The following post was written while I sat in class earlier tonight.
I’m sitting here bored out of my mind. My professor is attached to the old style of teaching. The teacher stands at the front of the class and talks for hours on end while using an old overhead projector. For some unknown reason, the software on his computer will not work with the projector. I find that hard to believe. Projectors are atheistic when it comes to software. Their job is to display images, not whether a computer is running Office 2007 or not. Anyway back to my rant.
There is no class discussion. No one is asking questions. I look around the room and I can count on one hand, the number of people that are actually engaged in this lecture. Most people are doing what I’m doing. We wait until the professor moves the paper and then we copy down the next fews words. Then we go back to our secondary tasks to keep us occupied. It will be another 10 minutes before he moves to the next section on the transparency. I think one guy is watching tv on his smartphone. It doesn’t help my mood that the paper I had written for tonight became corrupted and I lost the entire paper. Yes, I waited till the last minute to write it and print it out. Regardless, I would have lost it because I saved it to my USB drive.
Why is this professor reinforcing these one-sided teaching techniques to those who will be going out to continue the education process in our churches? Not everyone learns best by having someone lecture to them for 2 and a half hours. I learn best by taking things apart and working with my hands. I learn visually. I learn by discussing. It’s no wonder I have a hard time getting motivated for classes like this. Lectures and papers are the course du jour in school. I understand that at times you have to suck it up and do what’s required of you. However, it feels like a contradiction to be taught that we need to include all the learning styles when we teach yet they refuse to practice what they teach.