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The article and readers' comments provides good reading. Comments posted by Paula, Richard Baker, Ingolf Gruen, Tom H. irv, Mike and Jessie are worth the read.
I believe it is all about teaching as pointed out by Paula and I do think this article provide a chance for people to re-exam what or how things should be taught. The result could very well be that the old way of teaching is appropriate. Persionally, I don't like to memorize things but I also observe the benifit of memorizing things as pointed out by irv.
The real point is what is the goal of that class. Did student learn what need be learn in that class. If the goal is to learn to research, I don't see anything wrong using the google for finding info - of cause, research also require you verify the info. On the other hand, if this is a writing class, you better write it in your own language. This turn to the point that the most important thing in education, in my view, is the building of ethics and responsibilities. Students' goal should be learning and not be getting high scores.
Of cause, being responsible includes learning and memorizing things that fulfill their duties. So. yes, there are times people need to memorize things. But that is not the same question as what teacher should ask student to memorize. That is, of cause, depend on what's the mission of that teaching. As point out earlier, people should fulfill their responsibilities and, therefore, should remember appropriate things related to their fields. What this mean is that Higher Ed. is out of our discussion. We also need to note that the goal of education is always to help students to reach their potential. So. Our discussion is limited to: What is the reasonable minimum requirement on K12 students? For K12, what we need is building the basic skills needed for general citizen, eventhough, the need can change as time changes. This should include relative efficiency in dealing with their daily life. The question of how important is spelling, grammar or the math skill should be answered in the context of their daily need. With this in mind, we can then talk about some cases:
- Should student be asked to do spelling? Definitly yes - for the reason of efficiency. But do they need to memorize hardly used words? No, unless they have the potential.
- For math and physics, understanding is way more important than memorizing. For K12, almost all formula can readly derived from definitions or concepts. So. do we need all student to remember the formula of cos(2x)? Maybe not - Is it need for general citizen? But, again, for those who understand the concept and may go on to higher education, they could derived from the concepts - or, to get better test score, memorize it!