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Does Education teach us to memorize information, instead of understanding it, or is memorizing important for future use?
I belive that knowing and understanding are completely two different concepts. Understanding something is far better than knowing something, but does the education system teach us to memorize everything? Wouldn't memorizing everything be a bad thing or does small things not matter as long as you knew it was supposed to happen (even if you somehow forgot). Like in the case of Atul Gawande's Talk about doctors should use checklists and cowboys already using checklists.
Should education not dually educate their students to know something for the first half of their educational life, then understand it for the second half? Would that system not be more efficient that way?
What can we change about, or what is the use of, memorizing so much information in a course at school, as opposed to understanding?
Update: check out this video introduced by Edwin Nazarian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-QS7Fo6FTk
I elaborated about it in a seperate post, just a bit though.
Mini Update: Edwin's video has bad sound quality, but try to bear with it and hear it through. Amazing information.
UDATE: THIS VIDEO WAS MIND BLOWING, especially the visual part, BUT INFORMATION IS AMAZING TOO!
Watch this! =)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=youtu.be
Thanks Mary for sharing this amazing video with us. =)
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Edwin Nazarian 10+
Derek thanks for your explanation. I understood Mary M's point.
She has explained it very well.
You both went into understanding the system of a clock. I went into electricity.
I have to admit that I don't understand how my watch works. it is automatic.
(saves time from winding and buying batteries) but yes, I know what time it is.
The same thing might be said for your computer or your mobile phone, you know how to use it, but when it break down, you might not know how to fix it, it doesn't matter how old or new it is.
we simply pay attention on what is most important to us. today, we are bombed with information,
do you think our brain is capable to take in all at once? if it did, we would have gone mad.
our unconscious mind delete the parts of the information that we don't need and takes in only the very best of it.
Can I say that we, as human beings, can NOT know or understand everything?
that is why there is a word: SPECIALIST ... we are training ourselves in one things that most interests us.
We can learn certain things throughout live but sometimes we forget what we have learnt,
just because we don't use them very often.
an example. I used to work for architects (I have no idea how it works, what every line means)
but I knew how our brain receive the information, decode it and translated it into the language that we know.
and when a certain client came in there was a tension in their interaction. because just like me the client didn't understand the architectural signs and language but they knew what they wanted. they would ask all sorts of question until they understand what the architect wanted to explain.
Same for a doctor, you don't understand what they say, but you know that certain pills will help you to recover.
so here come the knowing and understanding - these two things are connected in one way or another.
we can't have one without the other.
be well
Derek Young 30+
they are definitely connected, but in my personal aggregation of different ideas, the definition and meaning of the two words are different. Though, that may ultimately not matter in a larger scale of things. Like I always say, "we can agree to disagree", but luckily not on everything. =)