While we may not remember the answers to every question, most of us who learned this way feel a sense of commitment to learning about our culture and history. We worry when national polls report that over half of the country's graduates can't give the dates of the Civil War within 50 years. Some education critics suggest that memorization is a waste of time since factual information is readily available via computer. They feel that teaching students to problem solve and work in teams should be the mission of today's schools.
Most educational researchers feel that a balance of goals is critical for today's schools.
In other words, higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis and problem solving, depend on a base of knowledge that's at the heart of traditional studies. The combination of learning information and applying it to new, real-life situations is what makes the knowledge valuable. Performance assessments are growing in popularity. These ask a student to apply traditional learning to a real-life situation, such as applying facts learned in a science class about acid and alkaline to determine whether the pH level in a school yard soil sample is appropriate for growing various shrubs. Here the students use their knowledge of facts to problem solve.