The New York Times Science section has an interview with Eric Mazur, the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. He talks about a subject which is dear to my heart—teaching for understanding rather than memory.
At one point he tells about giving a concept test to his students:
It measured their knowledge of physics forces in daily life. If they’d really understood Newtonian mechanics, they would have aced it. One student asked me: “How should I answer these questions? According to what you taught me? Or according to the way I usually think about these things?”
That was the moment I fell out of my ivory tower. It was then that I began to consider new ways of teaching.
This is the sad thing about education in America. Most students learn early on that it's a matter of memory, not understanding. Even math gets taught this way—memorize the different kinds of problems, and the exact steps to go through to solve each kind. Don't bother your head with the reasons for those steps, or what you're really doing.
I remember Mrs. Smith, my high school geometry teacher, who told us on the first day of class, "Geometry is not a bunch of facts about triangles. It's about logic, about thinking clearly. We only use the triangles so you have something to think clearly about."
We spent the year doing more and more complicated proofs, and by the time we were finished she had changed the way we thought. I remember my surprise when I realized I was using what I had learned in geometry to structure my argument in an English essay.
