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You seem to think education should be like putting music on an iPod. As with all skills, what doesn't find use decays. I believe education should create well

You seem to think education should be like putting music on an iPod. As with all skills, what doesn't find use decays. I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime.

kiba 14y ago
I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. I don't particularly care about English literature or any <subject x> for the sake of building a well rounded education. The more important thing is retaining what you learned and building on that. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime. To think memorization is bad is incredibly short sighted and stupid. Would you like to look up a book every time you do programming? No. You remember certain methods and certain part of the standard library so that you don't have to spend 10 minutes googling method x to accomplish result y. Principles is nice and all, but what make you an efficient problem solver is because you have access to an inner world of factoids and knowledge. Sure, memorization for the sake of memorization is useless. That's why you learn critical thinking skills that you love so much so that memorization will be useful.
- bithive123 14y ago
  I don't understand your tone. I never said memorization is "bad" or that I "love" critical thinking skills. I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Knowledge isn't irrelevant, but knowing where to look is key. Sometimes the knowledge is internal, but the CS whiz who jumps into coding his own libraries for everything without having the wisdom to browse the standard documentation first is surely not a model of efficiency.
  - kiba 14y ago
    I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Of course it does matter, because latency of lookup matters. He could spent it one hour googling things up or he can spend one minute remembering something and using it. That requires memorization. The wisdom part to use the standard library instead of implementing something something from scratch is just extra efficiency.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Rarely, however, does one need to spend extra time memorizing things. Memorization happens naturally as you solve problems, and see and use the same things over and over.
      - kiba 14y ago
        So what? It's still more efficient to just memorize your multiplication tables.
ht_th 14y ago
Many see formal education as mostly learning facts and procedures. Of course we will forget these when we don't use them often. However, I think the goal of education should be deep learning of concepts. Although we'll forget the procedures and details, when we truly learned a concept, we will always have a good idea what the concept is about, what it means, how to apply it, and, most importantly, where to go to learn more about it. Of course, deep learning is difficult to teach and assess on a large scale, so it is easier to test for knowledge of facts and procedural skills and teach children to perform well on these kind of tests.

kiba 14y ago

I believe education should create well rounded people by exposing them to the the breadth of human achievements in the arts as well as sciences. I don't remember all the books we read in English class either, but I appreciate literature more in general having been there. I don't particularly care about English literature or any <subject x> for the sake of building a well rounded education. The more important thing is retaining what you learned and building on that. The real tragedy is that many educational programs emphasize the kind of rote learning you seem to want everyone to aspire to instead of critical thinking faculties which, properly instilled, will assert themselves for a lifetime. To think memorization is bad is incredibly short sighted and stupid. Would you like to look up a book every time you do programming? No. You remember certain methods and certain part of the standard library so that you don't have to spend 10 minutes googling method x to accomplish result y. Principles is nice and all, but what make you an efficient problem solver is because you have access to an inner world of factoids and knowledge. Sure, memorization for the sake of memorization is useless. That's why you learn critical thinking skills that you love so much so that memorization will be useful.

bithive123 14y ago
I don't understand your tone. I never said memorization is "bad" or that I "love" critical thinking skills. I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Knowledge isn't irrelevant, but knowing where to look is key. Sometimes the knowledge is internal, but the CS whiz who jumps into coding his own libraries for everything without having the wisdom to browse the standard documentation first is surely not a model of efficiency.
- kiba 14y ago
  I disagree that what makes people efficient problem solvers is having an "inner world of factoids". Of course it does matter, because latency of lookup matters. He could spent it one hour googling things up or he can spend one minute remembering something and using it. That requires memorization. The wisdom part to use the standard library instead of implementing something something from scratch is just extra efficiency.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Rarely, however, does one need to spend extra time memorizing things. Memorization happens naturally as you solve problems, and see and use the same things over and over.
    - kiba 14y ago
      So what? It's still more efficient to just memorize your multiplication tables.

ht_th 14y ago

Many see formal education as mostly learning facts and procedures. Of course we will forget these when we don't use them often. However, I think the goal of education should be deep learning of concepts. Although we'll forget the procedures and details, when we truly learned a concept, we will always have a good idea what the concept is about, what it means, how to apply it, and, most importantly, where to go to learn more about it. Of course, deep learning is difficult to teach and assess on a large scale, so it is easier to test for knowledge of facts and procedural skills and teach children to perform well on these kind of tests.