Quote:
Originally Posted by coberst
We learned in school and college that the teacher furnishes the question and the answer that will fit the question.
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Knowledge falls into two categories: explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is hard, factual knowledge. It easily codified and so readily accessible. It absolute and objective. In contrast tacit knowledge is personal and subjective, it is based upon culture & experience. It is difficult to capture and to commonunicate.
Skills, including the skill to acquire further knowledge, tends to fall into the tacit knowledge category.
Much of the knowledge we acquire in school is explicit knowledge and it is therfore appropriate that, as you say,
the teacher furnishes the question and the answer that will fit the question. This is an effective way of transferring explicit knowledge.
A good teacher will also find ways of teaching their students how to acquire tacit knowledge. This will include teaching them how to ask questions. Consequently, I quite disagree with your assertion that "from the age of 6 to our mid twenties we have lived constantly in an educational system wherein we seldom if ever learned to function intellectually independent of outside direction."
My experience is that we were constantly being challenged to think independently, to be critical, to question what we were told. Of course we were also expeceted to learn the explicit knowledge 'parrot fashion', but that is appropriate for explicit knowledge.
