It’s been fascinating to look at the ongoing transformations of writing and the central role it had on human learning and communication practices. From orality to digital writing space, technology has been always interwoven in this process moving along with the cultural needs and changes from each society in different timelines.
The history of the development of writing reflects an extended modification in human thought but also involves certain gains and loses that new writing technologies bring with them.
On chapter 2 Ong emphasized how memory played a very important role in the Greek oral culture, where their knowledge relied on fixed and formulaic thought patterns that were constantly repeated, which highly differ to how memory in literate cultures is utilized nowadays. Once the Greek alphabet and a writing system were developed, memory was not considered as essential anymore, and instead, as Ong observes “writing freed the mind for more original and abstract thoughts” (Ong, 1982).
At that time there was some criticism to writing as there is now to digital writing spaces, especially in regard to the notion of the memory’s limited capacity when learning, and how we are exposed to overloads of information and we are constantly switching tasks or having poor retention and attention.
Since the properties of writing in a digital space allow us to access multiple sources of information simultaneously and information can be stored in various ways, we do not need to memorize concepts in the way that we used to.
When thinking about some of my early days in school, I remember memorizing concepts, formulas, and writing dictation as some of the common things we did in the classroom. Now I am navigating through a learning system platform, reading ebooks and exploring different websites where I have a more interactive experience. We have decreased the use of rote learning, however, is memorizing information a necessary step to get a deep understanding of certain topics?
Mayer R. (2002) emphasizes that learning includes not only acquiring knowledge but also being able to use knowledge in a variety of situations. So memorizing can be helpful to quickly recall basic facts and develop foundational knowledge of new subjects (formulas, spelling new words for instance). It is also important to be able to transfer that knowledge and apply it meaningfully, such as problem solving or answering new questions. So in this sense, the resulting outcome from rote learning could be helpful for some very specific purposes but it can be quite limited since it only recalls factual knowledge and information. I believe new writing technologies have the possibility to approach meaningful learning experiences
where students are also able to use different cognitive processes that go beyond memorizing.
However, as I’m writing this, I think about my personal experience with the switch of linear writing to the digital writing space and I still feel I need both to give a coherent shape to my thoughts.
References:
Mayer, R. E. (2002). Rote versus meaningful learning. Theory into practice, 41(4), 226-232.
Ong, W. J. (2013). Orality and literacy. Routledge.
Alicia Lok-Malek
June 8, 2018 — 7:18 pm
Your comment about needing to do linear writing and digital writing to shape coherent thought really resonated with me. I have the same personal experience.
Home computing was just introduced when I was in high school. So my learning pattern involved the physical act of handwriting. In my work I type on the computer almost eight hours a day so am a pretty competent typist. Even with the efficiency of typing, if I am writing an essay, I feel I need to revert back to something more physically. For longer essays, I still want to be able to see the eight or twelve pages in front of me. This must give it a spacial dimension that I need to keep my thoughts organized.
I wonder also if handwriting helps slow down the mind and prevents in from rushing to quickly ahead. Is it possible the speed capabilities of the digital world are not as conducive to creative thought as a more deliberate process of writing?
chris clarke
June 8, 2018 — 8:23 pm
Thanks Sara,
These are some interesting thoughts. Ong (1982) suggests that “ Writing can never dispense with orality.” This suggests that while literate cultures have by and large replaced oral cultures, the former can’t exist without aspects of the latter being present. Using this as a guideline, it seems reasonable to attribute the same dependency of skills based learning to rote learning. More and more, simply memorising equations and facts is being replaced with strategies to improve thinking, communication, personal, and social skills as outlined as core competencies by the BC Ministry of Education (2018). If fact, the BC Ministry of Education goes on to state:
“To maintain high achievement, British Columbia must transform its education system to one that better engages students in their own learning and fosters the skills and competencies students will need to succeed. One focus for this transformation is a curriculum that enables and supports increasingly personalized learning, through quality teaching and learning, flexibility and choice, and high standards.”
The system is moving away from rote learning, but like the transition to a literate culture, it is impossible to completely give up its past. Finding the balance between old and new styles can be challenging. For many teachers, it’s a paradigm shift that can be hard handle. People naturally relate their situations to their experiences of the past. One of the more challenging times in any transition between technologies is when the new technology is accepted and being taught to the next generation, but the older generation does not know the new technology intrinsically. The educators have not been groomed in the new technology and must actively change their thought processes to adapt. No matter how hard they try to change, aspects of the old thinking will always influence how the new technology is interpreted and used. As the new generation moves into the role of educator, their life experiences will match the skills based learning objectives, though aspects of rote learning taught to them will continue to persist.
References
British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2018). Curriculum Overview. Retrieved from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/overview
Ong, W. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
michael cebuliak
June 8, 2018 — 10:09 pm
Thanks for a great post! You made many great points but also one that I am not to certain about. As you stated, learning primarily through memory is seemingly a questionable process now as “the resulting outcome from rote learning could be helpful for some very specific purposes but it can be quite limited since it only recalls factual knowledge and information.” However, I don’t know if that is always true.
