My friend was highlighting what the instructor said to, and she was also highlighting what she described as other interesting things.
The instructor called her out: There's someone in the third row who is highlighting parts that I am not telling you to highlight.
My friend did not tell me what followed immediately, but she did get her license.
I saw a parallel between this instructor's behavior and attitude and the way teachers are told to teach in our test-driven, accountablility and measurability-obsessed education.
The teacher's job is to get the students ready for the test. The student's job is to do what the teacher says so the student will be prepared to pass the test.
Highlighting those useless, non-tested parts is a waste of time.
Except often those are the parts that are interesting.
And if education is not interesting to students, it's being done wrongly.
Ok, class, get out your highlighters. I think you should highlight the parts I talk about. But you need to follow your mind and heart and highlight anything you want to highlight, for whatever reason you want to.
We all need to know what we will be tested on; we need to understand immeasureably more than that.
