Children Are Merely Memorizing A Teacher's Rhetoric

When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be an adult. Not just because of the unlimited ice cream and the fact that I could stay up as late as I wanted, but because of all the rational, nuanced, well-informed adult conversations I presumed I’d be having. 

You can imagine my disappointment. 

In my article, Why Can’t Kids Think Anymore, I wrote about the growing focus on rote memorisation in schools. Kids are so busy memorising whatever they need to say to pass their tests, they have less and less opportunity to understand why they’re saying it. 

And in my experience talking to young (and some older) people online, the same is true for their political views. They know what they’re supposed to say, but are often shockingly unclear about why they’re saying it. 

Emmarie didn’t want to throw the memorisation baby out with the bathwater.

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Emmarie:

I don't disagree with your opinions, but I feel like your opening example isn't founded on history.

Classical education is based on memorization. You need memorization so you learn material easier. It's basically the first step of the trivium (Grammar, then followed by logic and rhetoric).

Because classical education and memorization was so common, it would've been a feature in previous generations. The problem then isn't memorization... but that memorization is the ONLY thing students are doing. They aren't doing logic or rhetoric, merely memorizing a teacher's rhetoric.

This is partly because it's easier to grade, but also because the class which has always been relied upon to teach critical thinking, English/Language Arts is now moralistic grandstanding.

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Steve QJ:

“I don't disagree with your opinions, but I feel like your opening example isn't founded on history.”

Yeah, it's just an anecdote that relates somebody's experience. I'm certainly not in a position to say whether this is universal. And I'm not trying to undermine the importance of memorisation at all. I agree with you that memorisation is an important first step in learning. But it also goes much deeper than that, right?

The education system's focus on constant testing is relatively modern. And it seems to me to prioritise memorisation over genuine understanding. This works pretty well on a test, but not so well in the real world. And the broader point I was making is that this focus on memorisation and regurgitation rather than actual understanding seems to be infecting people's approach to political discourse too.

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Emmarie:

That last paragraph is a good point.

I actually think testing is important, which I think everyone agrees with, but there is there far too much testing in American schools.

The average student spends 180 days in class with an average of just 4 hours spent to instructional time a day. But some districts will do standardized testing or test prep (not even class-relevant testing like a weekly quiz) for as much as 90 days a year!

My dream is only two standardized tests a year (beginning and end) that's not tied to funding, but helps parents make decisions about whether to send their kids to an individual school and inform them of what may need their attention in the voting booth.

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Teachers have always been activists. They shape young minds after all. And it’s nearly impossible to do that without shaping them in accordance with your own biases. 

But activism didn’t use to be so braindead. It used to be allowed, encouraged even, to think and discuss and disagree about complex topics. Conflicting opinions weren’t so readily conflated with good and evil. Certainly not in the classroom.

Because as kids, we had the humility to understand that we didn’t know everything. We knew there were perspectives we were probably missing. We realised that we still had a lot to learn.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe it’s the adults who should be aspiring to be more like kids.