We have been working our way through Daisy Christodoulou’s Seven Myths About Education. The previous myth we investigated was that the 21st century fundamentally changes everything. Today we are investigating the fourth myth.
Myth 4: You Can Always Just Look it Up
Who hasn’t heard this one? Someone displays an unusual depth of knowledge and another scornfully says, “If I wanted to know that, I could just google it.” We’ve seen hints of this in the other myths. Procedural knowledge, or knowing how is rated about declarative knowledge or knowing what.
This myth has certainly infected the classroom. Apparently teachers shouldn’t worry about their students learning facts. Given our internet age, knowledge is redundant. Rather we need to focus on teaching research skills.
How is this a myth? What is wrong with this thinking?
the first issue is that it denies what research on memory tells us. Knowledge in our long term memory is extremely important. In fact, the more knowledge we have, the greater range of problems we are able to solve. If we memorise frequently used bits of information, these will not clog-up our short term memory when we are trying to solve complex problems.
A classic case in the classroom is teaching fractions with children who do not know their multiplication tables. First times tables must be in the long term memory, then you can teach fractions. Or what about your doctor? Nobody would want their doctor googling how to do a procedure five minutes before they are due to go into surgery. They are going to need a lot of knowledge stored in their long term memory so they can be effective.
Secondly, ‘looking something up’ actually requires a certain amount of knowledge. First of all, one needs to know what one needs to find out. In addition, knowledge of what makes for a good source could be important. And these are just starting points. As Christodoulou points out, “..research skills are, on closer inspection, the function of large bodies of knowledge.” In fact, often when we describe students has having good research skills, we are actually making more of a comment on their general knowledge. Because of their good general knowledge, they are enabled to interpret research questions and approach the whole process of research in a competent manner.
So yes, we do want to teach good research skills. But it should never be an either-or thing. We want to complement this with providing children with a good body of knowledge.