locate and identify certain structures, but they did not always look the same. I could look at those pictures for hours and not learn as much as I would in an hour of actual dissection. There is something about actually manipulating my hands that makes learning come alive for me.

College provides more experiences for R-Directed learning than high school does. Many times, I work outside for my science classes; that helps me better experience my learning. I have a greater choice of classes to take that are able to better fit my needs. There are some high schools that offer a greater section of classes than I had, but they are not the same as a college. It seems interesting to me to think that in Kindergarten and elementary school we were presented with many hands on activities to stimulate our learning (painting, molding clay, building with blocks, games at recess, etc.). In middle and high school we were weaned off this learning in preparation for book learning. In my college science classes, it seems that the learning is becoming more R-Directed than in my previous schooling. Graduate school in science, I suppose comes with even more experimentation and less lecturing by a professor.