Older son is back at reading the book Study Smarter Not Harder. I tried requiring him to read it as a proactive plan to learn what study techniques work for him so he would not waste his time or fail at his academic work twice in the last two years. He did not comply. I was worn down. I let it go.
Now that he is struggling with the difficult chemistry course and is not getting what I call decent grades on the quizzes and tests he has concrete proof that he needs help learning different study strategies than he already knows. I mentioned grades but the fact is the larger issue is learning. Learning needs to happen. Period.
Actually my son needs to "learn how to learn". If he is to go to college any time he must learn "the school way" and that requires reading through lots of written material, studying and memorizing for quizzes and tests. He needs to know how to summarize and to skim through the fluff. He needs to be able to do careful reading in order to extract the essential knowledge from written text.
So this month he has started reading Study Smarter, Not Harder again. I am forcing it.
The book has ideas that are not in my own head, so the book is superior to me teaching this information.
The goal is for my son to be open minded, look for ideas to try out, and to have freedom to reject ideas that do not work or that he just doesn't feel like trying right now. Hopefully over time as he finds what works and what does not work he will re-open his mind to the weirder ideas and give them a try.
In a conversation between my husband and I and our son today he said he does not want to learn from someone else such as this book or me or my husband, he wants the learning to come from his own mind. Yet he admits he does not know other study and learning strategies so he can't teach himself. I would like to tell you what fallacy he is committing with his illogical argument but I have a splitting headache from stress and am completely worn out from lack of sleep so that term is unable to be retrieved from my brain at the moment. I know one of the fallacies is this exact thing...