oops!

One should be especially attentive to grammar and errors when posting in response to an article on education! I made a few above, oops.

Which reminds me of the other thing I dislike about this particular technology - the inability to edit our own posts.

Opinions without facts?

How can I critically answer "How has Confederation affected me?" without having some context of when Confederation occured?

Students have plenty of opportunity to debate ideas without facts - let's keep school as a place that emphasizes the need for a historical and scientific background to an opinion. Such a background requires memorization, even with google.

Is the MoE determined to become irrelevant?

“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” Old Chinese Proverb

I will say that the exercises are not pointless. You, I and our children engage in these exercises because they the act of memorization helps to stimulate and exercise the mind much like repetitions at the gym exercise the body. It is an important activity and ought not to be overlooked.

As you point out the article we don't know what our children face in the future, so we are unable to equip them with the exact knowledge they will need, especially when much of that knowledge is yet to be discovered, much less learned.

However, we can prepare their minds better than our forefathers, and critical thinking is an excellent tool in that effort. It'a a pity the MoE pulled back the critical thinking initiative, when other countries are investing significantly in this area (case in point: http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/ -- a website with over 100 online critical thinking courses and activities out of a school in Hong Kong.)

My children have just entered the public educational process and are engaged in the only public school montessori initiative in our district.

In my daughter's kindergarten class half the kids are already at grade one or higher reading levels coming into kindergarten. Why? Montessori pre-schools. Her teacher sees the split very clearly. And yet, montessori is still not seriously promoted by the Ministry.

People in our community are finding out on their own that the early reading efforts sponsored by the ministry and district are not nearly as effective as a good montessori pre-school.

The montessori kindergarten class at our kids school doubled this year while other elementary schools in our area are being closed down due primarily to a drop in enrollment.

The MoE must change to incorporate more of the fantastic new learning methods being developed, and must involve parents more in the learning process (ideally by having them actually be present more often right in the classes to aid the teacher to better understand the challenges students and teachers face).

To fail to incorporate methods that work (both new and old) will inevitably result in a public school system that will increasingly resemble nothing more than adolescent day care.

No Facts, No Critical Thinking

As a long time humanities teacher, I can certainly appreciate the problem of "too much to cover".

However, I also have reservations about Roland Case's emphasis on critical thinking. The reality is that critical thinking cannot occur without a substantial base of factual knowledge. This knowledge must be deeply held; that is, it cannot be surface knowledge looked up at the last second on Google. Only from the vantage point of deeply held knowledge can individuals make substantial evaluations of what is strong or weak, credible or dubious. When I conduct mock trials, the preparation for the trial takes 80% of the time. Students must be deeply immersed in facts and arguments and historical data. If not, the actual trial is a disaster.

Regarding the student who says learning about atoms is a waste of time, educators must not pander to her as if she has special insight into learning. Maybe she's too lazy to learn the necessary background knowledge required for scientific discovery.

Critical Thinking applied (Pt. I)

First, thanks to several respondents here for the links. To return the favor, I suggest looking into the Foundation for Critical Thinking here: http://www.criticalthinking.org/ I suggest their series entitled "Thinker's Guides."

I have also used chapters from Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon Haunted World," (especially the "Baloney Detection Kit") to great success.

Skeptical Inquirer also has many great articles--most available online for free from their site. One of the most useful in the recent past was William Hare's article “What open-mindedness requires” (Skeptical Inquirer, 33, 1, 2009: 36-39).

Finally, and another freebie, are the lectures available on TED.com (especially Michael Shermer on why people believe strange things).

These are resources students can actively learn from, engage with, connect to and use in their day-to-day lives.

One thing I add to this list in my teaching is to teach, specifically, meta-cognition including, for example, Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive development. In my personal, and rather long and meandering, trek from high school drop-out to educator I have found that it was when I was taught and learned the strengths and weaknesses in my own thinking that I learned the most valuable things.

In speaking of Bloom, as several posters have noted, there need be a balance between the, perhaps ill-named, 'lower order' skills leading toward the equally ill-named 'higher order' skills. Without 'knowledge', 'comprehension', and 'application' students will not be able to move onto 'analysis', 'synthesis' and 'evaluation'. Certainly asking for, or expecting, either one from students (at any level) without the other is a recipe for disaster.

In adding this at the beginning of my courses I find that students intuitively see the 'logic' in these steps and can, then, relate it to their own successes. The difference after teaching this, is that they know the how and why of their success and, thus, have gained autonomy: it is now theirs and theirs alone. That's confidence building.

