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Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Education / What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? (1445 Views)
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What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by bilexg(m): 1:07am On Aug 08, 2014 |
Whenever exams and tests are in the corner, it is not uncommon to see students running helter skelter looking for summarized notes and materials to photocopy, cram temporarily, only to forget after ‘downloading’ on the exam day. This practice is very unique as it is done within a very short time, sometimes as short as 5 hours before the exam. It’s really an amazing sight to see this set of students do what they do; they show very little desperation and only need a quiet environment to absorb the whole junk of a semester’s work load in their head. It is noticeable that these categories of students do not attend lectures during the semester and when they do, they take the backseats uninterested in what the lecturer has got to say. These “crammers” as observed spend a good part of the semester doing other stuff that ranges from business to clubbing and time wasting. However, it would be very unsafe to say that only these categories of students “cram”. It is also noticeable among the best students in class who specialize in lifting definitions, terminologies, principles & theories into their memories only to download verbatim on answer sheets without altering the original contents. I am, for example, guilty of this, an inadequacy that can sometimes be traced to the persistent request by lecturers requiring verbatim answers to questions in exams. Thus, students worry less about expanding knowledge, but rather they wait till exam periods to cram their course notes and materials.] In the popular movie, 3 Idiots of Bollywood, produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, this cramming technique was effectively done by the character, Chatur Ramalingam, also called “silencer”. It was humorous to watch its outcome for him when he was selected to give the introductory speech on Teachers day. Going down the history lane, it would be observed that the cramming culture is inculcated into pupils as early as primary school as they are made to cram the multiple times table, metric tables, arithmetic s and so on. I remember vividly my experience with my class teacher while in primary 3 whose first duty every morning in class then was to ask random questions on our memorized “times table” and those who failed to supply an answer in ample time had their buttocks whipped with strokes of cane. This is not to say such technique of education was bad, as what I memorized then are still in my memory today. I sincerely think that the difference between cramming in the earlier years and what is obtainable now is CONSISTENCY. This can be explained with Ebbinghaus’s “Spacing Effect”. According to him, “spacing effect is the process whereby animals (including humans) more easily remember or learn items when they are studied a few times spaced over a long time span rather than repeatedly studied in a short span of time” (H. Ebbinghaus, 1885). To explain this, while I was young, I consistently had to read and memorize the times table and thus it stuck, but what is obtainable in universities these days is to see students only cram when exams are around the corner and because they do not consistently read up their notes, source for more information from friends and over the internet, they forget all that is “crammed” in a short time. It is also quite unsurprising that majority of college students forget a good chunk of what they were tested on in the previous semester’s exam few weeks into a new semester. As Ebbinghaus demonstrated again, if information was acquired in a stressful and unhealthy circumstances such as cramming , its retention in the memory diminishes quickly. Cramming, thus, may not be always advisable if the goal is to be EDUCATED It will also be unfair to say that cramming in itself is completely wrong as it has immense benefits; for example, cramming sessions ensure students are able to see what they are made of and improve on their current brain abilities. Cosnider this: a person who walks steadily over long distances will not have a heart as strong as a person who runs at quick bursts over short distances. It pushes them to do beyond their abilities and also improve on their short term memory. Well, you might say, it is only useful for grades, not true learning. That’s left for you to decide. I’ll leave you with this question, “Is cramming that bad? source: http://www.jarushub.com/whats-wrong-with-cramming-to-pass/ |
Re: What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by Emperorking20(m): 3:02am On Aug 08, 2014 |
bilexg: Whenever exams and tests are in the corner,All I can say is "Cramming" is only good/useful and advisable to an extent. Real and sustainable knowledge isn't acquired by cramming. |
Re: What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by ifekemmy(f): 3:33am On Aug 08, 2014 |
La cram ,la pour: as u cram it, u pour it down. I av a friend who does dat alone, he can cram pages.his brilliant though, he came out with 2nd class upper |
Re: What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by eleojo23: 5:20am On Aug 08, 2014 |
The problem with cramming is that the knowledge does not stick to your brain. Also when an applied question is posed, the 'crammer' becomes stranded. But I think cramming is being encouraged by this our system where the lecturers are interested in getting their notes/textbooks reproduced for them on the exam answer sheets rather than applied knowledge. |
Re: What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by psucc(m): 6:17am On Aug 08, 2014 |
Cramming is not bad anyway but you are left with nothing almost immediately afterwards. |
Re: What's Wrong With Cramming To Pass? by bilexg(m): 7:38am On Aug 08, 2014 |
Emperorking20: eleojo23: The problem with cramming is that the knowledge does not stick to your brain. Also when an applied question is posed, the 'crammer' becomes stranded. But I think cramming is being encouraged by this our system where the lecturers are interested in getting their notes/textbooks reproduced for them on the exam answer sheets rather than applied knowledge. Emperorking20: so u mean its goodness all depends on usuage? |
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