I would like to mainly comment on your point about how people are more important than technology because I totally agree. Our world today is absolutely consumed by technology, and while helpful at times, I feel that it really takes away from our relationships and how we communicate.

I don’t mean to stereotype, because I too love technology, but it seems that this generation of teenagers are so caught up in computers, cell phones, ipods, etc. that some of them can’t function outside of those things. Who can we blame for that though? We are always trying to implement more and more technology into the classrooms to make our lives “easier”, but is it really making things easier when students only know how to Google something as opposed to looking it up in a book or can’t communicate unless they are behind a computer screen?

Eventually there will be job interviews, where I’m pretty sure an employer is not going to say “Hey text me and tell me why you think you’re qualified for this job.” Instead they are going to want to have a face to face conversation with you to see how you present yourself. Besides future employers, there are relationships with friends, family, parents, etc. that can’t always be maintained through technology. These people deserve to see that you care to interact with them outside of technology. So, my advice is to come out from behind the computer screen, get off the cell phone and make an effort to put yourself out there to learn some REAL communication skills, that will be helpful when you get out into the world.

What is canon of knowledge that is required to be a functional human being in the world today?

A student who wants to become an engineer should acquire the knowledge that help him to master his future job. It is our role as policy makers to consult the relevant educational experts to determine what knowledge should be acquired by sudents for each area of specialists.

I’m left a bit unsure of where we disagree on this. When you refer to my post as implying that factual knowledge is the enemy of 21st century learning, I wonder if you’re not overstating the point I am trying to make. I said:

Now, don’t read this to say that factual knowledge is never valuable or that it shouldn’t be taught — all things in moderation will create balance — but if all you take away from science class is that you memorized the Periodic Table, then we may have a disconnect between what we do in school and what you’ll do when you’re done in school.

And a few comments above yours, I also wrote:

It absolutely has to be a balance. And as students move into high school and – theoretically – closer to a profession, the granularity of what factual knowledge they have to have increases.

Since you make reference to my last paragraph, I will do the same. I have a basic, working knowledge of the electoral college. I don’t know the intricacies like how many electors Indiana has or in which states the winning party does not automatically get all the state’s electoral votes. Unless I’m at a dinner party chatting with a campaign strategist I would argue that I could get by with what I know.

As a former math and physics teacher, I’d also have to admit that the number of times I’ve been asked to change the amplitude of a sine graph when I was not standing in front of the class is effectively zero.

Now, should I understand the big picture concept of periodic functions and their general characteristics? I think so. We’ve got seasonal changes in the amount of daylight and daily changes of high and low tides. These things exist in the real world and they’re messy and imperfect. I like that.

Extending my argument to the extreme of “no one should memorize facts” is reductio ad absurdum. It’s not what I said. You acknowledge that the ABCs and 1+1 are the starting point and that’s all that I was going for.

So to clarify: Learning facts for the sake of taking a test that verifies that you learned those facts is “memorizing.” It’s not “learning.” I would like to see our students (and my own kids) get an education which, to me, involves knowing some facts as well as what to do with those facts. Learning them for a test only to have those facts forgotten an hour later is not something that I believe has a whole lot of value in terms of an “education.”

People who know a lot of facts but lack a context for those facts or the skills to apply them will succeed on Jeopardy but probably not much beyond that.

So let’s learn facts, but let’s make sure that they’re facts worth learning.

Thanks for reading, John. And thanks for the comment.