Critical Thinking appled (Pt. II)

Finally, there's been some backlash against critical thinking, I've found, although it is often a case of the person being ill-informed or of an individual applying critical thinking , but not fully understanding it. In regards to the latter, I've seen many teachers confuse 'problem solving) where there is a direct connection between problem and solution) and 'critical thinking', where the connection requires leaps between problem to solution. Back to the point: often critical thinking dissenters remark that there is no creativity or, equally out of ignorance, ally creatical thinking to their own ignorance reagrding the scientific method (as, often, being some form of 'colonialism' etc). The reality is--and readers can listen to Ken Robinson on TED speak to this) that Critical and Creative thinking CANNOT be separated. You cannot have critical thinking without creative thinking and vice-versa. It just isn't possible.

Sadly, early 20th schools of logical positivism and scientific determinism did, in fact, and erroneously, believe that science and logic (thanks Mr.--not Dr.--Spock) could answer everything, and answer it at the expense of the arts and humanities (today, buisiness has presented an equal assault on these disciplines--equally as erroneously).

They were, and are, wrong. Human beings are hard-wired to be able to think critical and creatively. If we wish to move beyond mere problem solving, however, we must realize that these are skills to be taught (and everyone can learn them) and, so, teach them.

Thanks for the links and the food for thought from all.

Cheers,
Will Cullen

*sigh*

My apologies for the grammar and mechanics errors....I got to excited to edit (I forgive my students of this too....if that helps any :-)

is our children learning

"Most of the facts that we have to learn are seemingly pointless,"

When I was in high school I couldn't imagine why I would need to know how to be a bookkeeper, because I was going to be a writer. Now, as a small business person dealing with invoices, bills, taxes, etc, what little I remember is invaluable. So, I know it's tough when you're a teen to believe others might know better, but sometimes they do.

Also, teachers have kids for about 5 hours a day. The rest of the time it's up to parents to instill a love and appreciation of learning in their children. If your kids don't see you constantly expanding your own body of knowledge, whether it's reading books, listening to public radio, watching educational television, taking adult learning classes or what have you, it's pretty hard to convince them that they're going to need those learning skills later in life.

The Fallacy of The Triumph of Technology

'..a Social Studies 11 curriculum document makes clear that students are expected to be able to "explain how Canadians can effect change at the provincial and federal levels."..'

Effect change? I recognize that. It's buzzword speak, the hallmark of managerial language. It's sad that it has crept into education too.

Perhaps students, instead of learning useless facts like multiplication, or the alphabet, should focus on writing mission statements! We're not learning, we're value adding! We're architecting our future!

My grandfather could do pretty complex mental math, that I think most people can't do now. Ask a kid to do long division now. We can just Google it on our iPhones!

Are we breeding a bunch of console operators, who know nothing of the inner workings of their functions? Who can't perform any job without the aid of high level computing? Is this the culmination of human society? No, it's the arrogance of techno-triumphalism. That everything can be solved by a new application or piece of hardware.

The future is going to be characterized by resource shortages. With dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, how are we going to continue to mine the rare ores and power the energy hungry infrastructure of the internet? There are no contenders to replace the energy potential of fossil fuels. Alternative energy in all forms will provide a fraction of that. How exactly are we going to maintain industrial systems on a fraction of that energy?

People in the future will 'effect change' by doing more hard work and doing with less...of everything. Less energy, less leisure time, less money, less techno toys.

false dicotomy

Let's not fall into the "either/or" trap as so often happens in educational circles (ie., whole language or phonics?).
Some fact learning is necessary to foster understanding of a topic/issue etc.However, facts are a means to an end and not an end in themselves. I hope the person who gives me CPR knows some facts, but also an understanding about the process.
Facts alone are needed in training;understanding/application are needed in education.

author response

Your comments are appreciated, and it is good to know that my article got some people thinking.

One point that I may not have got across clearly enough, if I am to understand the comments here, is that the introduction of critical thinking skills is not intended to supplant all fact-based teaching. Rather, and I will quote Dr. Case here, "We are supposed to teach the facts through the skills and what emerges is understanding." There are many facts that all people should know; however, all facts are useless when divorced from context, and thus, understanding.

I will offer an analogy. I would not consider a cooking class to be valuable if students were merely required to memorize recipes then to recall lists of ingredients and their quantities on multiple choice tests. Students could achieve a high mark in such a class without actually being able to cook. In the same way, students can get a high mark in almost any class without really getting what is going on.

as someone who works with information for a living

As someone who works with information for a living, and someone who graduated as a member of the first net generation, I find it disturbing to see the resistance to change exhibited in many of these comments.

Rote memorization has to go. It has to. We are killing all interest in academics in the majority of our students.

Speaking from experience - in my work - I do not start out by trying to memorize every bit of data that I may perhaps need. I do learn how to find that data when I need it, however, and in the process of communicating data in response to queries, I necessarily learn many facts.

Learning to find the data, and knowing how to use it once you find it is more important than memorizing it.

