At 11:54 AM 7/12/2007 -0600, you wrote:
On 12 Jul 2007 10:07:31 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote:
>What appears to be missing in "public edjamacation" these days is
>teaching *how* to think, and *how* to learn.
Most all education throughout history has had this same lack. Rote
used to be even a bigger part of education.
As an appropriate example, learning how to program a computer
involves both rote memorization and synthetic thinking. Vocabulary
and grammar can be learned separately, of course, but how much better
it is to USE the components as they are learned. That's mostly
accomplished by writing code, and the more code a person writes, the
more likely s/he is to learn what makes a good program. (Not
guaranteed, of course.) In my experience, students dislike "wasting
their time" memorizing instructions. Me, too, but how else can one
develop a usable vocabulary, not requiring each word (instruction) to
be looked up?
Michael Stack
Product Developer
NEON Enterprise Software, Inc.
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