The cost of ignoring facts

Down-playing the role of memory in education cheats youth

GERRY BOWLER
Special to CW Life

When I was teaching in Calgary at that superlative educational institution now known as Nazarene University College I used to post humorous items on the bulletin board. One day I put up the following as a jest about the widely acknowledged decline of educational standards.

Questions from a Grade 12 math quiz:

• In 1960: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is four-fifths the price. What is his profit?

• In 1970 (traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price; in other words $80. What is his profit?

• In 1975 (new math): A logger exchanges set L of lumber for set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $100. Make 100 dots representing the elements of set M. The set C of costs contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent set C as a subset of set M, and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?

• In 1985: A logger sells a truckload of wood for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.

• In 1995: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, an evil multi-national logging company makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class discussion: How do you think the forest birds and squirrels feel?

A not-so-humorous version of this has made its way onto the Internet via a Salina, Kansas newspaper which published an eighth-grade final exam from the town’s school in 1895.

See how you would have done with some of these genuine antique questions:

1895 FINAL EXAM: GRADE 8
Grammar
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no
modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
Arithmetic
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the
necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
Orthography
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
3. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e’. Name two exceptions under each rule.
Geography
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
3. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

The publication of the exam from which these questions were extracted prompted a heated debate in the American media. Other 19th century tests from around the country were unearthed and journalists universally concluded that most present-day university students would be hard-pressed to get a passing grade.

Forget memory

In defence of current educational standards some teachers derided the amount of memorization that these exams required and claimed that students today were not taught facts so much as problem-solving skills.

These teachers are right and, sadly, that is part of a larger problem. By downplaying the role of memory in learning we have cheated our youth of an enormously valuable tool that earlier societies, even pre-literate ones, knew to be at the foundations of education. The ancient Greeks made Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, the mother of the seven muses, knowing that all arts and science flowed from her.

What we have not committed to memory we cannot use to analyze, judge, debate or create with. When we don’t ask students to carry poetry, Scripture, the periodic table of elements or the list of Canadian prime ministers in their heads we are not only telling them that these things are unimportant, but also leaving a potent intellectual muscle unexercised.

If we want to revive a shared higher culture (see last month’s column) we must insist on the primacy of facts in the educational process or at least that instead of being denigrated as “warehouse knowledge” they share top billing with the development of creativity and self-esteem.

Gerry Bowler is a Winnipeg-based writer and historian. Contact him by email: gbowler@videon.wave.ca