, 2 min read
Don´t memorize, change your neural pathways!
Some days ago, I stated on this blog that I had a Ph.D. in mathematics (true fact) and that I didn’t know my own phone number nor did I know multiplication tables (also true). My wife knows it is true. She still claim she has superior brain power because not only does she know our phone number, but she even knows our postal code, and she knows many other things. There is not question that my wife is one of the smartest lady in Montreal. Hey! There is a reason why I fell in love with her!
Still, I claim not to be a brain-damaged moron despite these apparent short-comings. You see, I do not memorize on purpose because I think that my time is better used by solving problems and learning new tricks.
From Downes’, I got the following bit of wisdom telling I’m not alone in thinking that memorizing facts is not key to learning…
My own research – reserach that can be extended through the many resources on this site – has already convinced me that neural structures are, as they say, plastic. For me what this means is that learning based on the fostering of habits is more important than learning based on transmission of facts, that, indeed, the facts aren’t that important at all, not nearly as important modelling effective practice, paying attention to environment, immersive, experiential based education.
So, please, do me a favor: if you teach, do not ask your students to memorize. Ask them to change their neural pathways, their thinking patterns… let their PDAs and the Web be a fact storage unit, don’t waste their brains.
Update: A colleague who has a training in history and who holds a Ph.D. says he could never remember dates, and only memorized one: December 25th 800. So, I can say that I’m not alone to think that memorization is only a minor part of learning.