Most of my learning in secondary school was ‘passive’. By passive I mean in the sense that I wasn’t necessarily encouraged to be curious or to discover new things. It was a lot of: “This is the content you need to memorise in order to pass the test.” And sometimes I could do it very well because I had a good memory so I could get it done fine. But a lot of times I would just forget it right after because I was just doing it purely for the tests.
Take VCE, such a good example. A lot of the stuff we were just memorising for VCE and right after the exams, you know, “Put your pens down” and then that’s it, see ya later. Like, even essay writing in VCE English: we had to write based on analysing books and all that stuff but I was never good at it because I didn’t know how to form opinions, I was never taught that.
I think also being brought up in an Asian household where a lot of times it’s, like, whatever the dai yun* tells you, you just do it. There wasn’t a lot of space to think. Literally, we weren’t taught to think. And in school that also didn’t help. I was always really fascinated when people had questions to ask. I never had questions to ask because …I was just taking. I wasn’t doing any processing inside; just taking, taking, taking. I was just a sponge: taking in information without processing, without understanding at the end or even just deciding: “Is this true? Is the information I’m taking…it? Is there more to it?”. Critical thinking was zero. None. I feel like they just assumed we would think critically as opposed to being encouraged to.
What encouraged passivity was probably the reality that everything was very task-based: do these exercises and hand them in by Monday and, like…that’s it. The point of the task was to just get it done. And also, I mean, I think that was the main, main thing especially during Years 11 and 12. You’re just doing it so that at the end you pass. That was the point of the whole thing: so you get a good mark, so you get enough to get into uni and that’s it.
I actually loved school because I was really involved with all the after school and extra-curricular stuff. I enjoyed time with my house and doing all the house stuff. School was more of leadership building too rather than textbook stuff. Would it have made it a better experience overall [if the rest of high school was like the MYP project]? Yes, but it was stressful by Year 11 and 12. Things could have been…it’s interesting because by that point I didn’t have a strong desire of wanting things to be less dry because I just wanted things to be done. Finished. I didn’t mind ticking things off my list as long as I could do them, but that didn’t really do anything for me in terms of challenging me to find out more things. I was just like, “Okay, these are the things I need to do and I’ll do them.” and that’s it. It wasn’t really about learning.
*Thinks for long time I loved theatre. I loved it because it was creative and I could come up with my own thing. But the study part was *makes choking noise. So, I loved that we had to see plays for analysis because it was interactive. When we had to do test papers it was just all about getting it right. So, it was basically the same as everything else I was doing in the end.
I obviously didn’t realise this back in the day but now looking back… I see all of that and everything I’ve said…well, because of doing that unit recently on critical thinking [at the end of 2019], all of that made me realise how technology sometimes also makes people passively take in information without processing. Like, there’s TOO much information. Like, you go on your phone: scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, and you’re constantly taking in stuff whether you consciously acknowledge it or not… all the crazy amount of articles. I just think young people nowadays aren’t taught to filter that and that takes critical thinking. And because I wasn’t taught to do any of that in school…for me to flourish as a human being now, I see how important that would have been, and I wish that my learning experience had more of that because it has benefitted my life in general for right now.
It bothered me [after I did the critical thinking unit]. It bothered me that I could have had all these opportunities to just learn more. Hence, I now think “Wow…”. I assume everyone’s born with a certain degree of curiosity; we are innate learners whether we acknowledge it or not.
Learning about critical thinking changed literally everything. It changed everything for me. It made me realise I literally had no opinions toward anything before. Maybe I had, but it was never, like, share your opinion or consider, like…oh, what do I think about climate change, policies, my own cultural identity. It challenged me to think about what are some good traits of being Asian or parts of my culture. I didn’t know I could. I didn’t know I could disagree, never knew how to critique those things. I never questioned. And questioning is a big thing. I never questioned anything until now to get a bigger picture of certain topics.
I never liked reading back in the day. I read, like, nothing. I like to read now because, slowly, I started to read more. That unit made me want to read more because I wanted to learn more. I want to make sure whatever opinion I form is well informed.
*Literally translated from Cantonese as “big person”. A commonly used phrase to denote a parent or authority figure who is usually a generation older.
