By Bill Murrin
2016
Fundamentally, the problem with our educational system – besides the destructive nature of centralization of government power – is this: It has been optimized for a particular set of talents that serve approximately 15 to 20% of the school age population. These talents are predominately abstract in nature. In addition, they include the ability to memorize and recall raw, disconnected data for assessment tests – the gateway to lucrative credentials. Though roughly 40% of the current population may have a college degree – associate to graduate levels – around half of this population has been ill served by a highly self-serving postsecondary culture that has optimized the educational system for itself at the expense of all others. This culture’s negative influence then trickles down throughout the primary and secondary grades, benefiting a few but alienating a majority to varying degrees of injury. It is my intention to expose how the system has been optimized and how it harms individuals, which in turn, harms society in a multitude of ways.
Mestre et al. (2005) compares reasoning abilities to memory abilities showing how they are decoupled:
"[O]ne consistent finding is that reasoning accuracy is independent of memory accuracy across a broad range of problems: Memory for problem facts was found to be unrelated to reasoning about those same facts. This finding contradicts theories that rely on assumptions of limited working memory as an explanatory construct in reasoning and problem solving. (p. 54) … Under certain circumstances, factors that enhance verbatim memory actually depress reasoning performance." (p. 55) (Emphasis added)
This flies in the face of everything academic today! The educational community believes that memory and reasoning go hand in hand and assessment tests, which includes IQ tests and which are correlated with high stakes outcomes, reflect this belief. Indeed it is a belief, not a truth, with devastating consequences to those who may have outstanding reasoning abilities, but who lack outstanding memory abilities. The harm done to individuals and society is immeasurable!