Tim Holt quotes from a Marco Torres closing keynote, “What knowledge do you possess that a 16 year old kid couldn’t find out through Google?”
The point being that what differentiates an educated human from a Google search in this, the twenty-first century, is not the possession of knowledge but the ability to apply and adapt that knowledge when appropriate and creatively to necessary situations.
Our teaching, however, is too often focused on the rote memorization of facts. Even when we think it’s not.
We need to be conscious about asking students to apply their knowledge in new situations and in broader contexts.
I’ve written before how we focus most math instruction on memorization rather than teaching young students to conceptualize numbers. (It’s better to understand that 3 and 2 more is 5 rather than memorizing 3+2=5). I’ve written about how we might be mistaken to jump in and teach facts about the American Revolution before helping students understand the root causes of that War.
As we contribute to the development of young people whether we want to or not, it’s important that we think about what it is we want students to learn from our lessons once they forget the important dates, the obscure vocabulary, and the facts we’ve tried to teach them.
Matthew,
I like this concept. A lot. As a band teacher, a lot of what I do in the beginning levels is based on rote memorization. Despite efforts to avoid it, sometimes you must teach things by rote.
For instance, if they need to know how to play a Bb on trumpet, I\’m not going to assume that their ears are so well-tuned that they can find the fingering on their own. At the same time, I won\’t spoon-feed them every answer. They have resources that help them. I know the fingering, but sometimes I\’ll pretend I don\’t and then suggest they look it up in the fingering chart at the back of their book.
As we get into more advanced playing, the rote teaching can have negative benefits. We have a sight reading competition coming up next month. The band will go into a room, look at a piece of music for 7 minutes. The first four minutes, I cannot give them any audible indication of how it sounds. In the last three minutes, I can sing or whatever (except play it on an instrument) for them. After those 7 minutes, the band is required to play it. The music is only 2 1/2 minutes long, but with at least 10 wind parts in addition to percussion, nobody will hear their entire part all the way through before they play it.
If they know how to read the rhythms and notes very fluently, this competition poses little difficulty. If for some reason they have not made the connection, the competition is extremely stressful and challenging. In this case, rote teaching could be disastrous as the students have come to rely on hearing their part before they can play it.
This is why I loved word problems when I was in school. Because they made me think more than the easier problems.
Thanks Joel for posting the musical equivalents. It made me think of a friend of mine from high school who played every note perfectly but played like a robot devoid of all passion. Certainly memorizing the notes is a part of it but some people just play the notes and others bring life to them.
Hi Mathew,
Your post generated some thought and I whipped across to Tim Holt’s blog and responded to Tim and one of the earlier commentators on his blog. This is the comment that I wrote in response to Tim’s post. I also added the comment to my blog as you know. As you suggested adding my thoughts here as well may add further to the debate.
“I am a teacher and I think I manage to impart some wisdom each day. I have imparted knowledge garnered from my parents, siblings, friends, teachers, lecturers and acquaintances that cannot be found via Google. Allow me to qualify that I am not knocking Google. I actually teach my students how to use Google, Kartoo, Vivisimo and other search tools intelligently.
The knowledge I acquired from my relatives, teachers and friends over the years harnessed in tandem with the wisdom that lies within that knowledge forms a crucial part of the storytelling component of my lessons on 20th century history. That same knowledge has generated laughter and tears as well as understanding. That same knowledge has created a difference within the students. Before that knowledge was imparted the students were at point A in the learning journey. Following the receipt of the knowledge they were at point B in the learning journey. There was a difference, a change. Google was not applied in the creation of that change.
I grow a little tired of how some commentators apply blanket criticisms of the teaching profession. Marco’s question is somewhat puerile and will certainly not endear him to the teaching profession in general. He makes a good point regarding the knowledge economy but surely he could make it in a more collegial and diplomatic manner.
I feel that excluding teachers from your list of experts is rather simplistic. Teachers also apply knowledge. My colleagues and I do so every day. We were all applying those 21st century learning skills last century.
There is still a place in education for lectures. We have all attended great lectures that enthralled us from beginning to end. Granted you need a lecturer capable of delivering a great story.”
Naturally, readers of your blog Mathew will follow my comments a little better if they also read Tim Holt’s original post.
