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Boxed in: Education should be about
more than storing facts
By Marion Brady
*January 6, 2004
Blame this column on a truckload of roof trusses I followed into town yesterday
afternoon.
Longtime critics of my columns know that one of my favorite subjects is the
curriculum. I'm convinced that too much of what kids are made to study is
"ritual knowledge," taught not because serious people have given serious thought
to its value, but simply because it's been taught for generations. I've sat in
enough meetings as a publisher consultant to know firsthand that such is the
case. To my question, "Why include this in the book?" the answer has often been
some version of "Customer expectations."
Why, other than customer expectations, has algebra come to be a required
subject? For me, over the years, what I learned in geometry has been of far
greater use. Where are the studies that argue convincingly that, given the
differing paths students' lives will take, algebra should be required and
geometry not? Or that given the variousness of those paths, either should be
required?
My major complaint about the curriculum, however, isn't about whether or not
particular school subjects should be required, but about what's emphasized IN
those subjects. This is where mere ritual knowledge is most often evident:
-- The world's longest river is ( ).
-- ( ) wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls."
-- The chemical symbol for the element potassium is ( ).
-- A complete sentence should contain a ( ) and a ( ).
There are millions -- no, an infinite number -- of facts like these for which
students could be held responsible, and nobody is sorting out the important
ones. Neither is anyone seriously questioning the idea that mentally storing
facts is the purpose of educating.
Is it? Well, for Neil Larrimore, Michael Avitzur, Michelle Bergeron, Teddy
Nadler and Andy Aaron knowledge of facts has paid off pretty well. They're the
top five money winners on television quiz shows. But for most people, the
ability to recall random facts doesn't seem to have much to do with anything
else, such as success in a job. One recent quiz-show winner, a policeman, has
thus far been unable to pass the exam on which his promotion to the next grade
depends.
There are all kinds of facts, ranging from useless to critically important.
Knowing that the Nile is the world's longest river is almost certainly a less
important fact than knowing that, historically, navigable rivers have had much
to do with population distribution. That fact, in turn, may be less important
than knowing that the nearest local river is loaded with enough mercury to make
eating fish from it a bad idea.
But the whole issue probably doesn't deserve the attention it gets. When, with
two or three clicks of a computer mouse, I can find something as trivial as the
names of the top money winners on television game shows, I conclude that
teaching facts, and tests that make students accountable for remembering those
facts, is pretty much a waste of brains.
Which brings me back to that truckload of roof trusses.
Seeing them, I thought of how radically their use had changed house
construction. I grew up in old houses with roofs supported by rafters rather
than trusses. Rafters made attics big and open. Big attics allowed all kinds of
stuff to be stored. They were also great places to play in winter. A child
playing in an attic and finding, say, a father's first-grade paper showing that
he once had trouble writing within the lines will likely think a little
differently thereafter about the father. A grandchild, holding up a
grandmother's wedding dress and marveling at its tiny waistline, will surely see
the now-more-ample grandmother through different eyes.
There may be a relationship between roof trusses and how the young feel about
their elders.
I'm not saying that that particular relationship is important enough to teach.
It isn't. I'm saying that what IS important -- far more important than an
ability to recall facts -- is the ability to recognize relationships BETWEEN
facts. That's where important facts COME from. Surely, America's future would be
safer in the hands of those skilled in recognizing possible cause-effect
relationships, than in the hands of those skilled in mentally storing
soon-to-be-forgotten facts.
If that contention isn't outrageous enough to arouse the ire of traditionalists,
try this: That truck, with its load of trusses, provides more useful raw
material for teaching physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, history and the
social sciences than a whole shelf of textbooks.
*Originally published in the Orlando Sentinel. Published here by
permission of the author.
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