How my schooling encouraged me / did not encourage me to work things out for myself in my own way.

 According to constructivism way of learning, people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. So knowledge is created not acquired that way we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know.  

Reflecting on how I was schooled, right from primary level the teachers of English used to give us English books and we ready stories on our own and we were required to answer some questions from what we had read and this made us think on our own. My mathematics teachers used to give  me numbers to do on my own and if I failed them , he could always guide me and tell me to do them again on own which I believe made me feel part of Mathematics and finally become even a Mathematics teacher. In secondary I did many subjects and for science subjects the teachers used to take us to the LAB and I was able to carry out Physics, chemistry and biology practical’s on my own. Our physics teacher used to group us and give us work do  in groups and then we had to discuss those numbers in front of the class, he also used to give us a tip of the next lesson and he could tell us to go and make summarized notes from the library books. It helped to pass physics.

However to some extent apart from the science subjects which do have a practical paper most of the lessons where teacher – centred. No practical part of it. It was teacher coming in , good morning , where did we end , let us continue.  I remember teachers used to give us notes after notes and we had to read that for exams. There is an exam we set and I gave a different definition of a certain term in Biology which I had read from a certain book I got in the school library the teacher crossed it and when I requested him to check it out in that book, he just said I WANT THE DEFINITION I GAVE YOU IN THE NOTES ONLY. This made me feel I can’t do anything on my own apart from what the teachers have given me. It was not right.