If you forget…

There are a lot of people who are pushing for year-round schools on the grounds that less material will have to be relearned each year. That sounds good if you overlook the differences between memorizing and learning. If you forget material, it was not truly learned. It was only memorized.

This is a big problem with a fundamental component of schooling, the preference of memorization over practical learning. What you memorize can be forgotten, and most of what you “learn” in school will eventually be lost.

It’s not just the push for year-round schools. Here in Washington, students were having problems with our standardized testing. We made changes. Among these changes was that we started testing when material is fresh in students’ minds. In other words, what we know coming out of school is not as important as what we have memorized long enough to take a test. A lot of people are grateful for the change because they viewed the old approach as unfair.

This raises some questions regarding the actual value of the schooling process. In all honesty, I have never benefitted outside of school for knowing the capitals of all 50 states. It might sound important, but there is seriously limited practicality in the real world to know this information. Of course, the schools aren’t preaching the value of knowing the capitals of all 50 states. Instead, they insist that it is vital that all citizens have known the capitals at some point in their lives. Whether or not that information is retained is completely irrelevant to their cause.