Does anyone remember how to study?

When was the last time your son or daughter studied for a school test? And when I say studied, I mean sat down with a book, a pad of paper and a pencil, door shut, sans iPhone, and started memorizing biology, European history, pre-calculus, Spanish, or any topic in particular. When did they last take a ‘really big exam’? Not a worksheet for extra-credit and not a take-home quiz where they could look up the answers online and spit them back verbatim to get full credit, but an actual test where they were forced to sit by themselves, no distractions of any kind, and answer test questions based on their knowledge of the material, or at worst, on what they could memorize the night before? 

That’s the dilemma teachers now face. How do they ‘test’ their students’ knowledge of the material? Typical questions such as “Who was Franz Ferdinand’s assassin?” or “When did the Irish Famine take place?” are important concepts for European History, but without timed, in-person exams these answers can be quickly googled and therefore require no prior studying. Same for math. There are apps that can solve math equations right up to calculus level. Why bother to study and learn when you can use you iPhone to answer the question? The current lack of in-person teaching leads to tests being taken at home, unsupervised, with the internet literally at students’ fingertips, and that doesn’t require any studying. 

For current middle-school and high-school students, this problem won’t just disappear. Colleges, graduate schools, med schools, professional programs – they all require tests, and tests require studying. You need to pass tests to be an underwriter, CPA, police officer, plumber and a teacher. The months, possibly years, of not studying due to remote leaning will come back to haunt our children once in-person classroom teaching resumes. That first test once they’re back in schools, pencil and paper only, no phone, eyes on your own test please – Unit 1, Biology, twenty questions on cells and cell functions. Will your child know ‘how’ to study for it?