College Homework

An intresting topic that was brought up on one of the comments; homework. What is the point of doing the homework asignments when the teacher will not even give you credit for them? Well, before today I would have said that teachers do it to make students suffer but a teacher actually answered this in class. My Genetics teacher, Dr. Maughn, was not there today so we had the other Genetics teacher Dr. Fairbanks give the lecture. Fairbanks is one of the authors of the textbook we use. He began class by telling us that we had to read the book to understand the lecture. We have to understand the lecture so we can do our homework. And we have to do our homework so we can do good on the test.

Every thing in college revolves around doing well on the exams, on passing tests, on getting A's. I am ashamed to say that even I have gone through classes just to get a grade, to get to the next one without learning anything. Jumping hoops and passing tests is not what college should be about, it should be about learning; pure learning. We should study for the sake of learning, we should take classes for the sake of learning, we should do asignments for the sake of learning. My first semester here I was enrolled in Bio 120 and I would just sit in on a Bio 100 class and just listen to the lecture just for the sake of learning biology. (The Bio 100 teacher was also my religion teacher so I had made the arangement previously.) I learned so much from the Bio 100 class because I was just sat there to learn. I was not there to get an A or to get to the next class, I was there just to learn about the central dogma, and to learn about the creb cycle, and to learn about life. On the other hand in the Bio 120 class, I would sit in class and wonder if what the teacher just said was going to be on the next test. I would do my home work just to get more points so I could pass the class. Needless to say, I did not learn much. I have never learned so much like I did in the class that I would attend to just listen. What ever happened to the good old days where people were self educated? Back in the days were people learned from just reading?