Human evolution is about efficiency and comfort. All of our advancements have been aimed at one single goal, to increase our comfort level in a most efficient way. We have made great strides evidenced by robots, cars, microwaves, washing machines just to name a few. Currently we are enjoying many devices that do the work for us, making us more efficient and comfortable. Not many of us would argue the helpful nature of a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner. If the machine won’t do it, we have a lot of services we can rely on to do the job for us. The idea of machines or others doing the work for us has penetrated all most areas of our lives. And now, it is starting to seep into education.
Many believe, that education systems worldwide are following an outdated paradigm that was created centuries ago to produce workers who could read and do mathematical computation, in order to do the jobs that the industrial revolution has created. Experts, professionals and consumers question such educational system’s usefulness in current times. One problem they tend to address, is the information presented to the learners or skills required of them are no longer useful or necessary. The claim is that a machine (computer, tablet, phone etc. especially equipped with internet) can do it much better and quicker. These machines make the learning / inquiry process comfortable and efficient.
To bring education more up to date, schools have begun to eliminate some things from their requirements and curriculum. Cursive writing, memorization of time tables, memorization of poems, or really, just any facts, are among all that is in danger of extinction. It is true, that there is such an abundance of information, that it is impossible to organize, teach and learn of it all. So, the focus is shifting onto teaching kids how to think about and use the information. Now more than ever, the aim has become to recognize vs to know (recognition vs recall). This is evidenced by using predominantly multiple-choice assessments, true-false and matching questions, word banks in our classrooms to measure knowledge. Wanting children to be able to analyze, compare, synthesize, which are higher intellectual processes in Bloom’s Taxonomy, is to be celebrated. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical model of describing the different levels of learning and knowing. However, the very bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy is Knowledge, as in knowing facts and information. It is being able to recall such things. Because, really, if we have no facts in our head what are we going to think about? What are we going to analyze, compare, synthesize, and apply? Without actual knowledge we are not going to be uncomfortably inefficient.
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