I classify people as ‘regurgitators’ because all they do in school is memorize and regurgitate information. Many of them do very well in their major, however. I suppose its the only way some people can master something, if they do not have other talents/prior knowlege/passion for the subject. But simply memorizing it and parroting it back on exams has significant limitations. Many of these people have startlingly poor imaginations- they are unable to come up with any new ideas, or modify existing ones. Rather, they can only imitate, and while they can perform that task flawlessly, their one dimensionality starts to show painfully in certain circumstances.
Two people in my book project are regurgitators, unfortunately. It caught me rather by surprise how someone that gets good grades in class can still be dead weight in a group project, particularly one that requires imagination. Our project involves us writing a children’s book, which means we have to come up with a plot, characters, layout, illustrations, etc. Some group members and I were looking foward to coming up with something creative and unique, but because some group members seem to be completely unable and unwilling to come up with new ideas, we are kind of getting held back in the ‘creativity’ department. Its too far into the project to switch members, so at this point we are just going to have to come up with a comprimise, but the fact is that any task that they perform will require some amount of creativity. Want to be the illustrator? Think about what medium you want to use, and what the illustraitons will look lilke. The advantage of working in a group is being able to take the combined creativity of six people and come up with something greater than the sum of its parts.
I can’t help but think that some people are conditioned to not be creative- to follow the assignments and material in school so rigidly that they become unable to think for themselves. I really think this is a shame, because without some level of abstract thinking, applying 4 years worth of college education might be a bit challenging. I myself learned in a total opposite fasion- I didn’t like having to memorize something; I preferred to learn by applying concepts and understanding how they work in the real world.
We have a similar problem in Physics 101. All lot of these kiddies are amazingly good at memorizing a list of steps to take to solve a certain type of problem. But if you then alter the problem in any significant way, their heads asplode and their output becomes gibberish, or worse—they have no idea how to even start and they leave it blank.
It’s dangerous; you can trick yourself into thinking that they know the material because they can do the problems, but if you probe their conceptual understanding you’ll discover fun things like:
They do not realize what it really means to break vectors down into components. Strangely, they will cheerfully do it if they’ve learned that they have to do it as part of a particular problem, but they have no conceptual grasp on why you they are doing it, and when it is necessary.
They have a grand old time plugging and chugging with the equations of kinematics, but when you ask them, outside the context of a familiar type of problem, simple questions about “If the velocity is increasing in magntiude / constant / decreasing in magnitude / changing direction, what does that tell you about the acceleration?” they have a suprisingly difficult time answering them.
I can’t really pit them for this, because what they’re doing is applying study skills that have been successful for them in other classes (notoriously Anatomy.) This is a very difficult class for many (most?) of them, and truly, I admire them for their determination and hard work. And naturally I’m generalizing; many of our students are very bright and apt. But for, say, the lower 40%, it’s a constant struggle (both on our part and theirs) especially since we are making a real effort to emphasize conceptual learning over plug-and-chug problem solving. They would probably would have have had a much easier time if they’d taken this class two years ago (but, I think, they’d have learned a lot less physics!)
I think it’s because I was a lazy kid that I didn’t become a regurgitator.
In a lot of my classes, the homework was to define words. I HATED writing/printing (one of the reasons I went in computers, another triumph of my laziness I suppose), so I’d paraphrase the definitions into something shorter so I’d have to write less.
I expected to be chastised for it, so I was surprised when the teacher singled me out for praise because of it!
I remember running into this when i TA-ed the intro physics lab course at my college too. I think the root may be deeper than just Anatomy, though i agree that many of the bio students taking the course matched your description. I seem to remember that High School was very memorization-oriented as well, especially in my humanities classes (with a few notable exceptions where we had excellent, engaging teachers), and in some of the math and science classes as well. I can only identify 3 or 4 classes where I was actually required to think creatively about how to solve a problem, and one of those classes was Metal Shop! (The others were chemistry, calculus, and an english class with a creative writing component - but not my “conceptual” physics class).
I dated a girl who was taking the high school biology class, and i remember her complaining about the class (despite having the highest grade in the class) because all they did was memorize. She ended up going to college for Music/Education, probably because she never got to see the creative side of Biology.
Perhaps we’d have a better chance at encouraging creative thinking and problem solving if we made sure our public schools emphasized those skills.
I can say some public schools stifle creativity. I have nothing but high marks for the public schools my daughter attended. And we watched closely (ready to snatch her out if need be) and were very critical. We were also very involved in each school. Perhaps therein lies the answer.
For someone juggling so many classes and jobs, you seem to have lots of time to bitch and moan about the inferior people around you.
The people at work—all they do is whine and complain while inculcating students with their political ideologies. St. Incubus does not do this because he knows its wrong.
The classmates in theater class–they don’t study and memorize their lines. St. Incubus is a much better student than they are. He even got a Scooby snack from the teacher!
The classmates on the children’s book project–they have no creativity and it’s dragging St. Incubus down.
