J and I were discussing school philosophies recently and the topic of memorization came up. In the homeschool waters I swim in, there is a lot of emphasis on young children being able to memorize facts as a way to organize information so that they can process and manipulate it as their brains develop those abilities. While I maintain that there is value in memorizing because of the physical exercise it provides to the brain (neurons and synapses making connections and all that), J opened my mind to a new paradigm that I hadn't realized was upon me.
He (and lots of other smart people) realize that memorizing facts is no longer a necessary or useful skill. In a literate society in the information age, we have the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips in an instant. There really is no need to memorize the Presidents, the periodic table, or prime numbers to 100. We told our teachers that we would never use that information in real life. But now the students tell the teachers that they'll find it on the internet if they should ever need it.
I'm still wrapping my head around what this means for the way I teach my kids. I know it doesn't change my goal of teaching them how to learn. A very wise friend recently told me that it is more important to teach my children skills than content; great content is a means for teaching the skill. It's more important to be able to know how to learn, but while we're at it, let's learn great content.
I'm babbling here as I think through it myself. This article--the web kids manifesto--that J shared with me really does a much better job of communicating the generational shift. The scary part is that it probably is shifting even faster than whole generations. The way A learns and gathers information may be outdated by the time Z approaches the same skills. Read the article. It really will help you see information in a new light and ponder the ramifications for the way our kids learn.
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