Numbers and Learning

 To those of you curious enough to read today's blog I have a question for you.    If you recall going to school, at any level, do you suppose that testing - whatever the results - really indicated the extent of your learning?    And when I use the term 'results' I'm referring to a percentage or letter grade.

And of course there's that word 'learning.'   Is learning the ability to recall some fact, date, event or number?   Of course learning is much, much more than recitation.   Learning encompasses ones ability to adapt.   It necessarily involves research and that also calls upon one to be curious (since I alluded to that in the above paragraph).   Learning also asks us to 'stick with it' if we somehow don't get it 'the first time around.    

And, yes, learning involves picking up facts, ideas, events and the like.   But that, in and of itself, doesn't means that one has a full understanding of the meaning of those facts, ideas, events and the like.

My point is pretty simple.    'Judging' what one has learned is not something as simple as giving it a number.    And I do believe we have moved to far to the extreme of believing that numbers are proof that something is learned or not.

Thanks, Dick