[sampai]

I grew up in India, where I had to pass tests like this 20 years ago. It’s not as hard as it seems because:

1. You actually learn the things they’re asking about. e.g. If the question is “What are the fundamental rules of arithmetic”, you can bet there’s a textbook chapter called “The fundamental rules of arithmetic.”

2. You don’t have to get 90% right. A 60-70% will put you at the top of the class.

3. Tests like these encourage rote behavior. The students memorize entire textbooks (I did), and the teachers resort to the same questions on every test.

I’ll take a modern American education over this anytime. Steve Jobs may or may not have known the capital of Albania, but he could Think For Himself. And that’s what counts in the 21st century.

[LibWhacker]

Thanks. I agree. Actually, I had a professor who gave impossibly difficult exams when I was in grad school. I got an ‘A’ in the class and I don’t think I ever scored more than 35% correct on any of his exams. Talk about discouraging students! It was totally uncalled for.

[EQAndyBuzz]

” Steve Jobs may or may not have known the capital of Albania, but he could Think For Himself. And that’s what counts in the 21st century.”

He thought for himself until he became an Obama supporter. Now he thinks he can think for everyone else which explains why schools have been dumbed down.

[rdcbn]

Rote has it's place

You can't write the next great novel if you don't know spelling, punctuation grammar

You can't do advanced math until you have memorized the basic rule of math and the proper syntax of equations.

The point is 100 years ago people had the basics down in 8th grade, where as here and now students may go through High School and never learn them due to politicization of curriculum and dumbed down standards

When that happens you get this

http://tsiya.smugmug.com/Other/SMALL-SHOTS/27997217_d86GJG#!i=2535646029&k=RdDrgDd

From High School Seniors and due to a lack of standards and education, you get the attendant behavioral problems .

[aruanan]

3. Tests like these encourage rote behavior. The students memorize entire textbooks (I did), and the teachers resort to the same questions on every test.

I’ll take a modern American education over this anytime. Steve Jobs may or may not have known the capital of Albania, but he could Think For Himself. And that’s what counts in the 21st century.

Bloom's taxonomy has things exactly backward and Bloom's taxonomy is modern American education. Here it is, starting with what Bloom and his committee believed was the lowest skill in the cognitive domain and proceeding to what they believed was the highest:

Knowledge (often described by proponents as "mere" knowledge")
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation

Aside from the fact that one can evaluate, synthesize, analyze, and apply in the complete absence of actual knowledge or with limited knowledge or with faulty knowledge (knowledge being the possession of an idea that corresponds truly with an objective world lying outside one's senses or, secondarily, truly reflects one's perception of that outer world or one's understanding of it, regardless of their degree of accuracy). Morons do all of this quite well. So do politicians (see Sheila Jackson Lee). The quality, though, of the evaluation depends entirely on things that are "lower" in the cognitive domain such as comprehension and analysis. And the outcome of those activities have value only to the extent that one's base of knowledge is adequate. One cannot have any adequate base of knowledge without adding it to one's mind.

The two principal ways of doing this are 1. experience and 2. reading. That stocking of the mental shelves to be later accessed by the mind in trying to comprehend and analyze a situation preparatory to figuring out what needs to be done (the synthesis, evaluation, and application skills), is absolutely critical to the success of the output of those skills. An education that stresses only stocking the mind with facts or "mere" knowledge will be deficient, but not as deficient as one that stresses all the operations which are worse than useless without knowledge and comprehension.

[Katya]

I would agree to a happy medium between the two. I would not want to go back to a rote learning system, but there are subjects and historical facts that are no longer learned because the pedagogy has completely turned against any form of rote learning.

American education is often maligned.. but everyone forgets that we as a country educate everyone. Not so in the rest of the world... so when you see those studies comparing high school graduates, remember that the non-academic students in most countries aren’t being tested. They left school at the age of 16 to study a trade or begin working.

[stuartcr]

True, as long as one can find the answer, the problem can be solved. It was necessary to memorize back then, due to the very limited reference resources.