Behind the Learning
In the beginning of the school year, I sat in my English class and watched a TEDx talk, “Can Skateboarding Save Our School?” by Dr. Tae. During the video, he compared his skateboarding life to schooling and explained how learning is perceived. From this, I see that learning revolves around school, especially in high school. Students are confined in their classrooms for six to seven hours, five days a week, before the ring of the final bell signals they can go home. For students, the most important thing that they worry about learning is their grades. The unnecessary sign that reflects how much of an “intellectual” they are and allows them to brag about their “A”. Nowadays, learning is all about grades because it somehow determines what university you will go to, what job you will get…or so we’re told. However, learning should be an experience, not a large, red-letter marked on the corner of a paper nor a percentage.
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For example, there is always a nervous thumping in my heart and the shaky, sweaty fingers when I press open my phone and see what grade I received from a school assignment. My mind fills with frantic thoughts: “What did I get? What did I get? Please let it be a good grade.” Once the grade reveals itself, there is either a feeling of relief and a beaming smile for an A or a sense of disappointment and tears over a F. However, if someone asks me what I learn from that certain subject, I can’t recall it, but I can instantly remember the grade I got.
The TEDx video made me notice that from the moment a classwork includes a grade, the learning experience is ignored. I study for hours, reading tiny, printed words off pages of thick textbooks and hoping to memorize all the details to prepare for a test. However, I don’t stop to understand what I was doing. The dull, yellow light from the lamp illuminates the words and numbers as they pass through my mind, with no intent of staying there. I jump from one subject to another, but I can’t reflect on what I can take from them. During that moment, the lessons didn’t matter; only the grades did.
Learning becomes meaningful when it isn’t so restricted by rules, like grades. Mistakes allowed; improvements on certain skills, like writing or analyzing, seen when a specific letter isn’t present to show that you’re finished with an assignment and going back to work on it is not possible. You are not forcing yourself to learn quickly or restraining your mind’s creativity. There isn’t a huge boulder of anxiety, threatening to flatten your existence to the ground or making you want to rip your hair out. The freedom to explore on your own and see what you can do leaves a bigger impact than just copying notes from a power point. Imagine writing an essay without a rubric to confine you in a cage and being able to express your ideas on that particular topic. Imagine failing hundreds of times to get a skateboard move (the 360 flip) correct, like Dr. Tae, and landing it perfectly after years of trying and practicing. That is freedom. It’s understanding, not just recognizing, your weaknesses, like public speaking, and allowing yourself for failure first so you can learn how to move on from it. This is when learning becomes the experience. It leaves an effect on you that doesn’t seem forgettable anymore. That moment becomes the time where grades stop controlling how you learn, and YOU take the reins.
