Five Myths about Higher Education

©  2014 Michael Marek

Reading this article made think about myths about how education works.

Here are five myths that too many people believe about education, and particularly higher education.
The article lists "urban legends" that the learner knows best how to learn, that learners have preferred learning styles, and that learners should be given maximum control over their learning (which is pretty similar to #1).

Here is my own list:

Myth #1: Learning only occurs in the classroom.

In reality, college is a trans-formative time in the lives of students.  Yes, they learn things in the classroom, and from related homework assignments.  But they also learn in co-curricular activities.  They learn in student organizations related to their majors. 

But even more so, college students learn life skills.  For the first time (for most of them) they are not sheltered by their parents.  They have to learn how to make their own way, balance their multiple priorities, and learn life skills.  They learn to manage their time, and their social, live, and school lives.

Myth #2: Education means lecture.  The teacher lectures and the students recite the information back on tests.

In reality, students do not learn much this way.  Teachers cannot open up the heads of students and pour information in.  Students only learn effectively when they apply the knowledge and fit new information in with what they previously knew.  

Exactly how this works is different in different academic fields, but it is done by active learning, making use of the new information, and not be passive listening to lecture. Listening to lecture drone on and on is like a couch potato in from of a TV.  Your brain goes into alpha waves and nothing much registers.  Actively using the new information requires critical thinking and problem solving and leads to much more thorough learning.

Myth #3: College is about getting a job and making money.

In reality, this utilitarian mindset is fairly recent. If you go back a hundred years, self-improvement and being a good citizen were goals of advanced education that were co-equal with employment prospects. 

I once heard a guy complain about a woman who had retired from a professional career and gone back to school for a doctorate.  This guy said that her education would be "wasted" because she would not use it on-the-job. 

In fact, there is nothing wrong with learning for the sake is learning, and people with more education are often better prepared to make the decisions needed to be a good citizen of the country and of the world. 

Myth #4: Knowledge is straightforward and you either know it or you don't.

In reality, knowledge is complex and often takes extended effort to master. Why do you think that physicians go through four years of undergraduate pre-med college courses, four more years of medical school, and three to seven additional years of internship and residency training?   

It is because mastery of subject matter requires extended study, practice, and evaluation.

Myth #5: Some teachers refuse to teach, so the students do not learn.

In reality, the students are responsible for their own learning.  Teachers provide a context in which students can learn, if they apply themselves.  But teachers know this is like the proverb "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink."

The teacher provides the "water" of an appropriate textbook, classroom activities, and homework, but the teacher cannot force the students to "drink" the learning.  Many students do, readily, but every classroom has students who have high absenteeism, are not engaged, and never get around to performing the learning activities.  They consider that a "D" grade still passes the class, so why work harder?

This was one of the biggest fallacies of No Child Left Behind at the K-12 level. Schools were punished if student achievement did not get better and better, but parents have more influence than teachers in actually getting students to do their schoolwork. Should schools be punished if parents are not engaged in their children's learning?

The problem is that a lot of people who make policy about education believe these myths. Therefore their logic is skewed. They think that the answers are simple, whereas they are actually highly complex.

And to be blunt, higher education, and education in general, does a terrible job of framing the public understanding of what it is and what educators do.