On Computers, Fish and Learning

My View

EVERY SO OFTEN, my computer succumbs to a “virus” and, with my exiguous knowledge of the machine, I have to take it to the repair shop to have its health restored. Usually, a young technician fixes the problem in a blink by nimbly pressing several keys. Amazed and grateful, I collect my perfidious device and go home.

On my last occasion, however, the young man servicing the computer said, “I can teach you how to fix the problem if it occurs again.” I quickly agreed, and he began a brief demonstration. Not only did he show me how to make the repair, he wrote down the procedure and instructed me to give it a test try.

En route home, I recalled an old saying I used when I was a professor: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I wondered if educators today are merely giving this generation of students a time-limited fish. In this era when smartphones are upgraded every five years and knowledge doubles or triples within a generation, isn’t the information we ask students to regurgitate on standardized tests with little emphasis on critical thinking bordering on useless?

Dodging Questions

We don’t have to teach young people to think. They already have this ability. It is we as educators who, in fact, discourage this process.Witness the young child who exasperates his or her parents by repeating questions such as “Where does rain come from?” “What causes it to rain?” “Why does it rain down instead of up?” “How does it know when to stop?” If these questions seem familiar, refer to the poem by Rudyard Kipling: “I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.”

Next, think of the sedulous teacher (we’ve all had one) who dodges a student’s thoughtful question by saying, “We’ll get to that next week” or “If you don’t know, look it up.” Is there a better example of someone stifling learning? I am prone to wondering if learning a subject such as history with its multiplicity of “important” dates and places, a student would be permitted to ask “What was the main cause of the Civil War?” “Why were some people for slavery and others against it?” and “How did the war stop?” Apply these questions to any discipline and ask yourself, “How much more would I know if I had this type of learning in school?”

Of course, some subjects are best taught by rote methods. Before one learns to read, he or she must memorize the “sight words.” In math, we memorized the multiplication tables.

Quotable Inspiration

When I was verifying that Kipling quote, I came across a consulting firm that uses the five W’s to help business clients improve their services. They do so by asking “What are the good business techniques that you use?” “Why are some practices effective while others are not?” and “Where do you see the difference between good practices and bad practices?”

My final questions are: “What should be changed in our present education system?” “How do we change it?” “Who should be responsible for the change?” and “When should the change begin?” Perhaps George Bernard Shaw said it best: “You see things; and you say ‘Why,’ But I dream of things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”