Very often you may hear from friends or you experience it yourself about very familiar phrases ‘my school is boring’, or ‘my lecturer is not interesting’, or ‘arghh exam is coming’. It seems normal and it happens to almost everyone that has ever attended a class or lecture. It is normal. Why?
Call me weird, but I long for a structured class. Either online on in a classroom. That’s the best thing a person can get for education and learning. In my opinion that’s that.
It’s every teacher or lecturer’s dream that their students pay full attention to the class and at the end of the class they ask the right questions pointing to the next relevant subject that perhaps the teacher missed to cover or simply expansion of current topic. Nothing makes a teacher happier that the students gets enthusiastic about what’s next. I am not a teacher but I agree.
What I Mean By Structured Learning?
When I say structured learning, I am referring to lessons or subjects that have clear curriculum and taught sequentially from introduction to advance. On the other hand, I am also referring to structured class to mean the facility of teaching this, be it class room or online lesson (live or on-demand).
In contrast to this, basically the TLDR, is that in this article I’m trying to suggest that self-learning a subject by randomly poking into its random areas may mislead you.
Don’t confused structured learning with formal education. I’m referring to any course or classes that have a very well prepared curriculum or course chapters that teach from basic to the needed knowledge with a very firm base coverage. Be they standardized or not. The best random contrast opposite to this I can pick up is searching a topic and just rely on that as the source of knowledge.
Why Classes Are Probably Boring For Some
But it’s often true that a class is boring for students. We see that everywhere all the time. It’s even normal to portray that in movies and shows. Why?
For one, I might say age difference matters. Students are usually younger and teachers are usually older if not much older. These two age groups have a very different perception of class contents. Be it due to knowledge they have collected or simply different expectations. I do not have research references to cite here. I probably should find one.
Young students are harder to please – not that teachers are trying to please them in class – but that’s what they expect. They are much more energetic and playful. They will not be interested in class’ contents unless they can easily relate to them in their interest. Which is also exactly why this article will be very boring for them to read. Unless this is made into some games (or sort) that they are interested in. Seriously.
Secondly, most young students are placed in classes are not by their own “free will”. If you are a parent, you know what I mean by dragging your kids to school every single weekday morning. They do not wish to go to school or classes because that is not their interest. they would rather play or hang out with friends if there is ever a choice. But for the sake of their right for education we force them to go to school. I am kidding. No, seriously.
Young kids that are interested in school are probably rare, if non-existent. Especially when we don’t give them enough motivation and the true understanding of why they want to go to classes. Again, the reasons must interest them as well.
Structured Learning Is Saving Time
This may sound weird. Shouldn’t it be easier and faster to find stuffs from internet search on the very specific topic that you need? Correct. But, I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know. I must say that learning from structured class (yes, curriculum based lessons) give a solid grip into a discipline of study. Frankly, this is where I am weakest. And, I want to learn more. I want to sweep some knowledge into my brain systematically. How do I do that? Structure.
I’d like to compare structured learning to reading a technical book. Many of us learn by reading and studying from books ourselves. It often happens that we do skip some contents of books (like chapters that we think we already know) or jump straight into the sections we want to know. This saves time. Agree. However, that is only true if we already have some grasp of the topic before. However, very often when I go to read books on familiar subject (or even video tutorials) in certain chapters I am still surprised by how I do not already know something so basic that it was so useful and can be frequently applied. I am not quoting example now. But you may know what I mean. Even if I want to lookup this certain missed knowledge I wouldn’t have known the keyword sometimes.
At a job in 2006, I was working in a telecommunication company as a consultant programmer building their web application using a certain Java application server. I could say I was self-educated for this application server and could easily navigate around it writing business logic code and deployed it into it. However, I was stunt when it was no longer about writing business logic and more about how to configure this application server. I was so blank that I did not know what to do. So I went to its official website containing tons of documentation about it. I was lost. I did not know where to look. If only I had the right classroom walking through the application server in a structured way I would have known where and what to look for even if I did not know it.
