We Don’t Need No Education — Is Memorization Dead?
Is memorization dead? Is education as we know it dead? Well maybe yes to both.
The other day I posted a video by Dr. Michael Wesch in which he asks if it makes any sense to force students to memorize stuff when they can look it up via search engines in a second.
Then I was reading an academic paper today that made me wonder if memorization might be counterproductive and a hindrance to what students are capable of learning. The now dated 1998 paper entitled: “Markets for Information Goods” by Hal R. Varian contains this thought that made me think again of Wesch’s video. The thought:
Ithiel De Sola Pool noted that the supply of information (in virtually every medium) grows exponentially whereas the amount that is consumed grows at best linearly. This is ultimately due to the fact that our mental powers and time available to process information is constrained.
So, the more time we spend memorizing stuff the less time we have for finding information which we need to know. And with that grand thought I will leave you with Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (We Don’t Need No Education)
