“What to Know, How to Learn It” – Roger C.Schank

What should an educated person know? In school, little time is devoted to answering this question. The school already knows what you need to you know: vocabulary about phyla, the plots of various pieces of last century’s literature, and how to prove a theorem about triangles. When you try to get computers to know things in order to make them act intelligently, however, it turns out that these are not at all the sorts of things they need to know.

We know that a computer, for instance, can be programmed to have encyclopaedic knowledge about random facts, but I don’t believe that this would mean it is intelligent, anymore than I would consider a person who merely has the ability to spout random facts to be intelligent.

Implicit in all this is that we have, as a society, agreed on what stuff everyone should know, and decided that information delivery is the role of education.

Facts are not the currency of learning, nor does mastery of them indicate anything about an educated person. Facts play a big role in the education system because they are so easy to test. And it is tests (usually highly irrelevant tests) that have helped shape your learning since you were six.

Learning to think and express what one has thought in a persuasive way is the real stuff of education.

What is the currency of learning? It is the preparedness to be wrong, a willingness to fail.

Being able to articulate facts is useful for passing tests, impressing your friends, and doing well on quiz shows, but for little else.

We learn best what we want to learn – information which helps us accomplish goals we have set for ourselves.

You too, must learn to direct your own learning.

If there are no facts worth knowing, then what is worth knowing? First, in particular basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Also, there are the other less basic skills, such as speaking well, relating to others, understanding the world you live in. Processes too, are worth knowing; political processes, psychological processes, and economic processes.