When I come to school every day, I dread having to do nothing but listen to teachers talk for hours. I enjoy learning, but I have never enjoyed school because of this inability to keep me interested and engaged.

There are some benefits to lecturing, but in general, it is not an effective method for students. If the students are not interested or engaged in the topic, they are unlikely to pay much attention or focus.

A 2013 study conducted at the University of Washington found that students taught with traditional methods were 150% more likely to fail than students who were taught with more active teaching methods.

Of course, it is necessary to have these lecture-style lessons sometimes, but it is also possible for teachers to have the same impact on their students through projects and individual exploration of a topic. Many teachers say they will assign this type of work, but end up not implementing it in their lessons.

When students have more interest in what they are being taught, it makes them want to learn more, and in return, obtain higher grades. According to researchers in a study recently published in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” students are poor judges of their own learning, and while strategies that require lower effort (such as passively listening to a lecture) are often perceived to be better, in reality, they are less effective.

In an optimal world, students should be excited and determined to come to school and learn, but that is often not the case. While teaching methods are not the only problem, they do account for a large amount of the issues that students have with being focused, engaged and interested.  

To make up for this, teachers should attempt to add individual exploration of topics into class time, rather than just having the same mundane lectures and homework every day. Making school interesting to the student body could drastically improve morale and learning for many students.