Review?

I was observing how many people like to catch up on their blogging on Sunday and posted a tweet to that effect. Mom promptly informed me that I was now required to blog, ergo the following.

So the new semester started recently and I have several classes (ok, all of them) that decided to begin with a review of past material. I do not like to review material from previous classes at the beginning of new semesters or years and I have not liked it since I came home from first grade and told Mom that we wouldn't be learning anything new in first grade since we had already covered the material in kindergarten.

I feel that if material is a prerequisite for a class then all of the students should already be familiar with it, or be willing to review what they need to on their own. I feel that this will allow the class to progress at a more rapid rate and avoid wasting time covering something that all students should already know. For example, in my Digital Systems class (ENGE 240 - not even a freshman level course) we began our semester by learning about powers of 10 and SI prefixes. I believe that this is ridiculous because this is material that students should be learning in their middle school science classes, not their 200 level college courses and taking TWO class periods to cover that material is a waste of time. (I might be persuaded to admit that passing out the reference sheet would be OK.)

Other than the endless review that we are subjected to as students, my classes are going well. I am enjoying learning about logic gates and digital circuitry in my engineering classes, C++ and Java classes in my computer classes, and ways to interact constructively in my communications classes.