Basically, I do believe structured lessons are the right foundation for a subject of knowledge discipline. At least attend one of it as a start. Be it a classroom, online class, or reading a book – the problem with reading a book is that there is no one to keep you on the right track when you are off tangent but that a topic for another day.
Yes, it is true and very true that we can pursue knowledge our (unstructured) way and be great at the subject. In fact that is really the next level of knowledge mining. It is the essential method of getting more and more knowledge. But I do believe that should happen only after we have a good grasp of the foundation of the subject which I think should be structured.
It Gets You The Job
I have been a non-believer in certifications and formal training. I didn’t believe that getting a certificate (of course through a structured curriculum) is something important. I always thought that I could always get whatever knowledge I want my way. The keyword here is my way. Oh boy I wish I were not so stubborn.
Companies are probably right to prefer certifications over beautifully claimed years of work experience that has little to no proven track record. Some simple interviews may help filter out false candidates but does it help to know if certain subject knowledge the candidates have are grasping firmly into the foundation or is it just a sum of all the years of knowledge pieces stitched together to make some high level sense?
I am probably ashamed of myself because I’m likely the latter one. In 2015, I went for a technical interview with a high confidence. Knowing that I have years of experience in the field I was sure I could “sell”. That day I had to go home with a thick cloud of disappointment. I couldn’t catch the tricky technical questions on C++ function where the interviewer was trying to see if I strongly pay attention to pass-by-reference or pass-by-value. This was overlooked because in years of experience I rarely need to worry about how much memory was used when passing a big object by value. Sorry for the very geeky example.
Companies look for measurable quality. Something that can easily be documented. Something that has standard measurement. When it is about skills, it’s probably very hard for the hiring manager to report ‘this guy is qualified’. Well, putting aside that people look for certificate merely for the paper, I do believe there is some measured basic knowledge that come with it.
Of course, hiring an experienced employee is a different story when years of experience is the main factor.
On the other hard, when companies want to add spending towards training their employees in new stills and knowledge it is easier and very much quantifiable to do so with a well structured course. It is definitely not quantifiable or justifiable to allows employee to go for a week of google search for training purpose.
Classmates Are Motivations
Just like in sports, comrades or colleagues are your greatest inspiration if they are doing well. They are your strong motivation to move on pursuing more knowledge whether it’s in the class itself or even after finishing the class and you move on separate ways.
A little competition among the classmates is actually healthy. This should be a good motivation for students to get better. I like it when there is better student that I can look up to. I love it when there is creative student who does thing beyond what is taught.
Time Management
Seriously. How often do you put aside your tasks (be it a random learning or reading books) just because you feel busy? For me, it is very often, if not always. Even if we have planned something that we want to do during certain free time, when the time comes often we feel like not doing it. “Maybe a little bit later. I’m in the middle of watching this TV series. Episode 14.” Too often this happens. And, schedule does not help if there is no discipline.
A structured lesson gives an estimation on how long a course or even a chapter is going to be. This is definitely important for those with busy schedule. It makes if easier to fit the learning into work.
Knowledge Is Discipline
Book writers, curriculum planners, and scientific writers put together knowledge of a subject into a structure for a reason. That is where I see the beauty of why we should always start with structured learning. As kids we learn mathematics from recognizing numbers, counting them, do addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and so on. For a good reason. We don’t jump from recognizing numbers to calculating finite integrals in calculus. I guess not even a genius does that – let’s get a genius to testify here.
The same way applies to learning software engineering. (Pardon me if you’re lost here.) We should learn data structure, algorithm, operating system, and programming languages before we really dive into writing a cloud based intelligent web crawler (probably to compete with the events internet giants).
The examples may not be accurate representing what I’m trying to convey but you probably get what I mean. Once we’re good with the foundation, we are set for the real knowledge adventure anytime. With solid knowledge magnet.
My personal experience with going back to book for basic even when I have been very experienced on the subject is that there is always an ‘oh’ moment knowing that there is certain helpful foundation that we missed if we have not been to structured learning.
