Here’s Google CEO Schmidt, in response to a question about whether Google is “dumbing down” kids:
Kids use [Google] all the time because it’s a new way of learning. When I was growing up, in Virginia, they made me memorize the names of all the capitals of every county in the state. Completely useless information. So kids today are going from knowing everything to being able to search very quickly. The kids need to learn how to search because they’re going to have to search everywhere. They’re going to have search everywhere on devices that they carry with them.
Schmidt is right about the cult of memorization in schools. Most teachers do a great job of making lessons come alive, but when it comes time to measure what the students have learned, out come the standardized tests (thanks to state and federal requirements). And what’s easy to test in a multiple-choice format? Memorized information. So a student’s understanding of the Confederacy’s war strategy is funneled through questions like, “In what year did the battle of Gettysburg take place?”
There are (at least) two problems with that. First, if you’re the teacher, and you’re running low on class time, what are you going to teach — what’s on the test (i.e., factoids) or the “big-picture” stuff? Obviously you’ll teach to the test, because you’ve had it drilled into your head that the test scores are THE representation of your students’ learning in your class. If their test scores aren’t solid, you’re a bad teacher. So, yes, given a tradeoff, you and I both would teach the Gettysburg date.
Second, facts fade. Very very quickly. I propose a test to lots of school administrators who are in love with recall-type tests as an index of progress. Two weeks after your kids make solid scores, give them a surprise re-test. Same questions, same answers. And get ready to weep. All of us know and experience that our memories fade quickly — just see the forgetting curve literature — and yet we’ve designed assessments that seem to presume memories are permanent, like files stashed on a hard drive.
Google is the perfect real-world memory aid for students. It makes it easy to retrieve the factoids that will inevitably be lost from memory. It makes it so easy, in fact, that it’s foolish to obsess about teaching the factoids. If a student knows that there was a battle, during the Civil War, that represented a turning point, and she can articulate why, and she can discuss the factors that led up to the pivotal battle itself, isn’t that a picture of success? Would anyone think she’s less smart, or less aware of history, if she Googled the dates and the place names?
Long time reader, first time commenter. We’ve even spoken on the phone once before. What drew me out of the woodwork? Search as a school skill. (This comment is US-centric in nature, but I know this is a worldwide consideration).
I’m 38. I grew up as a digital native when it wasn’t really fashionable. But that gave me an edge on other folks because I knew where to find certain resources. I’ve continued that trend as an adult.
My daughter is 6. She knows how to find PBSKids, NickJr, and all her sites, plus she knows how to use the search bar in YouTube to find what she wants (with supervision).
I believe there are courses required for education that didn’t exist when I was in school.
* Search
* Media literacy
* Basic HTML ( links, emphasis, etc)
* Critical Thinking
* Media creation
Without these, kids coming up will be at a serious disadvantage to other children from countries who are taking this much more seriously.
Look at the XO from Nicolas Negroponte. It ships with a browser. Think the Web is superfluous to what children need to learn? MIT doesn’t think so. OLPC doesn’t think so.
I think you’ve got a nail-on-the-head post here. Thanks for your thoughtfulness.
My background is similar to Chris Brogan’s and until yesterday my comments would have been as well. I’m not living in the US, but I have a large number of friends who do and one shared with me last night that some individuals she was training were incredulous that Russian troops were on US soil after they saw headlines about Russian troops in Georgia.
I agree 100% that greater emphasis must be placed on self-reliance and the ability to discover information for one’s self using tools and strategies such as search. But the effectiveness of search is limited by one’s ability to input related keywords and ideas.
Returning to your example, knowledge of the Confederacy’s strategy isn’t possible to understand without some previously acquired knowledge (read: information in memory) about the Confederacy, the conflict in question and where and when the conflict took place (general time periods if not specific dates).
I agree that rote memorization is no longer the best way to help individual acquire knowledge, but trading “factors” and “concepts” for concrete information is a dead-end as well.
Neuroscience demonstrates that concrete facts provide anchors for concepts and factors to be hung on. I can navigate my country quite well because I have a list of regions and capitals in my head that enable me to have a general idea of which way I’m supposed to travel to a new location-in case the directions I get from Google Maps are unclear (as they are on occasion).
How would you answer your concluding question if I reworded it slightly?
“Would anyone think these trainees less smart if they thought Russians had invaded the US because they didn’t have the “factoid” in memory that there is more than one place called “Georgia” in the world?”
My friend answered it by giving them a couple of factoids to memorize so their intelligence wouldn’t be judged based on a lack of information.
Search skills and core information together provide the best hope for producing curious, reflective, self-sufficient persons.
I find myself outsourcing my memory to my blog too. I find myself thinking in response to questions, I posted 3 blog posts that would relate to that in the last year, and 2 that relate to this… Trying to recall the details though is harder, I just want to pepper my conversation with hyperlinks to see blog post x,y and z for the details…
I am a public librarian, and I do
My apologies, I believe I used some characters that confused the system. As I was saying, I am a public librarian and I often use Google. However, I’m concerned that the normal methods of research are perishing. Often, our younger patrons don’t know what a database is, and insist that their teacher said “I can’t use the Internet.” Librarians also struggle to find a “sticky” way of labeling the databases on their website – “database” is a foreign word, “magazines” is too narrow, and “research” is intimidating. What magical word will raise our statistics?
I fear also that kids today may not know the pleasure of pawing through old, smelly journals.