My wife and several of my friends are teachers and I am amazed at the things they tell me about their students. To put it briefly, no one studies. Ever. Frankly, I don’t think most kids (or even college students for that matter) have the slightest idea how. The idea of spending a few minutes at home in the evening reading or thinking is absolutely ludicrous to many students. And parents call in to the school saying, “What can we do to help him/her do better?” Ummm, try making them do their homework and study. No really, make them.
All the frustration aside, I do think students would benefit from having a dedicated class/teacher/mentor/tutor/whatever to teach them how to learn and study. If every school across the board had some avenue for telling kids “This is how to learn - this is how to go home and study so that you actually know things,” I think our education system and our society as a whole would greatly benefit. Bring in trained psychologists who understand learning and memory and who know the research behind what they’re teaching.
There are a hundred reasons why it’s not quite that simple, and a hundred more why it would be difficult to implement. But the fact remains that there are very few if any teachers or classes that operate as dedicated learning guides (that is, the only things they’re teaching is how to retain and comprehend information - they’re not teaching biology at the same time).
