Grades or knowledge: pick one!
Say, you’re philosophy or PolySci major (or grad student) [1] and you get assigned to read 5 books a week for a certain class. If you were to optimize for knowledge, you’ll ignore the assignment and focus on one book fully internalizing it. One week might be, in fact, even too little given other classes and commitments. To make sure you have the full grasp of the material, you’ll practice ‘active recall’ and after reading each chapter you’ll summarize it with your own words without peeking at the book. That takes a long time. You’ll show up in class in a week, acing the discussion around the book you’ve read, but obviously hiding in the audience during the discussion of the remaining of 4 books. If you were, on the other hand, to optimize for grades, you’ll just show up in class having read the discussions and critiques about all the 5 books. This ‘about’ will create the gap between shallow short-term familiarity and deeply internalized understanding. But that won’t matter as you’re eloquently discussing all the books “you’ve read” in class.
Most educational institutions suffer from the ‘grades or knowledge: pick one’ dichotomy. When you’re optimizing for grades, more often than not you prefer to stay within the determined boundaries and not bash into the walls too much. That limits the amount of learning you’re exposing yourself to. When, on contrary, you’re optimizing for knowledge, you tend not to follow instructions and guidelines to save time, you get more adventurous and are willing to take risks. That results to sloppiness to required details and the grades suffer.
Have you experienced the conflict between grades and understanding, between breadth and depth in your school years? Would be awesome to hear your story!
Notes
[1] Which I was not.
