Learning is Just a Matter of Reading and Remembering
Learning is Just a Matter of Reading and Remembering
Throughout a person’s life they acquire a vast amount of information, skills and values, most of which are learned. The knowledge and abilities that are thus gained extend across a broad spectrum from the very basic such as knowing the alphabet or walking to the extremely complex such as understanding quantum physics or flying a helicopter. Personal experience clearly indicates that not everything one has learned has been read and remembered, for example how could a person learn those skills they have before they are able to read? In view of the constraints of this essay, it is intended to narrow our consideration of the statement that ‘Learning is just a matter of reading and remembering’ to concentrate on learning in the academic sense. After starting with a suitably appropriate definition, the essay will establish that reading and remembering enable learning as it has been defined. The nature of learning will then be further explored through examination of the work of a number of educationalists and their studies of various learning objectives and styles. These will be used to show that remembering is critical to the learning process and whilst reading is an important skill it is not the only, nor the best, method of learning.
The educational psychologist Fontana (1995, p141) defines learning as ‘a relatively persistent change in an individual’s potential behaviour due to experience.’ So where do the activities of reading and remembering fit into that definition? Reading is a way of experiencing and by remembering an individual brings about a change in their potential behaviour. For example, during an examination a student may recall a number of facts that he has read during his previous studies of texts and thus he has the potential to include those facts in his answers. It can be seen therefore that reading and remembering do constitute learning in accordance with our definition. Consideration must now be given to whether or not they represent learning in its entirety.
An alternative way of understanding the nature of learning is to examine what it is trying to achieve or in other words, what the objectives of learning are. As explained in McKenzie (2000), such work was conducted by committees operating the direction of educationalists like Benjamin Bloom (1956). Bloom broke learning down into three distinct areas or domains: the cognitive, which deals with knowledge and understanding; the...