I cam across this article in ReadWriteWeb titled Education 2.0: Never memorize again? about how education for children are changing. Basically the article states that with the wealth of information avaliable on the internet, children shouldn’t need to memorize information via rote learning like we did.

“Children are going to have to reinvent their knowledge base multiple times,” he continues. “So for them memorizing facts and figures is a waste of time.”

However, there’s another side to the story which I am more inclined to agree on, which is

Richard Cairns, Headmaster of Brighton College, one of the U.K’s top-performing independent schools, believe that core level of knowledge was essential. “It’s important that children learn facts. If you have no store of knowledge in your head to draw from, you cannot easily engage in discussions or make informed decisions,” he says.

Sure multi-tasking might have changed the way our brains work and sure it’s suitable to adapt the education system to adapt to the new way kids process information, but i feel it’s vital to know the details of a general situation.

I can say that memory work doesn’t teach u anything. I got through my Mandarin education memorizing everything without understanding any of the words i memorized. I became good at it, so good that i could memorize stuff i didn’t understand. 6 years after taking my Mandarin paper, i dun remember anything and worse of all, i have the standard of a 12 year old kid…

Hence, a good blend of memory work and adapting to the use of information provided by digital media tools such as Wikipedia and search engines should be encouraged. Kids should be encouraged to find out more about any knowledge they wish to seek but the basics should be provided by memory learning.

There’ll be a  good base before free reign on the internet. It can help them to manage the information overload as they grow up and they’ll know how to deal with it better.

Sure technology can change the way we learn, but we’ve been memorizing stuff for a good few thousand years… Why be so radical and do away with memory work? I say keep it and adapt it to the new way of brain process!

What do you think? Are we really ready to do away with memory learning? Can collborative online efforts via social media tools and the tons of information on the internet push memory learning away? Do share!

I’ll be really interested in what Singaporeans have to say considering that our education system (for the Gen Y) was based quite a bit on memory learning!