Pranav Pabba
Undoubtedly, memorization is a hallmark of education, with students going through thousands of mathematical theorems, vocabulary terms and significant dates throughout their academic tenure.
The utilization of memorization has become a target of critiques, most of which point out that memorization doesn’t facilitate true understanding of the subject matter. Some even contend that memorization is a deficiency, something that doesn’t belong in a teacher’s toolkit.
But memorization does and should play a role—it is a fast track past the labor of comprehension. In programming, abstractions—similar to prebuilt functionalities—are often used. The internal workings of the abstraction don’t matter, and by memorizing various sets of abstractions, programmers can quickly assemble complex programs.
Similarly, working knowledge also revolves around abstractions: which abstractions are available for use, how the abstractions should be utilized and how to extrapolate from pre-existing abstractions. Abstractions provide a convenient interface to interact with, without a need to understand the fundamental concepts underlying the overall mechanism. In terms of productivity, the memorization of abstractions has inherent value as lump sums of knowledge that can be employed immediately. By this token, it doesn’t matter whether or not one understands the inner workings of an algorithm, theorem or machine, as long as the context for usage is clear. For instance, only a small minority truly understand the workings of cars, computers and phones. Although these devices are abstractions for most of the general public, it doesn’t matter, since they can still be used effectively.
THE PROBLEM ARISES WHEN PEOPLE BECOME SOLELY RELIANT ON PRE-EXISTING ABSTRACTIONS AND INCAPABLE OF DRAWING INDEPENDENT CONCLUSIONS.
On its own, the usage of other people’s tools, methods and ideas has rarely been an issue, and more often than not, the process is essential for progress. The problem arises when people become solely reliant on pre-existing abstractions and incapable of drawing independent conclusions.
In today’s digital era, the extremes of discovery and memorization have been pulled closer to everyone. Anyone can search for an answer to a question instead of sifting through massive databases to analyze different ideas and generate new ones. In education, this phenomenon is amplified by the ubiquitous presence of digital resources such as Chegg, YouTube, Quizlet, and more recently, ChatGPT.
Despite its potential to enhance the possibility for discovery and independent thought, digitalization often has the opposite effect, particularly among younger generations. As the path of least resistance, the internet has the potential for impact and serves as a powerful medium to quickly pick up concepts and implement them. The sets of compartmentalized knowledge and abstractions are, for those who are curious, empowering in almost every endeavor.
But the web isn’t a place to intelligently promote development—it’s a place to answer questions. For instance, digital tools such as ChatGPT and Bard have made previously obscure ideas and abstractions accessible by anyone.
With adults, the vast stockpiles of information on the internet can be utilized effectively. In general, they have the ability to use the information to derive answers and to form independent thoughts. There’s always searching for answers, but the search can serve as a route for some higher abstraction, and often does. For students and children, however, it becomes a habit to search for answers to a critically restrictive degree. It’s no longer searching for information to support some larger conclusion—it’s searching for the conclusion itself. For many students, the search has become the first choice. For many more, the search has become the only choice.
IN A WORLD AWASH WITH EASILY ACCESSIBLE ANSWERS, INDEPENDENT THOUGHT IS DROWNED OUT, CAST OFF AS HOPELESSLY IRRELEVANT AND TIME-CONSUMING.
The concern isn’t whether or not students properly understand concepts—there are hundreds of thousands of resources dedicated to walking students through a concept and explaining each excruciating detail of the abstraction. All of this, students can memorize. Instead of an information deficiency, students face an information overload.
Most often, information is cumulative: New knowledge is built off of old ideas, and higher-level abstractions are generated from lower-level ones. Education is a space not only for learning abstractions, but also for developing a certain mode of thought that allows for the creation of complex ideas from simpler subcomponents. In its current state, education is ill-equipped to espouse this type of thinking, especially in a digital world. If students are assigned homework, they can search for the answer or ask an AI for a summary. If students are assigned a test, they cram concepts in their heads, assisted every step of the way by the internet. As students gain more options, they deprive themselves of intelligent self reflection. In a world awash with easily accessible answers, independent thought is drowned out, cast o as hopelessly irrelevant and time-consuming. The act of drawing conclusions has become devalued, and the opportunities for individual analysis and thinking have all but disappeared.
Sometimes, individual analysis isn’t a critical factor in the success of an undertaking. At the frontier of human knowledge, however, independent thought becomes crucial. In a situation where the answer can’t be found on the web, people should be able to fend for themselves. Learning how to think independently starts at an elementary level, grappling with topics that could be learned by searching them up, but aren’t. Developing synthesis at a basic level scales, and it proves to be valuable down the line.
As digitalization rapidly takes over the duty of conveying abstractions, the encouragement of independent thought becomes all the more important. Education can include digital elements, but it has to be designed in a pointed and intentional way that ensures that students have the chance to form their own thoughts, isolated from the buzz of the internet.
Even as information expands to cover every path of inquiry, and AI is able to come to conclusions beyond the scope of human knowledge, independent thinking will still play a role. In order to preserve this valuable skill, something in education has to change. There has to be accessibility to the vast digital community, while at the same time, preservation of unique thought.
As to questions of where to strike the balance, educators will have to think on it—and perhaps ask ChatGPT.
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