AIBU to disagree with Sebastian Faulks re: 'knowledge'?

[Cortina]

First off I am a huge fan and I read the recently live chat with interesting (I'd like to have heard more from him).

I was struck by this remark:

The generation now in its twenties and thirties is the first for perhaps two hundred years in Europe who will end up knowing less in aggregate than its parents. This is the opposite of education. It is appalling.

Knowing things in your own head, full understanding them, is important. If Tony Blair had known much history he would not have invaded Iraq.

When I speak to teacher friends of mine (involved with rolling out the IB in secondary schools) they tell me that learning how to think is far more important than knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

They tell me that if you want the facts that's why we have google. It's only the traditionalists that still see a need to recite the names of of the kings/queens of England in chronological order and so on. There is no point in learning by rote, learning to think critically and creatively trumps that.

I say I disagree with Sebastian Faulks but really I am torn. There is a huge part of me that values traditional learning, and can see its uses, but I can also see the limitations and see that things have moved on. Knowledge doesn't seem to esteemed in quite the way it used to be and I wonder if this is sometimes mistaken for general 'dumbing down'?

Sorry, that should read 'I've read the live chat with interest'. :).

Is learning facts mutually exclusive from thinking, you are assuming it is one or the other. I would say if you are only interested in "what" questions, that can be easily looked up and is unnecessary to learn by heart but the "why" questions require so much more. If you do not learn anything that has already been done, you are likely to waste time asking obvious questions.

Even taking your example, being able to recite kings and queens is pointless, I agree, but being able to explain the order, referencing battles and history and context - that would be real learning and useful politically (Scotland/England/France relations for example). Only a bad teacher would ever put reciting ahead of explaining. In science, you need to fully understand what has come before and there is almost a necessary order to that understanding - you are never going to get anywhere with cloning if you do not know inside out, without googling, how cells replicate. I don't think the brain fills up with knowledge at the expense of thinking, but grows in better and more complex ways as a result.

Google gives no context to the facts, does not discriminate between an opinionated blogger and a real academic, it might be a starting point but the flicking between ideas and lack of depth and background is worrying. People who simply know how to internet search will be so boring to talk to. Similarly to google, there are so many times I have heard the phrase "I heard it on QI" as a supposedly conversation ender - the person not feeling the need to actually find out the explanation, just stating you are wrong - end of - QI trump card. It gives lazy people a short cut to knowledge, but it is knowledge of such a low quality that there is nothing useful can be done with it - no conversations, ability to teach or pass knowledge on, no ability to advance the current knowledge, not even being able to fill out crosswords and ward off dementia. If you are no more interesting than the latest search tool (that someone else wrote), what is the point of you?

Your quote there doesn't sound like he is talking about memorising facts - "knowing history" isn't knowing a list of dates and names, but of understanding what happened and why, and then connecting that to the modern situation. And then, hopefully, using that assessment to make a sensible decision.

The impression I get is that he was saying you have to both know stuff and understand it, and that having access to information online etc is no replacement for a genuine understanding.

So, I don't think what he said disagrees with what you are saying - the important thing is understanding, but a certain amount of actual knowledge is necessary before you can understand a subject.

I think the latest thoughts are that knowledge should be used 'for doing' not just for hoarding. We should think about expanding minds rather than just filling them and this is why we maybe why we give don't knowledge the same reverence as in the past. I agree with you Runner about the potential pitfalls and agree that there is a place for facts, we shouldn't throw the baby away with the bath water.

You say only a bad teacher wouldn't explain, I think in years past a teacher wouldn't expect too much questioning but would expect pupils to accept the 'right answer'. For example I've read that in physics Neils Bohr's 'mini solar system' of atomic structure was taught to physics students as if it was the truth. In English A'level taken in the 80s I was delighted to get credit for all the Shakespeare quotations I had committed to memory! I knew that many of my peers would have been to lazy to commit huge chunks to memory and this gave me an edge. By the 90s at our school pupils had to go in with their texts, dumbing down? I don't think so. Now you would have to use your brain to come up with the best examples and you had no excuses as your text was with you in the exam. You had to apply the knowledge.

A teacher traditionally passed 'knowledge' down to the pupils. Now there is a movement to try to get people to focus on wider habits of mind that are being developed not just on the retention of knowledge.

The students job used to be to understand what they were told and to remember it. They were doing their job well if they could write it down and manipulate it in a number of prescribed ways. Teachers used 'is' language: these are the most most important rivers in Africa, there were three wise men, 6x6=36 etc (now primary kids are given number squares to understand the patterns and don't add up in columns before they can manipulate numbers on a number line etc).

Knowledge was blindly passed down and I don't think it was explained in the way it might be now, students were not there to ask why. There was a inherent value in the knowledge itself. Knowledge studied for its own sake in a reverential and lacklustre way doesn't equip students for a knowledge applying world. Claxton has written about this and I am no expert (interested in learning more) and am paraphrasing him a bit here. He says if we learn about the Kings/Queens etc too blindly it's likely what we learn will stay indexed to school-like conditions and won't come to mind to be of any use in other situations.

Knowledge is becoming more democratic. There are stories of teenagers bypassing traditional routes and cutting to the chase- one 14 year old boy in the States apparently set himself up as a share trader on the net and converted a stake of $8,000 to $800,000 in a year. Another 15 year old had a website which offered highly rated advice on criminal law, apparently he never read a law book, just looked up things on the net and got his 'knowledge' from Judge Judy! Wikipedia is an example of organic reliability as people argue and correct each other.

Now there is a movement to see knowledge in a different way, to get people to critique and elaborate on knowledge they come across. This is more important that covering huge swathes of history etc just for the sake of it. Gaining and using knowledge is what counts not having a vast store of general knowledge 'just in case'. Minds should be expanded and not just filled and I think that this is beginning to happen.

Muminscotland, Sebastian said he was worried that new generations would 'know' far less than previous generations.

I think whilst more recent generations may 'know' a bit less they might 'think' & apply more (as per previous post) and that's a good thing.

YA never BU to disagree with the misogynist old ham IMhO :)