For many years, the common political belief has been that our society would benefit by requiring public schools to train students to pass standardized tests. Generally this has meant that teachers must spend a significant, if not a majority, of their instruction time insuring that their students have effectively learned a set of standard knowledge items. In the worst case this amounts to memorization of set of standard facts.
My education background was much more of a discuss-and-understand-based style of learning. Of course there was plenty of fact memorization (I was blessed with the ability to memorize the multiplication tables very quickly and I picked up spelling without too many gross errors). My nature love of discuss-and-understand was not always a comfortable situation for my teachers in the earlier grades. I freely admit to being the kid who asked “why?” almost to the point of distraction and there were a couple of times were I disagreed with the answer; but we won’t discuss those times right now. By graduate school, I think this behavior was one of the primary reasons the faculty showed strong interest in me so soon after I started.
Joining industry has only reinforced my belief that a discuss-and-understand-based style of learning provides a solid background. It has served me very well in my personal career. I have also observed a tendency among those employees who have impressed me with their performance to approach new subjects with a discuss-and-understand-based style of learning. These are the employees who are best at resolving the true cause of issues and problems.
I have come to believe that discuss-and-understand-based style of learning works so well because that is the way humans have learned since they became human. When faced with a new problem, the group takes what it knows and tries to apply that to achieve a solution to the group’s needs. More often than not developments are small steps built upon improved understanding of what was known by those that came before. Very, very rarely is it developed in a vacuum. Almost always it is developed through discussion and questioning.
A very good example of this is the Pythagorean Theorem. This allows calculation of the length of the third side of a right triangle if the lengths of the other two sides are known. The theorem is invaluable in architecture, surveying of land, and many other practical applications which have been important in both scientific and social development. The theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras, who by tradition is credited with its discovery and proof. More recent evidence points to knowledge of and use of the theorem by the Sumerians over 5000 years ago. What is amazing is the Sumerians did this using a base-60 number system and their implementation of algebra was essentially without using symbolic notation and with pre-written multiplication tables.
The Sumerians had a problem that needed to be solved. They had land, they had canals, they had a significant taxation system, they needed mathematics to allow them to assess areas for accounting purposes. They developed techniques (which I strongly suspect they adapted and expanded from those they learned from peoples that came before them) that allowed them to solve the problem at hand. They did this by using some memorized facts, but I am willing to bet the really solved the problem by sitting down and asking themselves what is the problem we really need to solve, discussing how to apply techniques to solve these problems, they asked questions of themselves.
Almost 1500 years later the Greeks and Pythagoras were living not far to the west of the land that had been populated by the Sumerians. They surely learned much of what the Sumerians had known. By this time there had been additional learnings in numbering systems. Some surely must have discussed how they might adopt what the Sumerians had done and modify the concept to apply it to solve some new problem.
The Greeks were very well-trained in discussion and understanding. It was the basis of their education system. People trained in just memorizing facts would not have been able to utilize what the Sumerians developed in any way except the way the Sumerians had developed it.
If all we did was teach our children to memorize facts, and if all the many generations since the ancient Sumerian civilization had done was to teach their children was to memorize, then we would still be solving for the third side of a right triangle using a base-60 number system and with pre-written multiplication tables. Instead we do it using computers that use a base-2 number system and display the answer on an electronic display after we type the value for the two known sides in on a base-10 keypad.
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The key here is that you pick out other people as helpful because you observe them using the discuss and understand technique. You point out that in elementary school, you were unusual for using it. I, too, learn that way. I was ostracized in elementary school for talking about things the other children didn’t understand. I think discuss and understand is a great learning mode for those of us who gravitate towards it. I tried to teach it to my children. One learned. The other said, “I don’t care that much.” Both graduated college. I had to do plenty of boring memorization for testing (I called it regurgitation). It was all that most of the students could handle. I do think discuss-and-understand is valuable and I think schools should have sessions for students who want it. But it can’t be the primary learning mode — most teachers don’t know how.
“Discussion and understanding” is important, and I think it should be incorporated more in education. Neither discussion nor memorisation would work entirely on it’s own, but it’s possible for discussion to be primary. Perhaps an ideal would be a 70:30 ratio of discussion to memorisation?
Discussion is bad for those who are shyer, as I am. However I’ve always seen the importance of it, despite being more of an intaker than contributer, and though I hated it initially, it still worked for me. It encourages development and understanding beyond the bare facts, or “thinking outside of the box” and it expands theory as the post above depicted. Whilst memorisation is good for getting kids through hoops, it does nothing for progress or development as a whole.
Best of luck for this years survival, btw
Geezerchick, Angela,
First of all, thank you so very much for taking the time to comment on my post.
Giving more thought to the issue, is not the real goal of education to teach our children to be able to solve new problems and learn new things for themselves as they move forward beyond the years of their formal education? Perhaps we too often forget that learning should not stop the day we finish school. Learning should be a lifetime experience.
Whatever method is utilized, the education we provide our children should develop the ability to independently gather new information, assess that information, form an independent judgment on the merits of the information and then develop some independent opinion from the new information. Memorization of facts only provides a very small part of the background necessary for these skills. Such an education requires significant one-on-one and small group interaction between students and highly skilled and motivated teachers. Society would be much better off if we supported our schools in a way that we could realistically expect such performance from our teachers. Unfortunately, we do not seem to believe it is in our best interest to pay for such an education system.
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