Alongside the myth of the digital native runs a related
narrative that students in the 21st Century don’t need to learn the
same old stuff, they only need to learn what interests them. I have seen numerous presentations and
speeches to this effect; students only need find what they like and learn about
that. They don’t really need to know other things—those facts are useless and
outdated anyway and they can always look up stuff on the Internet if they need to know it.
These sentiments never fail to make me cringe for several
reasons. First, it is not true that most
knowledge becomes quickly outdated (“Urban Legends” 176). Second, we all need
to know certain building blocks, for example, multiplication tables. There are
people who claim that students should not memorize these—after all they can
look them up. Why waste valuable brain
space on rote memorization, goes the argument.
I will tell you why. Without
these tools, i. e. knowing that 5x5=25 without having to look it up or work it
out, students are severely handicapped when trying to go on to higher math
concepts, such as basic Algebra. If it
takes them too long to work out simple math, they don’t have the wherewithal to
stick to something that actually requires thinking. My question to the proponents of
non-memorization of things like multiplication tables would be—why waste
valuable short term memory and reasoning capacity on something that should be
automatic?
If you don’t believe me, here is support from the Wolframblog—which by the way, is owned by the same company which owns Wolfram-Alpha, a
“computational knowledge engine” with a vested interest in people using the
internet. Even they see the value in
learning some things by memory.
If we take this idea to its argumentum ad absurdum, would
we let students eat only what they want to eat?
I would agree with the authors of “Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban Legends in Education” that most
students would choose soda and sweets, which would be bad for them (175). Why would we allow them to choose what they
wanted to learn, without any thought of what we, as adults know is good for
them?
Studying a variety of subjects allows for several
beneficial outcomes:
1.
How do
students know what they like or find that passion for something, without trying
lots of things? If indeed, we want
students to find that thing they love, we need to expose them to as many
subjects as possible. Not everyone will
like all of them, but all of these subjects have value and we never know which
one will turn out to be the thing that a student wants to learn more about.
2.
Different subjects, and some in particular, like
mathematics and history, teach us ways of thinking and train our brains to work
better. Have you ever wondered why logic
sometimes goes out the window? Blame a
lack of mathematics training. Math
teaches logical reasoning. History
teaches analytical thinking. We need
both. If we don’t teach these to all
students, or if we limit their learning to what they want to learn, which for
most students will be what is easier for them, then we are not taking our
responsibility to educate students seriously.
3.
Learning difficult subjects teaches grit. There has been a great deal written lately
about the value of grit. (See How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character for one example).
What better way to learn persistence than to learn something that is
hard for you? When we don’t require
students to work hard and learn hard things, we are robbing them of the sense
of accomplishment that comes with meeting a challenge. And, by the way, we are encouraging a fixed
mindset, not a growth mindset, which readers of Carol Dweck’s Mindset will know can be detrimental to
students’ future growth and development.
There is one additional consideration from the Urban
Legends article. Studies show that when
students are given “full learner control” they created a situation in which they continued to practice tasks they liked or were already proficient
in. The students were “reluctant to
start with new, yet unfamiliar tasks.” (178)
This meant that their learning in a particular area was uneven or that they
never went on to advanced material. Let
me put this in terms with which we are all familiar. My brother did a book report on the same book
for every year of elementary school. I
have had students tell me when they are in the library doing “research” that
they have written papers on the same topic they are currently “investigating”
several times. They laugh because they
are avoiding having to do any real work—they already know everything about this
topic (they think). This speaks to our
need to develop assignments that are not generic enough to allow such practices
by students. We need to do a better job
of scaffolding to get them where they need to go and we need to structure the
assignments to make them unique. We need
to participate in vertical alignment, so that all four years of English class
are not doing research papers on the same “controversial topics.” In short, we
need to make hard choices for the good of students and help them do the hard
work necessary to learn and grow in meaningful ways, not allow them to beat the
system by recycling generic assignments.
“Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban
Legends in Education.” Paul A. Kirschner, and Jeroen J.G. van Merriënboer. Educational Psychologist. Vol. 48,
Iss. 3, 2013.
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