Did you know that most A-students don't study?
That’s because they’ve figured out how to play the system to their benefit, for maximum ease.
School isn't about active, dynamic decision-making, or logical steps, or complex rationalization....it's not about thinking, really, but memorization.
The kids who get straight-As are often (but not always) the ones who simply have a knack for memorizing things and parroting them back.
For whatever reason, their minds are better at stashing facts and retrieving them on command--and so school comes easily to them.
Arguably, memorization is not an indicator of above-average intelligence or problem-solving ability--yet that's what schools prioritize and praise.
Plenty of the human race's best and brightest have been told they lacked the necessary skills to do well in school--and went on to do things like invent lightbulbs and theoretical physics.
Real knowledge is practical and useful.
It's knowing how to start a fire; how to get your seeds to sprout and crops to grow best; how to purify and harvest water from your environment; how to tie a knot that will keep you safe when you need to climb or pull something heavy.
There are so many things that are critically important in life, but will never come up on a multiple choice test.
So why do we put so much stock in those as measures of ‘intelligence’?
An intelligent person is one who knows how to think critically - not one who’s been taught how-and-what to think.
Let's aim to teach the things that truly matter - and maybe we'll also see an uptick in the interest level of kids as a side effect of that....because they know that life is not about taking exams.
Dolores Umbridge tried to teach kids that, but more and more kids are becoming wise to that sort of bullshit.
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