Have you read Zweig's novella, "Confusion"? Your post made me go back and find the passage wherein the main character describes his first encounter with a professor of English literature. Up to this point, the main character says he has never been much of a student, but this encounter changes him and starts him on the path towards becoming a professor. From your description of Zweig's memoir (haven't read it), you have to wonder how autobiographical this is. This also brings up a third element in the discussion of facts vs. thinking, which is the importance of the relationship between the instructor and the students. I would argue this vitally important part of education is similarly being eroded. Anyway, here's some of the rather incredible passage:
"The lecture had obviously arisen spontaneously out of a colloquium or discussion, or at least that was what the informal and entirely random grouping of teacher and students suggested - the professor was not sitting in a chair which distanced him from his audience as he addressed them, but was perched almost casually on a desk, one leg dangling slightly, and the young people clustered around him in informal positions, perhaps fixed in statuesque immobility only by the interest they felt in hearing him. I could see that they must have been standing around talking when the professor suddenly swung himself up on the desk, and from this more elevated position drew them to him with words as if with a lasso, holding them spellbound where they were. It was only a few minutes before I myself, forgetting that I had not been invited to attend, felt the fascinating power of his delivery working on me like a magnet; involuntarily I came closer, not just to hear him but also to see the remarkably graceful, all-embracing movements of his hands which, when he uttered a word with commanding emphasis, sometimes spread like wings, rising and fluttering in the air, and then gradually sank again harmoniously, with the gesture of an orchestral conductor muting the sound. The lecture became ever more heated as the professor, in his animated discourse, rose rhythmically from the hard surface of desk as if from the back of a galloping horse, his tempestuous train of thought, shot through with lightning images, racing breathlessly on. I had never heard anyone speak with such enthusiasm, so genuinely carrying the listeners away - for the first time I experienced what Latin scholars call a "raptus," when one is taken right out of oneself; the words uttered by his quick tongue were spoken not for himself, nor for the others present, but poured out of his mouth like fire from a man inflamed by internal combustion."
Memorization of facts are also a by-product of having deeply internalized something. Knowing dates of decisive battles may be a cool party trick (at the worst party ever?) or win you tens of thousands at Jeopardy, but more importantly, it probably means you have a good contextual understanding of history of what happened when and why.
Maybe some educational philosophies get cause and effect mixed up and think that stuffing facts into students' heads will lead to that deep internalization. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation at that point, because with things like history, you do have to just know a bunch of names, events, dates, treaties, etc. before it all starts to make sense.
Have you read Zweig's novella, "Confusion"? Your post made me go back and find the passage wherein the main character describes his first encounter with a professor of English literature. Up to this point, the main character says he has never been much of a student, but this encounter changes him and starts him on the path towards becoming a professor. From your description of Zweig's memoir (haven't read it), you have to wonder how autobiographical this is. This also brings up a third element in the discussion of facts vs. thinking, which is the importance of the relationship between the instructor and the students. I would argue this vitally important part of education is similarly being eroded. Anyway, here's some of the rather incredible passage:
"The lecture had obviously arisen spontaneously out of a colloquium or discussion, or at least that was what the informal and entirely random grouping of teacher and students suggested - the professor was not sitting in a chair which distanced him from his audience as he addressed them, but was perched almost casually on a desk, one leg dangling slightly, and the young people clustered around him in informal positions, perhaps fixed in statuesque immobility only by the interest they felt in hearing him. I could see that they must have been standing around talking when the professor suddenly swung himself up on the desk, and from this more elevated position drew them to him with words as if with a lasso, holding them spellbound where they were. It was only a few minutes before I myself, forgetting that I had not been invited to attend, felt the fascinating power of his delivery working on me like a magnet; involuntarily I came closer, not just to hear him but also to see the remarkably graceful, all-embracing movements of his hands which, when he uttered a word with commanding emphasis, sometimes spread like wings, rising and fluttering in the air, and then gradually sank again harmoniously, with the gesture of an orchestral conductor muting the sound. The lecture became ever more heated as the professor, in his animated discourse, rose rhythmically from the hard surface of desk as if from the back of a galloping horse, his tempestuous train of thought, shot through with lightning images, racing breathlessly on. I had never heard anyone speak with such enthusiasm, so genuinely carrying the listeners away - for the first time I experienced what Latin scholars call a "raptus," when one is taken right out of oneself; the words uttered by his quick tongue were spoken not for himself, nor for the others present, but poured out of his mouth like fire from a man inflamed by internal combustion."
Memorization of facts are also a by-product of having deeply internalized something. Knowing dates of decisive battles may be a cool party trick (at the worst party ever?) or win you tens of thousands at Jeopardy, but more importantly, it probably means you have a good contextual understanding of history of what happened when and why.
Maybe some educational philosophies get cause and effect mixed up and think that stuffing facts into students' heads will lead to that deep internalization. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg situation at that point, because with things like history, you do have to just know a bunch of names, events, dates, treaties, etc. before it all starts to make sense.