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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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Shallow Water Walker
I agree with memorization of the alphabet and the numbers themselves, essentially the same thing. It creates a basis for having everyone on the same field of communication. But why addition and multiplication? What is an example of necessary memorization with respect to addition? And multiplication?
"...and I explain how to borrow one group of tens from the tens place and turn the 3 into a 13 and THEN subtract 7 from 13."
It is memorization of a method used in simplifying an expression, and the vast majority come away with a poor understanding of why the method actually produces the correct answer.
Derek Young 30+
Children, at first, immitate information taught to them and they derive certain information/ideas from pure nothing from their previous knowledges.
Shallow Water Walker
Mary M. 50+
As a teacher, we even say it to the little ones...."do as I am doing....as when we are teaching them to write...."
Later on in the upper grades, if the teacher is effective, she will have great conversations about all the subjects and listen to the student's questions on any particular topic, then patiently and using all her/his knowledge and understanding of their paticular field of study help their students to come to a good working understanding of said subject.
The interesting thing is Shallow that there really is no way to test and truly see how deep of an understanding the child has obtained, unless they administered a test asking deep questions, and have the student reply in their own words in writing, BUT THEN, the teacher would have to READ through all of that.....week after week after week......so multiple choice, true and false, fill in the blank and matching takes over. And of course, these questions can be written in higher order........I am able to do it because I have been trained to come up with such questions for primary school students.
I remember a Civics teacher in high school would give these tests. She would tell us our grades would be based on how many facts we could write down. 100 facts meant 100% 125 facts meant 125%. I thought to myself back then, I am not learning anything here.....
I have enjoyed reading all your comments.
Hasn't Derek asked a great question?
Mary M. 50+
Basically like you bring out, you "imitate" what the teacher is doing......yes imitate is a good word.
As adults, also, we imitate. We imitate other's actions, words, dress style, lifestyle, wanting to "fit it"..........not understanding some times why those particular adults speak, act or make the choices they do.
As critical thinkers, people with understanding and discernment, we as individuals then, make choices based on our own understanding, and stop being imitators of others...........teachers, friends, work colleagues, family members, tv personalities...etc.
This should be the ultimate lofty goal of teachers........to instill the love of learning, and of asking questions and to dig deep for understanding..........
Your question is such a deep one on so many many levels Derek, it goes beyond mere appearances.
Thank you for asking it, and I hope my contributions have helped your discussion of it.
Derek Young 30+
I've also just maxed out my maximum number of thumbs up for you this week! I didn't even know that they put limits on max thumps ups. Kind of funny thought, these thumb ups give you Tedcred, but what can you redeem with these Tedcreds, more flyer miles?! *drum*drum*cymbal* haha!