Authentic Learning versus memorization

The typical goal of a traditional education requires a rush for advanced coursework with the goal of preparing for the future, requiring the bedrock principles of modern education-rote memorization make learning unnecessarily difficult and dull. Not only does it ignore the science of how humans are actually designed to learn, but it is also one of the most significant ways we make children believe the myth that learning is hard and that they aren’t very good at it. Taking out the joy of learning. Majority of adults were raised (myself included) to believe that children need adults to learn because learning is hard. But after witnessing, first hand, how learning actually flourishes under the right environment, conditions, and approach-there's no going back to that belief. A true and authentic education does not mean to teach a state standardized curriculum. Too often, educators try to skip over the complexity and go straight to the summing up, immediately offering children the simple concise answer. Stripped of complexity, loss of the opportunity of problem solving, rendered mostly meaningless even if correct.

One of the lessons this kind of rote learning teaches is to not think, but rather to simply react, quickly forgotten and meaningless once the test is over. A very inefficient way to force facts into short -term memory. with the real goal being passing the next test.

Should the goal of learning be making sure they learn rich and rigorous content such as problem-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and project-based learning, promote a deeper understanding of the material and encourage critical thinking and problem-solving skills? These methods also promote engagement and motivation, as learners are actively involved in the learning process and have a sense of ownership over their learning.

Rote memorization can be an effective way to pass the next test, but without narrative and context, it will be very difficult, inefficient, and tedious to move it into long-term memory. An education separated from life itself is no education at all. The creation of meaning is what human learning really is all about. That's what makes learning joyful.