Reflectiveness

I have noticed through my schooling that one of the things that teachers want students to do is to be reflective.  But reflecting on oneself can be challenging.  I feel that being reflective is so difficult for people in our schools because of some of the reasons brought up in Wagner's Global Achievement Gap.  In his book, he explains that schools are only "teaching the test"; students are being taught what is going to be on the test and then forget about it.  But if the student is told to be reflective, it allows the student to think about what exactly they have been taught and why they have been taught it.  But being reflective is an important skill, because I think that it helps students articulate on what they have learned.  Reflecting can be efficiently used after the teacher teaches the lesson and having the students reflect and articulate on what they just learned. I think that if a student can reflect on what they have just been taught, they have actually learned the material.