Seth

Our principal included this great Tweet from Seth Godin in our Staff Weekly: "Open book, open note, all the time.  There is zero value in memorizing anything ever again."

This, as you can well expect, got quite a few people worked up.  One of my colleagues in the history department, took especial exception to this quote.

I don't think Godin was being quite as literal as it sounds, for my friend was offering the example of if your kid gets lost and wanders up to a police man, it might be a good thing for her to have memorized her phone number.

And that's true.

To an extent.

What I think Godin is getting at here is that we should stop teaching things out of context and forcing memorization on students.

To be fair, I can see why this offends history folks for they are fond of having students memorize dates, places, and names.  But to be honest, we all at one time or another memorized those dates, places, and names, but do we retain that knowledge?  Why is that?

The same is true for the history folks if I were to ask them all the English stuff they had to memorize.  I'm sure they used to know how to diagram sentences or define verbs, adverbs, gerunds, and so on.  Why can't they do it anymore.

I think Godin is trying to say that given the immense amount of information we have access to at a click of a button, why focus on memorizing tiny facts in isolation?  Why not aim a little higher?  Why not allow students to delve in to full subjects and explore their way around them.

To be honest, that's how I have learned about just about every thing.

I can tick of numerous draft choices from every NFL team.  I can tell you where they went to school and give you their stats.  But never once did I ever sit down with a textbook and force myself ( or 'cram') this information in my head.

I just surrounded myself in it and absorbed it.  That's why I can tell you that Peter Warrick excelled at Florida State University (helping them beat Michael Vick's Virginia Tech Hokies in the national championship where he caught a long touch down and returned a punt for a touch down) before being draft in the number four overall in the 2000 draft (Michael Vick would go number one the following year when the Bengals - again picking fourth - grabbed Justing Smith (yes, THAT Justin Smith who is an absolute stud for the 49ers right now) and then they grabbed Chad Johnsons/Ocho Cinco in the second round, Rudi Johnson in the fourth round, and TJ Houschmandzedah in the seventh.  For the Bengals, that's an awesome draft.  Four Pro Bowlers, not bad!).

Warrick caught 4 ball for 80 yards and one touchdown in his first NFL game.  Then, though, he struggled mightily to play at the same level in the pros that he did in college.  His best game three years later when the 3-5 Bengals, in Marvin Lewis's first year as coach, beat the 9-0 Chiefs.  Warrick had a big touch down reception and returned a punt for a touchdown.  Later that year, he hurt his knee, but tried to play on it anyway to help the Bengals secure a playoff spot.  They lost the final game of the year to Cleveland 14-21 and missed the playoffs.  Unfortunately, Warrick did serious damage to his knee.

The next season he was replaced by TJ Houschmandzedah and then Warrick was released before the start of the 2005 regular season (he did latch on with the Seattle Seahawks, though, and did return punts for them in the Super Bowl).

Now I could go on for hours and hours like that about the Bengals and their draft picks.  And I never took one single class or read one single textbook.

Why?

Because I'm passionate and interested in it.  And because I've read thoroughly on it.  I have open access to the Cincinnati Enquirer, their web site, and ESPN.  Oh, and TV too.  And while I've never gone out of my way to memorize any of it, it has cemented in my mind.

And what I don't know - such as whether Warrick really caught 4 balls for 80 yards in his first game - I can look it up easily on line.

So I think what Godin is saying is that if we allow our students to experience knowledge and our subjects that way, we will be learning a lot more than we do now.  All without being forced to memorize anything.

Don't ge me wrong.  Students will memorize things.  But they will memorize them because they find them personally interesting or relevant or engaging.

Why can't school be more like that type of learning (which I would argue is how we all really learn anyway) rather than this false type of learning that occurs in school?

Godin has a great example of this.  He says walk in to Barnes and Noble and ask for a textbook.  They'll laugh at you.

That's not how real people learn.  If you want to learn about the Civil War in the real world, what do you do?  You get a book, watch a film, watch a documentary, research something on the internet, and absorb the knowledge.  You don't sit down and have someone design a test for you to take after it.  And you sure as hell don't do a crossword worksheet on it.

Yet, why do we do that in school?

We want to control kids rather than engage or inspire them.

Well, that's Godin's take.  And I mostly agree with him.

If we don't do something about it, Godin says, our kids will just keep on learning the same stuff we learned and forgetting it just like we forgot it.

As John Merrow once observed that school used to serve 3 purposes

1.  It's where the knowledge was kept.
2.  It served as a social circle for students
3.  It kept kids busy for 8 hours a day while their parents were at work.

The only one of those still true is #3.

The rest are gone (as Merrow says about the social aspect of schools, "There are apps for that now.")

1.  If a kid has an internet connection, he has access to more information and knowledge than any kid in the history of the planet.  To lock him away from that (hence the open note and open book part of Godin's statement) is a damn shame.

So let's repeat it "Open book, open note, all the time.  There is zero value in memorizing anything ever again."