Learning and Knowing vs Memory

What is learning? How does learning happen? and what is the difference between learning and knowing? and more importantly for schools, what is the difference between learning, knowing and memory.

My premise is that schools have evolved to a point where, no matter what educators and the public believe, they have confused learning, knowing and memory. AND, even more important, schools teach and test for memory. Tests are not designed to measure how much one knows but how much one remembers.

I believe the whole premise of school and education is upside down and backwards. The brain is a connection making machine yet education disconnects ‘subjects’ from their context and often from their environment so no (or little) connection can be made.

What is learning?
Learning is connected with emotion. When learning happens there is some emotional experience tied to the learning experience. This emotion can be as simple as a struggle or it can be more complex like elation, frustration, joy, disappointment, etc. But, there is no learning without emotion. There is no learning without trial and error – which produces emotion (persistence, determination, struggle, frustration, challenge, etc.). Mistake making is a very important part of learning.

What is Knowing?
How do I know I know?
Knowing happens when ‘data’ or facts are connected with a context (information about the data) and an experience (an interaction with the data). Often, the experience involves learning (and emotion) but there is no ‘knowing’ without the context and experience(s).

What is Memory?
Memory is simply re-collection and re-calling and re-taining information (data). This re-collection and re-calling can be of anything – facts, figures, images, experiences, etc. But memory is very different from learning. With memory there is no learning – unless it is the learning that ‘I forgot’ and/or ‘I remembered’ something.

Why is this important?
If we are going to develop schools that are really learning environments than the emphasis will need to be on experiences that are connected to life and that have emotion with them. The emphasis needs to move away from recollection and recall and towards life.

Here’s an example of how this kind of thinking manifests in the public school system. Social studies – the study of stuff that has to with relevant issues – is losing out to more emphasis and reading and math scores (that’s scores on tests that measure what is remembered not what one knows).

NPR: Social studies sidelined by NCLB demands
National Public Radio correspondent Liane Hansen discusses the current state of social studies education with Fred Risinger, former coordinator of social studies education at Indiana University. Due to NCLB pressures to improve math and reading scores, Risinger argues, students today aren’t learning about contemporary issues or other parts of the world and thus are missing out on the information they need to become engaged and effective citizens. (Audio player required)

What's Important?