Because College!

While it is final exam season again, this is not my regular rant against finals. Rather, it is an argument that we should not let imagined expectations of college drive high school practices, especially ones like finals, when they are poorly executed, that are not beneficial to students.

Why do we need to keep giving finals in high school? Because students will encounter them in college? Why are multiple choice tests important? Because students will take them in college? Why do students have to memorize useless facts, listen to teachers lecture, and suffer through hours of AP everything? College! College! College!

Let’s examine this rationale (or rationalization). Even putting aside the fact that not all students are going to attend college, do we need to replicate college in high school to prepare students? We are not replicating the college schedule. We do not have many teachers with PhDs. In fact, much of what we do and how we do it is quite different than college. Thankfully, many important aspects of the college experience are very different than what happens in high school. The photo attached to this post was a bulletin board in a college dorm. Can you imagine it at a high school? Perhaps our cherry picking of college practices serves another purpose.

College students are eighteen to twenty two years old. Their developmental needs are significantly different than a fourteen-year old’s – or even a sixteen year old. Why do we insist that one size fits all? Should our students who want to go into business wear suits and bring briefcases to school? Why not? They’ll have to do it later.

How do we know that whatever practice we are justifying happens in college? Most teachers are more than a few years out of college. Many of our AP and upper-level teachers haven’t been college students for decades. And while old school practices are certainly alive and well in many areas of academia, like the rest of the world, colleges have changed since we graduated in the 80s or 90s. 

Every college is not the same. Many colleges are moving away from the traditional lecture class because research has found that active learning is more effective. While some college classes still give final exam tests, many are using alternative forms of assessment – just like in high school!

College professors are not often trained to be teachers. Their primary focus is research; teaching is secondary. Thus we may run across professors who may be experts in their fields, but have difficulty communicating with students. In recent years, some colleges have put an emphasis both on training professors to be effective educators and to create awards and other programs that encourage good teaching. Why are they doing this? Because college is not the place to look for great educational practice.

Lecturing is simple and focused on the teacher. It is what many teachers have experienced. Multiple-choice tests are quick to grade and make the life of the teacher easier. We must be honest with ourselves and ask if the reason we rationalize our practices by saying that students will need them in college serves the students or the teachers?

The choices that high school teachers and administrators make certainly should take into account their students’ possible future activities. However, the main consideration should be what is best for students now. We cannot look to colleges to be educational role models. We cannot simply superimpose college practices on younger students.

As with all practices, we must ask ourselves, what are we teaching and why are we teaching it? We must look at the practice’s effect on our students and ask if it supports their academic, emotional, and social growth regardless of their college prospects.

If we teach students well, and make sure that our practices match their developmental needs, they will have the skills for what follows. If our students are our partners in learning and not merely audience, we will be better able to tailor the educational process to their specific needs. If we leap over the present and force them to relive our ancient college experiences, we will be doing them a disservice that traps them in our past instead of empowering them for their own futures.