The Danger of Internet Search
Many people believe that searching for an answer on the internet is the only way to learn nowadays. They are not wrong to a certain degree. Many have been working around using just the internet search to complete their work and study. And it is totally fine.
The problem will start to become harder when people do not understand what to look for. They may not have enough basis of what is needed to digest the information they found. Information processed without the base knowledge of the topic can lead to misinterpretation. IDRA calls this basis as metacognitive skills. Maybe I should use that more often – it sounds smart.
If you are familiar with the term “don’t confuse my medical degree with your internet search” mentioned by doctors then you know what I mean. This isn’t only about medical knowledge, but also applicable to other knowledge.
My background is software engineering．Many thought that being a good software engineer is all about getting the search on the internet right. It is not always the case. You need to have the correct foundation to look for the right information. Getting and applying the wrong code can be disastrous. Personal experience. Honest.
Social Media is a Source of Jokes
And, I am serious about this one. Never take social media information from friends – be it news, quotes, knowledge, and “facts” – seriously. They are to be taken lightly with entertainment value. Same treatment should be given to social group chats. Take them as the source of joke instead. Well, except when the info is really coming from reputable source of information such as known/verified news reporters and formal institution.
This is very important. My point of view of how social media works is that it is based on how many people “click Like”. A piece of information or knowledge can became very popular simply because people agree to it and it becomes viral because there are too many people agree. It would be more reliable if the social community is from the same knowledge discipline such as associations of doctors and lawyers. The problem is they don’t use social media for sharing or receiving knowledge. Well, maybe some do some knowledge sharing, but that’s all about it.
Very often a hoax or false information gets distributed wild just because people do not investigate into the truth of it or get it from reliable source. Most often, social media is to blame. If this information is crucial to life and death of individuals, it could be fatal. Tread with care there, or simply just enjoy the memes.
I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know
Searching for knowledge on a certain subject requires basic of that subject. To me this has to be in place before you interpret anything that you have found on the internet as reliable. Beside this, we should ask ourselves, do we really know what we want to look for?
Of course we can always start from the subject name itself and make ourselves familiar with the subject in focus. But doesn’t that sound familiar? Hint: structured learning.
One day in the past I was looking for a function or purpose of an organ (part of human body) because I was curious about it. I did not know where to start because I do not possess enough biology knowledge that can lead me to even the name. It was depressing even if it was just for filling my curiosity. Imagine if this is something I need to complete my work for my boss.
Classes Should be Less Boring
Yes, formal training and structured curriculum are boring (at times). It doesn’t have to be. Some educators add fun activities and tell jokes in their classes. Some goes to the extend of pranking or making practical video to perform some acting with. This is good as long as it is within reasonable moral conduct. Making the classes fun eases the student’s already (possibly) stressful schedule.
Don’t forget that motivating students is a very important mission for any educator. Motivated students could also means that the teaching job is half way done. The rest (actually teaching the subject) would be much simpler.
Students, especially young ones need to get motivated with the reason “what is it in it for me”. Understanding why they are in your class is a very important start. A futuristic or imaginary end result may not be too much. As long as students believe in the possible practical results, it is motivational enough.
This is very useful especially when teaching subjects that require a very focused concentration, such as mathematics chemistry and physics. If I knew I could make awesome animations write cool games by studying maths and physics well, I would be great in those subjects in high school. Not that my teachers weren’t good at their subjects.
Conclusion
If you want to be good at certain subject, do pursue the foundation via a structured curriculum/classes/training. Take that base by faith and it will be the pillar or the core pivot for you to further explore the infinite possibility of knowledge and learning. Not everyone will get the same result in learning structured lessons. Some may have outperform their peers simply just scrambling around the internet looking for answers. It is totally fine to have that ability as long as you get the knowledge you want and able to expand it. In the end, we aim for getting more knowledge. It may not suit everyone though.
Finally, do not stop where you are and challenge yourself further. And, enjoy the classes and exams!
Copyright And Disclaimer
Images in this article are taken from unsplashed.com with assumption that free to use license is in effect.
This article voices my own opinion.