“Do I need to know this for the test?” is a common question from my undergraduate students. My graduate students with an undergraduate mindset often ask, “How many pages should the paper be?” These are symbolic indicators that suggest learning is driven by task and grade. Not by insight or academic curiosity.
I want to hold them by their collective shoulders and shake them. How about learning for learning sake? Why can’t they learn because they are inquisitive, passionate, driven? My goal is to always challenge my students’ thinking, and to take every student out of his or her intellectual comfort zone. Rote memorization is passé. That’s why God made books. Besides, by the time they get to be my age, it is difficult to remember the simplest things.
We forget the content – the learning process gets engrained. We must learn how to learn – not always what to learn. And that’s what separates the cream that we skim from the top to build world-class organizations.
About Hemant Rustogi