Status vs. Education

[DossarLX ODI]

The title might sound a bit bizarre, but it directly relates to the transition from high school to the university level. I watched a 5-part series on improving study tips, and it made me think about how high school strategies need to be unlearned (mindless memorization and skimming, procrastination, overconfidence, etc). I always see students saying something along the lines of “I got accepted into a college!” and take it as some sort of status achievement. However, the reality many times is that a student fails to complete his or her degree, and winds up being in debt and having to pay off student loans.

This brings up the thread title: Is secondary education influenced by the bias of college being a representation of status and prestige? Why are students being given packets of information with a lot of definitions and told to memorize them? In my history classes all I did was read through a lot of text and memorize many dates and such. Yes, I did well on the tests from being able to retain information for a short period of time, but I don’t remember most of what I did in those classes. I don’t learn from being given big packets and reading through text where almost 90% of it is irrelevant and then the other 10% is what’s put on the actual quizzes/exams.

Below is the views comparison between part 1 in the series I watched to part 5. Part 5 only has around 25% of the views of the part 1. This takes me back to the “senioritis” term that floated around when I was in high school – doing good in the first half of the semester, but then putting in less effort in the second half. I feel like students tend to lose interest in studying from being hyped about getting accepted into a college, taking it as some kind of status accomplishment. What’s mentioned in the 5-part series I linked below is something that does not get a lot of attention in high school.

Part 1: 397,809 views Link
Part 5: 98,107 views

I feel like there’s a lot of arrogance associated with the transition from high school to university. Students go into university thinking they’re prepared with the strategies they used in high school, but then in the actual university courses what they did in high school is useless. The status illusion, in my opinion, is what causes a lot of students to go into deep debt. Rather than wait and get some money beforehand, they try going straight to university so they can brag about being in a college. I feel like this is detrimental to education as it also affects high school students who aren’t changing their study habits.

Of course, this also doesn’t factor in teachers who grade like assholes. There was a teacher at my university who is no longer teaching – she basically graded 0%, 50%, or 100%. It was ridiculous and that teacher usually put in many assignments that required much more knowledge than what was being mentioned in the textbook. Being a professor at a university can also be seen as a status accomplishment, but many professors are usually known for the research they’ve done; some are very bad teachers. Some professors become so arrogant to the point where they don’t admit that they can improve their ways of teaching, and when half the class fails, they blame all of it on the students. My physics professor in my first semester of freshman year incorrectly attempted some questions that my friends asked – so not only was that professor bad at teaching, he also was quite incompetent.

Thoughts on how status affects education? I feel like not mentioning these important studies about cognitive research in high schools misleads students into getting into a lifetime of debt.