As I attended my first classes this semester, one common question from my professors was what previous information we encountered in their fields. Students in my philosophy class with previous experience threw out terms like “metaphysics” and “Kant” without further explanations, earning smiles from those who were also familiar with the field while leaving others in confusion. Similarly, as I listened to discussions in my literature classes, I found myself nodding to words like “aesthetics” and “postcolonialism” without paying attention to other details. I used my knowledge about these terms to assume my classmates’ thoughts instead of registering new information.
These instances remind me of my experience teaching English language arts to middle school students this summer. I interned with Breakthrough Collaborative, a nonprofit organization serving low-income students and families in Greater Boston. In our current education system, students have little time to critically reflect on how much academic and social terms matter in day-to-day life. Both my internship and college experiences have made me wonder why education prioritizes the memorization of big, empty academic terms without supplementing necessary content to elicit students’ original, critical thinking. By learning about the current education system through my experience as a teacher, I have come to find that the American education system only encourages the memorization of concepts rather than the understanding of them.
I started my reading class this summer by asking my students what the last piece of writing they read was. Most students came up with similar sentences in response, writing that they read a story last semester on Islamophobia and its global exploitation of Muslim individuals. While I was initially surprised that the 12-year-old students commanded such sophisticated language, I became suspicious when I asked them to elaborate on Islamophobia and was met with silence. Eventually, one of the students explained that their teacher from last semester asked them to write that response for their reflection assignment.
Talking with a fellow teacher confirmed the reality of an education that only imparts concepts without explanations and discussions that are essential for complete comprehension. For example, her students were required to memorize official definitions of popular phrases in the news, such as LGBTQ+ rights and police violence, within 40-minute periods. She was worried that her students might not understand these important concepts in such a short time, since they were being forced to prioritize recitation over explanation.
The repetitive and short appearances of information on social media, intensified by increasingly polarized politics in the United States, have made us more prone to learning empty concepts. When there is too much information to choose from, simplified concepts can initially be an effective way to communicate by making large chunks of news digestible. For example, the expansion of the term “LGBT” to “LGBTQIA+” systematized the concepts of “intersex” and “asexual,” therefore affirming more marginalized sexualities in public discourse and making it a useful concept to internalize.
However, when there is an excess of concepts — which are rigid terms without understandable explanations — in circulation, their actual meaning dilutes. Politicians, with their aim to garner supporters, perhaps best understand the psychology of creating concepts. By distilling political actions to symbols, our known pool of political concepts expands excessively. Former President Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), for instance, is an abbreviation of former President Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again,” which represented Reagan’s promised solutions to economic difficulties. Yet, in Trump’s campaign, MAGA has become an empty concept: a chant to reinforce the party’s morale without clear policies affiliated with it.
Additionally, teachers may be prone to having students memorize empty concepts for better outcomes in exams. Each state in the United States has a fixed set of curriculum standards, and education policymakers evaluate teachers’ performance by assessing how well their students meet these standards through testing. Yet, these rigid standards fail to accommodate the diverse backgrounds of students: the education resources available to them, the languages they speak and what they want to pursue in the future.
Although explicit exam standards may not be as common in higher education, universities still compete with one another in rankings that largely rely on post-graduation employment rates and starting salaries. Seeing as job opportunities are scarce and essential for success, universities tend to inculcate students with terms to demonstrate their work abilities in job applications like “critical thinking”, “transferable skills” and field-specific terminologies without necessarily delving into how these concepts can look practical in real life. The emphasis on efficient exam preparation and job hunting forces teachers to equip students with academic concepts and popular terms in society in short times.
Education should be a space where students can develop critical thinking regarding big, empty words. By permitting this in-depth thinking, these kids can learn more specific knowledge, communicate and strategize detailed solutions to the current political and economic system. Rather than inundating students with vague concepts, our education system should value thorough explanations and critical discussions. In philosophy classes, professors and students should ask why a specific philosophical term is applicable in a given context instead of barely nodding to it. When teaching concepts, teachers should encourage students to think of and debate their practical use.
Pragmatically, helping students adapt to the current society with its preference for big but meaningless words can be part of education. Yet, education should not only reinforce the system. It should cultivate change, free people from the pressures of capitalist efficiency and create a more equitable environment. Education, at its best, brings joy and hope for our future. To achieve that, we need to supplement mere concepts with concrete content.
Amiee Zhao is ( 26C) from Shanghai.
