This weekend's Baltimore Sun reprinted an article by Lisa Anderson entitled, "D'oh! We're Stumped in Knowledge Tests." The basic premise of the article is that American youth tends to fare poorly on examinations of memorized fact. For instance, we score terribly on civics and history tests and students simply cannot see the purpose of memorizing a poem. The author does a good job, I feel, of explaining that our students see knowledge differently in that it is something ephemeral, to be "found" and not necessarily "remembered." Anderson explains:
Ironically, Web sites demand that people read, but their information often
is more to be accessed than retained, more to be consumed than assessed and
more to be gulped than savored, unlike a book, a poem or a lengthy
article.
Later, she reminds us that older generations have almost always lamented the laziness of the young compared to themselves. It's true, the younger generation is almost always softer than the ones that came before--unless some hardship serves to shape them differently. Of course that is the case. I just wonder if that complacency toward remembering information makes this generation more likely to repeat the mistakes of the past. It calls to mind the Edmund Burke quote: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." And then there's another one of his famous quotes : “All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”
