The World Is Not One Dimensional and Education Shouldn’t Be Either
Memorization has been the bread and butter of education for a very long time. Standardized testing, for example, revolves around the idea that to learn is to retain pre-determined information and be able to regurgitate it at will — but what if this is a limited way to view education? Does it actually deliver school results with increased academic performance? What if we are leaving out one of the most important skills of all — the ability to think.
In an article for The Christian Science Monitor, titled Is School Too Shallow, President of Educational Research in Action, Karen Hess, says, “Most teachers never really ask students to think very deeply…. Most of what is assigned and tested are things we ask students to memorize.”
The ability to think deeply is not as abstract a concept as it may at first sound. In reality, it is comprised of many essential and important skills, such as communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration.
These are abilities that serve each of us well in day to day adult life — much more, one might argue, than the ability to successfully memorize information. Indeed, it is worth questioning the continued prioritizing of memorization skills in a modern world where access to any and all information is never far from the tips of one’s fingers.
Even Albert Einstein himself believed that the greatest value of learning was to be taught deeper thinking. When asked why he did not have the speed of sound memorized, Einstein replied, “[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. …The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”
The training of the mind to think is surely a worthy skill — and some educators are beginning to take this perspective to heart and seek ways to instill these values in schools.
One such educator referenced in the article, Is School Too Shallow, came up with a method to teach her seventh-grade students different methods of critical thinking. She gave them each a different colored hat and assigned to each color a different way of thinking. The black hat was skepticism, the green was creative thinking, the white was evidence seeking — each child had the opportunity to wear a hat while asked specific questions.
By exploring these different methods of thinking, the children were not only able to identify which methods they naturally gravitated towards, but also learned that they are not limited to one technique. This opened them up to a world of possibilities when faced with an intellectual dilemma.
Although teaching deeper learning may not yet be the standard, it is catching on in popularity. In a 2016 national survey, nearly half of American teachers stated they were focusing more on the skills necessary for deeper learning in their classrooms. Meanwhile, Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, Jal Mehta, discovered in a visit to 30 schools that 1 out of 5 classes were assigning student’s work that encouraged deeper learning. Notably, he also found that in extracurriculars such as drama and student paper, there were higher rates of deeper learning skills being used to problem solve and create. As such, there may be something that standard classes can learn from the way in which these extracurriculars operate.
These examples are encouraging, but the fact remains that teaching deeper thinking is still not the norm in most classrooms, and there is a long way to go in the pursuit of integrating these skills into educational curriculums. For example, in a survey of English Language Arts grade 3 classrooms, 49.4% of teaching focused on the recall of information, 48.1% focused on basic reasoning, 3.4% focused on complex reasoning, and 0.0% focused on extended reasoning.
It is never too early to begin teaching the valuable skills of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and problem-solving. These are life skills that are beneficial not just for future careers, but also for navigating a complex world full of conflicting ideas and perspectives. The world we live in is not a one dimensional place; it is not a series of black and white statements and memorization — and education shouldn’t be either.
— — — — — — — — — — —
Are you looking for something amazing for your child to do this summer in Minneapolis that will be fun and excite their creativity? Mind Foundry is providing Summer Camp sessions at sites throughout Minneapolis. Robotics, Coding, Filmmaking, Minecraft Exploration, Principles of Flight with Drones, Dr. Osmosis Science Discovery, Entrepreneurship, and many other engaging camps are available.
Camps run Monday — Friday 9am — 3pm at a cost of $250 per week. Before and after care available. Discounts available for siblings as well as for multiple weeks.
Mind Foundry is committed to providing accessible high quality 21st century learning to all. Limited scholarships and sliding scale pricing available to those that qualify. Contact us for more details and to register your child, today!
