In grad school, I TA’d for a professor who claimed that students finished his class knowing genetics as well as those at Harvard. He gave out these detailed definitions for terms and made the students write them down verbatim. On the tests, he give them the definitions with some words missing, and they had to fill in the blanks. It struck as a very rote, grammar school type of pedagogy, and I’m not sure that any of the students came away from the course with a very deep understanding of genetics. After all, just because you can recite a definition doesn’t mean that you understand what you’re saying. It’s the difference between knowing and truly understanding.
I bring this up in response to a recent editorial in Wired, “Your Outboard Brain Knows All,” in which Clive Thompson talks about our increasing reliance on computers to store key facts. He cites a study that found a number of young people didn’t know their own phone number and instead had to look it up on their phones. I usually know my own number, but I was dating Caroline for years before I’d memorized hers. Moreover, I love looking stuff up on Wikipedia or IMDB. But Thompson raises a good question: “Does an overreliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?”