Educational Myths'

Of the educational myths that were in our content folder, the one that surprised me the least was the learning styles. I actually vividly remember my algebra teacher in high school tell a student to stop making ridiculous excuses for their lack of effort. The student was doing poorly in the class and he talked to the teacher after class and said that he is a visual learner and he can't succeed in the class because there was too much lecturing. The teacher said there's no such thing as a visual learner and thats when I stopped making similar excuses in other classes. I realized that saying I'm doing poorly in a class because its not hands-on is an excuse. The article on how much we remember was actually both surprised me and didn't surprise me at the same time. The fact that the percentages of what we remember were not credible was not surprising because I think the only reason we remember such a high percentage of what we teach/do is because we have thought about the information and processed it so much that we will remember it. Just because I don't teach someone else doesn't mean I will remember less of what we learned. I never gave it much thought beyond that but I'm not surprised that those percentages hold no weight. What surprised me was how wide spread misinformation is. I would have never guessed there were so many examples of percentage theories like those that were essentially made up. As for a solution to these myths, I think we should look at them the same way I looked at the learning styles. I think we need to stop allowing students to use these as excuses for not performing well. I think there are more than enough opportunities to receive extra help in any subject and making a claim that you aren't able to learn by listening isn't constructive. The students need to push themselves through school rather than be dragged across the finish line.