Why I Didn't Read Chapter Four Last Night

Teacher: “Okay class, your homework for tomorrow is to read chapter four from the textbook.”

Student: “Sweet! No homework.”

            Today’s topic is efficiency. While not exclusive to higher education, it is certainly a prime example of a realm in dire need and will be the focus of this writing. Let’s look at the above example. Anyone who has ever gone to college, even just for a semester, has been given the assignment to read an entire chapter from a $200 textbook, with no further direction or questions to answer. The instructor simply requests that the students read the chapter. The instructor then spends the next class delivering a lecture on the material covered in that chapter, but in a much more concise manner, with emphasis put on the items that that instructor finds particularly pertinent. The wise student, will quickly notice, that the benefit from reading the material before being presented the same material is not worth the additional time and effort to actually complete the reading. This is especially true, when the student is taking other classes, with real assignments, as well as working, and trying to fit food and sleep into the equation somewhere too.

            So why don’t the readings offer any benefit? First off, they’re dreadfully boring. Anyone who has ever read a textbook can attest, that the authors provide such immaculate detail, that a description of something as tedious as reading a textbook chapter can go on for what seems like four pages. I’ll spare you this level of detail and limit myself to one, but the point I am trying to make is that the same information could be presented in a much more efficient manner. One might question the validity of a textbook written in bullet point format, but the information is much more readily retained by the reader, and additionally, since textbooks are almost exclusively used as a supplement to instructor led lectures, there is really no need for such detail. For instance:

• ·       Textbook chapters are long and overdetailed
• ·       Instructors typically cover the same material in class the following day
• ·       Lacking any real direction, students often get little out of reading an entire chapter

Now take a minute to compare what you just read to what you just just read. Both offered essentially the same information but the latter took significantly less time to read, and you would probably retain more from it. Plus, were you to have any questions or want any further clarification, you could just ask me next class, though I do plan on expanding on those points in the lecture anyway.

To sum up this detailed account of concision, I would like to make the claim that the inefficiency of most college curricula could be removed without significant loss in the quality of knowledge, and would likely lead to increased retention, and certainly prolonged interest.

-AMS