You can tell me to go fuck myself. I don’t care. I’m not trying to be mean or a jerk and I apologize if I’m hurting your feelings right now. But come on, dude. You can’t be that perfect! Not in a single week. Maybe it’s time that you lowered your expectations. Better yet, realize that it’s easy to see how screwed up people are. Wherever you go, there will be screwed up people. There is not enough bandwidth in the world to talk about them. Talking about them on the Straight Dope will not make them improve their behavior.
Now for the current rant…
Creativity does not come naturally to many people. Blame the schools or the parents or whatever, but it’s not something people can make themselves be if they aren’t inclined. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Slamming someone for not being creative, IMHO, is like slamming someone for not being out-going. I say this as someone who’s biggest strength is creativity.
Is it too late to have a group meeting? Sit everyone down and say, “I’m concerned that we aren’t putting enough creativity into the project. What do ya’ll think?” If a real life meeting can’t happen, do it by email. Ask for suggestions from everyone on how to “spicen” things up. Rally the like-minded members around the cause. If necessary, mention that part of the grade rests on how original the project is. If they don’t budge (which is a possibility), then at least you know you contributed as much as you could. But chances are there will be some improvement.
Haha. You have to be kidding me - one of my professors flat out told us that if we weren’t at least a postgraduate, our opinion was worth exactly jack squat. As in, if we couldn’t credit an idea in our essay/exam to some other “recognised lawyer”, we might as well not have put it down at all. Even if what we wrote was exactly what that “recognised lawyer” had said.
Monstro, I am not offended or upset at what you just pointed out. You do bring up a good point.
One of the reasons I have been pointing out how lazy/incompetent people are around me is because this past semester I have been working harder and taking things more seriously than I even have before. I’m going to graduate soon, and I’d like to finish college doing the best I have ever done. As I started working harder both in work and school, the shortcomings of other people became more apparent.
I’m not perfect. I make mistakes as well from time to time. The issue I have is that a large proportion of the people around me don’t take their task as seriously as I do, and many are so apathetic about it in one respect or another that it has the potential to interfere with my work.
My main grudge with the group regurgitators is primarily their unwillingness to pick their brains. Everybody gets ‘writers block’, even if they are very productive artists, musicians, writers, etc. However, its important to not give up so early on, especially when you are contributing to a collarborative project. I will continue prodding them for unique ideas- it could be they are afraid their ideas would be considered ‘dumb’ or ‘unoriginal’. At this stage, we need as much feedback as possible- you can’t judge something if you haven’t seen it yet. Thus, most of us are brainstorming and throwing out lots of ideas. Everybody is going to have some ideas that fall flat, but the more we have to work with, the more good ideas will come about.
I knew plenty of regurgitators in school. They got excellent grades, and could even tell you what page of the textbook something was on. But, give them a problem not in the book (original thought or a different approach) and they were lost. They could memorize and crunch numbers like crazy but had no clue what the numbers really meant. This became painfully obvious in the various labs, especially the electronics labs. Their projects and exercises somehow always were “tuned for Maximum Smoke”, while those of a C+ to B student (me) always worked. Then I was asked to troubleshoot and explain why they had these little fires going. They were memorizing, while I was trying to actually understand. The lab teacher and I always were highly entertained. Regurgitators are always good for a laugh, especially if they came in all high and mighty because of their high grades. The Smoke disrespected them, a lot.
You know, I know this’ll be the unpopular side here, but I have gotten to the point, in some classes, of being thankful when a professor is willing to stand up and say that. I’m so fucking tired of group learning, and presentations, and sharing my goddamn feelings in class. The fact is, I don’t learn squat from people’s presentations in class. We’re fucking undergrads, and their presentations suck, and they take two weeks of valuable instructional time away.
A professor who insists you do nothing but memorize is bad, but in my opinion, one who’s enamored of ideas about creativity and encouragement is usually worse. Creativity is great when it’s not taking the place of actually learning the material, and when spending some real time studying is deemphasized in favor of being “original” (which, ironically, never actually occurs in these situations) it just means that I’m not learning what I should be (and what I’m paying a damn high amount for) in school. And group discussions where we “share our thoughts” are like being in fucking kindergarten again. On of my goddamn profs actually wasted half a class period having us talk about “how people can get along when they have different views.”
Okay, I see your point, but I’d just like to clear this up: I’m not talking about presentation where other people are involved, but individual exams and essays, where we are supposed to already know our material.
Well thought out argument, with relevant case citations, might even be in the damn textbook, but didn’t come from “recognised lawyer” or wasn’t cited to be from
“recognised lawyer” = fail.
One of the most memoriable sentences that was said to me “Well, anyone could have come up with this stuff in a pub, you need to know who actually said it” as if the argument was somehow more persuasive because Lord I don’t give a shit about Parliament Denning said it.
Any any professor that spends half an hour on “how people can get along when they have different views.”, I transfer out of that class.