We need to return to basics - reading, writing and arithmetic - and the rest of our energy should be spent getting students to use those skills, not memorizing dates and bits of trivia - unless we expect our children to make a living playing jeopardy and trivial pursuit.

Even if, as one poster suggests, the internet disappears, if I really need the exact date for something I can look it up in an encyclopaedia.

Heck, even if there are no books left - can anyone give me a real life scenario where knowing the date of some historical event is of any practical use?

It is foolish for us to waste scarce educational time programming our children with trivia.

We should be giving them tasks that expose them to information in its natural context. I think the example of having children learn about how the political system works by researching issues and doing actual advocacy is illustrative.

For example, a young person concerned about the decline of Fraser River sockeye - would learn much more about the divisions between federal and provincial jurisdiction by engaging in the issue than they would by being asked to memorize the information.

There are scores of issues that have a personal impact on the lives of students that they could get excited about. Our best chance at building a literate and capable society lies in triggering that excitement, and demonstrating the practicality of the skills we are teaching.

To moonbug, etc.

You say, "For example, a young person concerned about the decline of Fraser River sockeye - would learn much more about the divisions between federal and provincial jurisdiction by engaging in the issue than they would by being asked to memorize the information."
To discuss this issue, the student must know what a river is, what sockeye salmon are, how does a river flow, what factors affect river flow, what is the life cycle of the sockeye salmon, what factors affect the life of a salmon, what is a life-cycle, what is a fish farm, what is fish waste, and so on.
You can see there is much info that needs to be taught to the student so they can learn about the decline of salmon in the Fraser. Some must be taught directly in the classroom as "fact." Some can be learned by research. The learning must be evaluated and it can be done in many ways. It may be with tests or it may be evaluated by research essays.
But how do you know that all students have learned the desired objectives or outcomes? You must first know what those objectives are and develop a strategy to teach to those objectives. Then you find a method to see if the student has achieved those objectives. How the teacher does that will depend on what the outcomes are, not some blanket statement that multiple choice tests are bad or facts are just information, so they are to be looked down upon.
It is important for students to know facts and then know how to use them. The teacher teaches to both of these outcomes.

When I was in high school

When I was in high school (a while ago) I heard a line about the media and information. It said that "You can believe 50% of what you read and 25% of what you hear on TV." I would like to add that you can believe about 10% of what you read on the internet. To use Google or Wikipedia sources as factual is not a good idea and you better be prepared to find other sources to back them up. The suggestion to use Google as a source for facts is fraught with danger.

Hogwash from an oh-so-adult...

"Rote memorization has to go. It has to. We are killing all interest in academics in the majority of our students."

Yes to the second. No to the first. How many children have you brought up? If you had, you would know how sternly they will censure you for getting one word wrong in line 37 of 'Goldilocks and the three bears', and how much they delight in demonstrating their own faultless 'root memory' on same. This will not change unless we force it to. I have a bank of songs in my memory, which I learned by rote as a child, and do not need a book to sing on a hike or around a camp fire, for hours
if I cared to. I also remember hundreds of proverbs and stories my parents taught me. It is EASY to achieve this as a child, much more difficult when you are older, but can be done if one has the will. That kind of thing makes for self-reliance and a strength you cannot buy for money. What is a cultural heritage if not that sort of thing? The mere ability to use a dictionary or encyclopedia is a meager, phony substitute for this kind of wealth! Children who are offered the real of thing gobble it up so readily that it is hard not to believe it is part and parcel of what makes us human. Let us not kid ourselves that children who are handed stones for bread don't know they're being fobbed off.

We kill their interest by imposing OUR perception of what learning should be, and by trying to browbeat them into adopting it as their own, all our smartass ideas of 'interesting and diverse' stuff, when we ought to observe and respect, that children are some of the most conservative critters the world ever sees. By respecting them for who they are, we aid them in becoming life-long learners, for they will remember their first learning experiences as something joyful and usable.

Why is it that there are so many wild theories out there about who and what children are, and what they need? One gets the feeling that most of this guff comes from people who spend very little if any time in their company!

I fear that it is often people with poor early experiences, who slam the traditional patterns in the hope of creating the magic they were denied, through innovations of their own. Let's not forget to 'seek first to understand then to be understood', as Stephen Covey had it.

memorizing facts

For over thirty years as a university professor of history, my advice to students was that a foundation of remembered “facts” is handy on occasions, but otherwise don’t exert yourselves particularly hard to memorize anything you can easily look up in a survey text, an encyclopedia, and now on the web. What is important is to wonder about and understand connections. Just like on Sesame Street, when they ask you which of these four does not belong here, the question really is what do the other three have in common, or how are they related. Of course to compare things you have to know things, but at least you know why you need or want to know. Then it becomes interesting and fun.