faith, and trust. that's the problem.

WARNING: offensive contents ahead.
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powerpoint-based lecturer, or student-centered learning program.
which is better?
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i know that a lot of us are probably rooting for the latter,
but i chose to differ.
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honestly, i can't bring myself to trust my lecturers,
their explanations aren't very detailed, i have to say.
and it's not the first time my questions got confused with other things,
or deflected, because the teacher him/herself can't come up with a solid explanation to my inquiries.
i don't like voicing out my misunderstandings, only to get myself even more confused and clueless about things i thought i could understand.
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the way i see it,
we, the student body, is a very flexible unit.
open to new thoughts, new ideas, new theories, new ways to do anything.
we get into lecture halls everyday, expecting to be wow-ed and our minds blown my what's in store for us,
what we could learn, what we could do, what should we expect when we're our there, working for our first pay-day.
to us, anything goes...
we DO still have that "much-ness" (quote from the Mad Hatter, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland)
and that cheek to think about things in different perspectives,
and ask questions on why can't there be alternative ways to do one thing, for example.
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problem is, we're so used to this condition where we come in,
fresh and hyped-up about the campus life and our newly-gained independence,
only to be smacked in the head by remarks such as "don't think too much and complicate things, this is the right way to do this...*blablabla*"
or "it's like that because it like that" (not the exact sentence, but something similar to that)
..........wwwwhat???
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here's the problem:
when we WANT to participate in class, educators are suddenly caught in this strange new mentality that they do not understand,
thereby, being the "more experienced" and "more certified" professionals they are,
they're unofficially granted the permission to use excuses like "don't over-think things" or "that's wrong" or "that's not possible".
(i'm not saying that ALL educators are like that, there are some that actually has what it takes to make us learn better about our subjects...sadly, we don't get assigned 100% to such group of lecturers)
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i saw a quote/question on facebook not long ago,
and find it making perfect sense:
"one teacher can only teach one subject, how can you expect one student to learn so many subjects?"
and to add to that, what if that one teacher that you've got, doesn't seem to understand his/her own subject?
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that's when "student-centered learning" got coined, i guess....
apparently we're suppose to find out these things by ourselves and present our thoughts as our lecturers,
(staying true to the way they are trained in education schools), stick closely to their oh-so-perfect powerpoint slides..
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question:
if we're encouraged to study and understand the courses by ourselves,
participate (and if we could even do presentations) in lectures,
solve our assignments' questions by ourselves,
only refer to our lecturers after class/any other time, if we have any questions,
make use of our technologies to gain knowledge,
where in some cases, the information presented in the lecturer(s) slides are actually taken from wikipedia or yahoo,
.....why do we need to attend lectures??
since it's apparent that we're not learning about anything much during our 50minutes lectures.
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you must be thinking, "how dare you, as a mere student, question the education system and the educators' abilities in teaching"
well, i've had close to 14years of experiences on being a student.
i think i've earned my right to judge which classes are good, interesting and informational classes, and which aren't.
on the other hand,
educators go through 17-20years of studying to get upgraded to the front of the classroom,
shouldn't THEY know better to tell apart the good from the bad examples of a lecture from their own life as a student??
what methods did they use to make their lectures seem more attractive to us?
why do so many of us still doze off in class, or can't resist our eyes from looking at the ticking...no blinking *digital watches mah* (ever so slowly) watch??
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so, student-centered learning?
duuuuude, it has always been a student-centered learning system to us students...
honestly it's nothing new.
unless the government suddenly abolishes the lecture-slots and announce that campus students may be exempted from any lectures,
in fact, there will be no lectures.
all we need to show up in lecture halls are for tests, quizzes, assignments and exams.
and if we'd ever have any question, we may seek help from our assigned lecturers on our own time,
via e-mail, or meet them in their offices. (since most of our questions get answered in their offices, when we went to see them personally anyway)
we could have had more time to finish those dreaded assignments, projects and revisions....
not to mention perform better!
by having more time to rest and study with a more peaceful mind instead of running up and down the campus to get to class and all...
(we could even save the environment by reducing the usage of electricity, used to generate power to lecture halls+tutorial rooms...since a lot of them are left unused half of the time they're opened to students)
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wouldn't that be awesome.
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until then, i think the education system should maintain the current not-so-student-centered-learning system,
let them use powerpoint slides,
at least there's something to look forward to when we rush our butts of to get to classes.