POINT/COUNTERPOINT
6 Learning & Leading with Technology | February 2010
Yes You find yourself in an unfamiliar
town with a car that appears to be taking its last
breath. You have a choice between two garages.
One has the fastest diagnostic tool and mechan-
ics who have trained extensively in computerized
analysis, and the other is staffed by mechanics who
have worked on cars for years and use computer-
ized diagnostics as a tool to assist them. Which
would you choose? Most of us would prefer the lat-
ter, as their abilities are backed by personal factual
knowledge that makes them more valuable and
likely to diagnose the problem correctly, whether or
not they receive assistance from the computerized
diagnostic software.
The same concept applies
to education. The failure to
properly develop underlying
declarative knowledge (facts)
can have long-term implications. It is foolhardy to expect
students to develop procedural knowledge (processes)
without the underlying
declarative knowledge.
Robert E. Mahoney
Memorize or analyze? In my experi-
ence—corporate and academic—analyzing always
takes precedence over memorizing. It is the founda-
tion of critical-thinking skills. For example, manag-
ers who can think through problems and anticipate
alternative scenarios are invaluable.
When we think through problems or make con-
nections, we create new, or reinforce existing,
neural pathways in the long-term memory portion
of our brains. Children are born with far more neu-
rons in their brains than they will use in adulthood.
This is because if a neuron goes unused and never
becomes part of a brain pathway, it either dies or
becomes unusable ( www.brains.org/path.htm). So
a major task for educators
is to help students reinforce
and create as many pathways
as possible, because by doing
this, they create long-term
storage of pathways and de-
velop a better system of recol-
lecting and using memory.
Willard R. Daggett and
Paul David Nussbaum discovered that, given the right
No
C. Curatola Knowles