Best wishes, John
@John
Marco is a teacher and a teacher advocate. You can hear more of him in a recent podcast by Wesley Fryer. Taking his question out of context, it might sound like he is criticizing teachers but I believe he is just being provocative. His larger body of work has never criticized teachers and this keynote doesn’t seem like a criticism to me either.
The comment causes me to rethink and reevaluate my own teaching a bit. It makes me think of countless classrooms I’ve visited where students are simply memorizing facts. I think that’s what Marco is talking about. It’s not about discounting the knowledge that teachers have but it’s about how we ask students to apply that knowledge.
@Mathew
One of the greatest difficulties I have is trying to get kids to understand that just playing notes simply is not enough. There must be music involved in music-making. Music without passion is not music worth listening to.
The point being that what differentiates an educated human from a Google search in this, the twenty-first century, is not the possession of knowledge but the ability to apply and adapt that knowledge when appropriate and creatively to necessary situations.
However, to be an educated person first you must possess knowledge. The possession of knowledge is the foundation on which the ability to apply and adapt that knowledge is built. Attempting to apply and adapt knowledge is hopeless if you don’t actually know it in the first place.
To take a trivial example, one of the magical moments in my life happened in 2005 when I was sitting on the front deck of a boat travelling between Tongan Islands, watching the dawn, and reciting John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever” to myself. Now, as it happened I didn’t have an internet connection with me, so if I hadn’t memorised the poem I could not have looked it up, but even if I had had access to Google, if I didn’t already know Sea-Fever, how would I know to look it up? A 16-year old might have Googled Sea-Fever, but it would only occur to them to do so if they knew quite a bit about it. And, as I said, they could not have on that boat in Tonga.
To take a more serious example, once for a job I was reviewing a list of alternatives proposed to building a new transmission line into a large city in order to meet peak demand. One writer proposed placing a set of tidal current turbines into the city’s harbour, saying that tidal power provided a predictable flow of energy, unlike wind turbines. Now I looked at that and knew two things:
1. The tidal turbines would not produce any power during the time the tides change directions (the slack of the tide). I knew that because all motors operate off the rate of change.
2. The time of the slack of the tide changes every day, so sometimes the turbines would not be producing at times of peak demand, so this was not an alternative to a new transmission line.
How would a 16-year old have known what questions to ask of Google to match that knowledge?
I can do that with electrical engineering. But I have no idea what questions to ask about even closely-related topics like mechanical or civil engineering, as I don’t have the knowledge in my head. To say that a 16-year old can just Google everything is to seriously misunderstand the nature of knowledge.
This article, by the Cognitive Scientist, at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/winter2002/CogSci.html explains in better words why we have to know things before we can apply and adapt them. Rote memorisation of facts is no more a waste of time than the foundations of a building are a waste of space.
@Tracy, Agreed. Neither Marco or I said that rote memorization is a waste of time. However, there are many classes that never get beyond memorization (the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomy) and never get to higher level thinking like application of that knowledge.
Hmm, then I think I may be misunderstanding something. If you recognise memorisation as important, then what was the meaning of the Marco Torres quote “What knowledge do you possess that a 16 year old kid couldn’t find out through Google?”
@Tracy, you might have to read past the first paragraph to get the point.
Let me reprint paragraph two: “The point being that what differentiates an educated human from a Google search in this, the twenty-first century, is not the possession of knowledge but the ability to apply and adapt that knowledge when appropriate and creatively to necessary situations.”
Your second example, in fact, illustrates not that having factual knowledge was important but that in a real world situation you knew how to apply that knowledge to solve a problem.
I did read past the first paragraph. I still don’t get it. The key thing about the educated human is that we have that knowledge in our heads, which is a very different thing from having it in a Google search. We are differentiated from a Google search because we have that information in our heads, which is where it must be in the first place to be applied and adapted.
I think you missed the point of my second example. I only could apply that knowledge to solve that problem because it was in my head in the first place. Applying it to solve a problem was the easy bit, I did it without conscious thought, getting the knowledge about how motors operate into my head in the first place was hard work. (I picked up the knowledge about tides from numerous holidays by the sea, so remembering that was easy).
So, how do we move students from simply memorizing information to applying that knowledge?