Schools need to provide young students with many opportunities to build their repertoire of concrete experiences upon which more abstract learning can be hooked. Merlin Wittrock, head of UCLA's Division of Educational Psychology, maintains that much of the instruction in today's schools is based on a flawed premise. In place of the usual 'drill and practice' programs, he advocates complex problems without simple solutions that engage numerous systems of the brain and strengthen the connections among them. Today's learners must become constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients of information that even the least intelligent computer can handle more effectively. When we talk about higher standards and rigor in curriculum, we are talking about these kinds of differences.
Memorization is a low-level skill.
We must ask students to use skills and concepts in life-like situations to solve real problems that have meaning for them. These are the kinds of learning situations that produce learning that can be used beyond the classroom in many environments. Not many administrators or school-board members know it exists. In most states, neither teachers nor administrators are required to know much about how children learn in order to be certified. What's worse, she says, decisions to cut music or gym are often made by noneducators, whose concerns are more often monetary than educational.