Okay, which would you say is really more important, knowing, or being able to judge? "Education" has in the past meant cramming facts and formulae into our personal Read-Only-Memory, without regard to the ability to do any more than reproduce that data on tests. But tests only measure what percent of the facts memorized that we can reproduce for the purpose of the test, not necessarily the ability to use the material in real-life problems. It is assumed that, once exposed to all of the lessons academically, we will, having been taught to think and analyze, be able to apply these abilities to life situations, but it ain't necessarily so. Once tested, we tend to forget what we crammed in, and even where it reposes.
Isn't having the answers to the test, as in the results of the NY state chemistry exam whose answers were actually published before the administration of the test, also a kind of education in itself? So you study the published answers, relate them to the questions, thus "learning" the important material, go in and look at the questions again, remembering the answers, mark the right blocks, and forget the material at the same rate you would have had you crammed the larger mass and taken the test. Learning is easy; nothing to it...
If education is really to be a "learning" experience it must be a process of threading one's way up a creek of knowledge by stepping on the rocks of fact to arrive at a concept, remembering where but not necessarily what the rocks were, for a possible return trip. Once we find our way up a few of these creeks, using the map of where the facts are rather than what they are, it becomes easier to avail ourselves of all the knowledge that begs our attention, and using this process of learning will leave us time for the genuinely important tasks involving judgement, which is after all the thing that clears or clouds our lives.
Henry Francisco, Special to
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