What Have We Learned?

Are you another Pavlov's dog?

Can you name the capitals of all the states?  I can name a lot of them, but I was supposed to learn all of them in school.  How about yourself?  Can you name them all?  Were you supposed to? 

Does it matter?  Even if we know all the capitals, how much have we learned?  We associate a city with a state. That’s good for something, but without knowledge about the city and the state, we have learned little.  Yet if you were tested on it, and knew all the capitals, you got an A. 

My point?  Learning and knowledge aren’t always the same thing.  Good grades and knowledge aren’t always the same thing.  I was a grade school teacher, years ago.  I taught earth science, and I didn’t teach it as a bunch of terms to memorize.  I taught it as, you know, science.  I taught the forces that were involved in shaping the planet.  I wanted my students to be able to look at clouds and know how they got there.  And to pick up a stone and not just identify it, but know how it was formed.  And so forth.

I became aware that there is variability in students.  Some want to just memorize terms, and keep them memorized long enough to pass a memorization test.  In some classes, that worked out well for them, but not in mine.  In some classes, they memorized (learned), took the test and got an A, and then mostly forgot all of it and started memorizing for the next test.  Not in my class.  In fact, as I “defined” terms, I altered definitions such that memorization was nearly pointless.  So, I might describe a metamorphic rock one day as a rock that had been derived from some other rock.  The next day, I described them as rocks altered by heat and or pressure.  Both explanations are correct, and there’s still a lot more to know about metamorphic rocks.  And I taught it.  And the tests required students to demonstrate comprehension of metamorphic rocks and the dynamics of their formation.  Memorization just wasn’t going to cut it.

I frustrated the hell out of the memorizers.  They struggled in my class.  But those who wanted to learn and COMPREHEND did well.  Interestingly, some of my students, who learned and comprehended nearly all that I taught them, did poorly on tests.  It’s not that they couldn’t do well; they just didn’t care about getting good grades. 

What’s my point?  My point is that extensive education and good grades are no assurance that a person has learned very much.  And little education and poor grades don’t mean that a person isn’t knowledgeable.

What have we learned?  If you went (go) to school to focus on getting good grades, you might not be all that well educated.  You might not have learned very much. 

I have a dog, Toby.  He’s a great guy. He intrigues me.  He is afraid of some of the inanimate objects in the house because, as a puppy, he ran into them and got hurt.  To this day, he isn’t entirely clear that these objects are not ever going to jump out and attack him. On the other hand, he can read our actions very accurately.  When we close the kitchen door (so he can’t get away), he knows that he’s about to get eye drops.

And, he has learned a lot.  Using normal behavioral training, we’ve taught him to sit.  That training consists of giving him a treat when he sits, so that he associates sitting with getting a treat when we say “sit”.  The same for “heel” and “come”, etc.  He doesn’t get treats that much anymore, but he still sits, and heels and comes because of the previous association with treats.  All this began with Pavlov’s dog, who learned to associate the ring of a bell with food, and so salivated every time he heard the bell.

Toby has learned a lot.  But how educated is he?  Can he solve problems?  Can he determine cause and effect?  No and no.  To some extent, yes, but mostly, no.  Now, let’s jump back to those state capitals. I’m going to suggest that, to some students, good grades are like treats to a dog. Certainly, if Toby could have learned state capitals in exchange for a treat, he would have.  And some students will do that memorizing for an A.  No harm in that, but what good is it?  If I keep repeating, “A metamorphic rock is one formed by intense heat and pressure”, and students know that they can get an A by repeating it back on the test, they’ll do it.  But they won’t have learned much, and I won’t have taught much.

And unfortunately, some students, and some teachers, think that memorizing should count as adequate education.  I don’t.  I respect knowledge and comprehension far more than memorization.

What have we learned?  There are those who have memorized that when the teacher says “climate change”, the correct response is “CO2”.  That’s pretty much the extent of their knowledge of climate change.  Such people would flunk my science test.

Our physical world is quite complex.  Scientists are still endeavoring to comprehend it.  Our human cultures are also complex, and we are still trying to sort things out among ourselves.  My guess is that we will never sort it all out.  Regardless of whether you identify as “liberal” or “conservative”; regardless of your years in school, if you have easy, pat answers to “climate change”, “abortion”, “capitalism”, “socialism”, “democracy”, “rights” and all those other usual terms, you probably haven’t learned much.

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Not long after I wrote this, the following post appeared on Substack. For entire institutions, grades are more important than knowledge. This is serious, folks.  We are headed for an education cliff.

‘I Was Fired for Setting Academic Standards’

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 The hits just keep on coming: Here’s a recent response to an article in the Wall Street Journal concerning memorizing trying to pass as education…

The Teacher Who Taught Me How to Think