Comments on: “Knowing the parts of a neuron isn’t really that important”

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:28:16 +0000

I’d say the right response is “What do you mean by ‘learning the parts of a neuron?’”

By: BalancEdTech

BalancEdTech — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:02:08 +0000

So, how do we change this quote?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.”
–Albert Einstein

By: Jesse

Jesse — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:49:20 +0000

I taught secondary English before becoming a technology integration specialist. We would often focus on the minutia of grammar and style because no one had bothered to spend any time on it earlier. Why know the parts of speech when you can look them up? To learn the parts of speech, which many people understand intuitively to some degree, repetition is necessary. It is especially necessary in the cases of common, colloquial errors.

In order to understand what make good writing one must first understand basic errors. To do this one must understand the parts of speech. Sometimes the “big picture” is inextricably linked to the minutia.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:24:56 +0000

As an elementary teacher, I can tell you those little boxes are very important. They help avoid exactly what you are complaining about, as they teach what is called a “concept”.

The little boxes visually show how three sixes equal eighteen. Some children may memorize easily; for those who don’t, once the concept is understood, the road to memorization may be opened. Children have different learning styles and it is incumbent upon a teacher to appeal to all styles so all children have an equal opportunity to understand the concept.

By stating students should just know their multiplication tables, you are furthering the very result you are complaining about. If the brain does not understand the concept, how can it use that concept to compute? (Of course it’s easier to use a calculator, and of course I feel our educational watchdogs in the government have not been on the ball.) Believe it or not, a good teacher knows what they are doing. We do, however, have problems with parents who don’t understand their own children’s learning styles and with administrations who are concerned with state and national exams.

People think my job ends when I leave the school building. I am constantly trying figure out how to appeal to every one of my student’s learning styles so every one of them has a chance to understand and succeed. I’ve done this in the inner-city and in the suburbs.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could truly teach children and they could learn??? We need open minds on every one’s part. There is room for concept, detail and most importantly application in relationship to the learning.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:18:25 +0000

Hmm: interesting discussion. I agree with much of what you say, Scott. For example, I recently created a reference of common G&M codes for students to use on a test where they had to write a fluent program for a CNC Mill to run. To me it wasn’t important that they remember that G02 means clockwise circular movement, but that they could apply it in the program to make an arc where there should be one.

However, memorization itself is a skill that will be needed in life, in college, in work. I wonder if students should continue to memorize in each class, both as a way to learn material but also as a way to build their capacity to memorize. For example, in English they could be required to memorize a poem, in math the quadratic formula, in biology the parts of a neuron, and in history the dates of events leading up to the American revolution. Even though these are all easily Googlable, I do see value in them.

When you write that we should “assess on what’s important” I absolutely agree *for the major assessments*. I want my students to use trigonometry to figure out real world challenges, not to recall that sine(60d) = sqrt(3)/2. But I do have mini-quizzes on vocabulary, as an incentive for students to learn engineering terms that they will then be applying to a project. Or I have my Algebra II students memorize the quadratic formula for the first quiz (we sing it to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’), then allow them to use a formula page or calculator program (that they wrote) thereafter on future quizzes, tests, and projects.

By: BalancEdTech

BalancEdTech — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:29:11 +0000

Related story in the New York Times: The Age of External Knowledge http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/the-age-of-external-knowledge/

By: Margaret

Margaret — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 19:03:03 +0000

As usual, this is an interesting discussion. I view these comments as a teacher and wonder more and more how important subject-specific details are to the bigger picture, particularly given the explosion of information available and how I personally process what I see, read, and hear. On the other hand, I know that when my 13 year old brought home 44 terms to define in Social Studies for overnight homework, and the terms were related to the Roman Empire from 400-100 BC, I have to REALLY wonder who in the heck still sees this as an essential skill? Teachers need far more time and help to really look at what we are doing in our classrooms and see how what we teach can help not only our students, but also our nation as we compete in a changing world. Could we use our limited time and develop student skills more effectively?

By: Bob F.

Bob F. — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:16:28 +0000

A couple of thoughts:

When standardized state tests drive our instruction, we and our students are in trouble. Thank you (NOT) NCLB!

If content is relevant (like Tina pointed out), students will learn (memorize) it. Think about knowing the names of the letters. Eventually, students no longer have to recall the name of each letter when they write their friends’ names; they simply know it. When students use the names of the parts of a neuron in their lives, they will no longer need to “recall” them because they live them.

So, do we have to memorize? I’m think that for the short term, yes. If a student needs to have that memorized knowledge as part of their lives, they will learn them and will not need to recall or look them up.

We all must learn some things. I’m glad that I don’t have to decide what those things are.

By: Tina

Tina — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:44:38 +0000

Taking this to the elementary level for discussion,(No not neurons) how about the discussion of why do students need to know the names of each letter of the alphabet if they can make the sound and use that sound to phonetically sound out a word. I agreed with that until I realized the students could not write their friends names (names are not phonetic all the time). The students who could not name letters learned very quickly when it had to do with something so relevent to them as writing a best friends name correctly. So that being said the question I have as an educator is…How can I make the identification of neuron parts relevent to my students so they want and will learn them. And then the yang; to go through my curriculum and evaluate; am I teaching the big concepts.
@Shircliff…your statement “the more i teach, the more I think i don’t know what i’m doing or what i’m doing is correct” Great educational self evaluation that most teachers ask themselves often…including me.

By: Massasoitbio

Massasoitbio — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:27:35 +0000

I teach Anatomy & Physiology (including neurons) to pre-nursing and allied health community college students. Even though I tell my students that I need them to understand how neurons work and how the different parts function, my students prefer reduce this to simple memorization and generally miss the point of what I want them to do.

I’d like to know what kind of deal with the devil the flashcard industry has made. My students show up to class & office hours with enormous stacks of flashcards (sometimes inches thick). Here’s a typical exchange I’ll have with a student:

Me: Why do you use all of these flashcards?
Them: Because that’s what we were told to do in high school. To make flashcards.
Me: What do you use them for?
Them: To learn the vocabulary words.
Me: But I gave you a list of study objectives and most of them deal with how X works. There’s not a lot of vocab on the exam.
Them: Oh, but I’ve got that on this card here. (Shows me a 3″ x 5″ card with two paragraphs copied out of textbook on it.)
Me: Uh, does that help you?
Them: (no response)

Moral of the story: just because a student says he/she needs to memorize something in science, that’s often just a survival instinct to get out of doing something harder, usually because the deeper understanding requires a level of self-assessment and self-critique that makes students uncomfortable.