There is most certainly a trend in education to undermine the importance of memory and rote learning as important aspects to a critically thinking person’s education. Apparently knowing how to think is of greater significance than knowing what to think; consequently, in “progressive” classrooms, the almost singular focus on student Inquiries and questions has eclipsed the “antiquated” approach centered around a teacher’s considerable knowledge and their available answers. Now there is a greater emphasis on “process” rather than “content”. The sage on the stage has had to make room for the guide on the side. While a seeming consensus on pedagogical approach may be welcome by some, I often wonder if these sentiments, sound bites and “buzz words” being expressed, ad nauseum, by teachers are often more a product of memorization with superficial understanding rather than comprehension and actual justification. Process and content are not mutually exclusive and knowing what to think doesn’t always come at the expense of knowing how to think. And lastly, knowledge, never comes without question.
I have come up against some opposition in our English department for having my students remember, what is probably the most famous speech in all of Shakespeare’s work, Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar. Through the process of having my students remember and recite this speech, It has been implied that the students learn very little as they don’t fully comprehend the work when it is merely memorized and simply regurgitated. It has been implied that I am old fashioned and out of touch as I am apparently under the frightening assumption that I can simply pour knowledge into a student’s head like water in a glass (it’s amazing how words not only become symbolic vehicles for feeble thoughts but complete sentences, unfortunately, do as well). Of course, I think that these people are entirely wrong.
Human beings are wired to search for meaning, some more than others but always in relation to what meaning they believe can offer them worthwhile affordances. When we stare at puzzle pieces thrown on the ground we don’t stare questioningly, and meaningfully, into the haphazard patterns produced, but when we stare at words, produced by what is frequently cited as one of the greatest writers of all time, we most often want to learn why this person’s work is considered to be great and how this can have both immediate and long-term applications to the quality of our very own life. Again, we search for meaning, particularly when so many others have claimed the work to be meaningful. When I tell students that Mark Antony’s speech is considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest because it is model in oral rhetoric whereby in a manner of minutes Antony convinces a crowd that the killing of Caesar was wrong immediately after Brutus convinces the same crowd that it was right, this seems pretty meaningful to them. So, in my pouring of teacher knowledge, into student glasses, the students immediately ask themselves many questions about the knowledge I have presented. How did Antony do this? Why did the citizens believe him? To what extent, and where, were all of logos, ethos and pathos utilized? Is the account believable? Does this speech deserve the reverence it receives? Certainly, these questions are not all evident upon a first reading but upon successive readings, upon each attempt at memorization and greater comprehension, more questions invariably come so that students can find meaning in the work so as to actually remember and understand it: as I said earlier, knowledge never comes without question.
The belief that knowledge can never come without question is supported in constructivists theories of learning. New material can not simply be absorbed; rather, it must be made to fit, or accommodated, with the learner’s other past experiences, knowledge and beliefs or–as such a system of understanding is called—one’s schema. I can not know that I must breathe unless I can question what happens when I stop breathing. I can not know how to multiply unless I can question its relationship to addition. I can not know what makes Mark Antony’s speech so persuasive unless I can question, amongst other things, his use of pathos, ethos and logos. Such examples illustrate why the process of activating prior knowledge through questioning is so critical to learning, but while we, as teachers, can utilize prior knowledge as a means to student accommodation through our understanding of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, students often explore their own schema, when trying to accommodate new knowledge. My point is that the acquisition of content, can never come without some exploration of process. So, it is entirely impossible to teach content without having the student trying to accommodate it, and it is absolutely impossible to teach content without some element of either teacher or student initiated process so as to accommodate that content, so that it eventually becomes either a belief or actual knowledge.
Admittedly, there is a lot that we accept without understanding, but we don’t actually know such information that we have merely memorized. My claim, is of course, that students acquire greater meaning and understanding within each successive attempt to memorize Mark Antony’s speech. Certainly, many teachers have experienced problems with students remembering the material that they have been taught. How many times have I had students come to me and say I don’t remember the author’s name for a book they once read or the instructions for an assignment they are to complete. In such situations, the students understood the words but not the meaning and/or significance behind them, or they saw no application for the information at the time. Often when students have successfully recited Mark Antony’s speech from memory, many of these same students will be able to recall and often apply, the importance of rhetoric within all of their persuasive works because they have seen and understand the significance of its application. And this understanding comes through successive attempts of memorizing and accommodation.
One can not help but believe that memorizing an oral form of communication, such as a speech, is not only concerned with the memory of the text, but is perhaps a multimodal approach, not unlike that of modern media, whereby numerous forms of text, and communication can be interpreted and appreciated for the manner in which each augment the other. When trying to understand Antony’s speech students can certainly appreciate this as they view other actor’s delivery of the work and think of ways in which they should deliver the text for greatest impact. Ong (1985) certainly acknowledges this when he claims that, “[w]ords acquire their meaning only from their always insistent actual habitat, which is not in a dictionary, simply other words, but includes gestures, vocal inflections, facial expression, and the entire human existential setting in which the real spoken word always occur” ( 46). The importance of this multimodal means of recall and representation is noted in Fosnot (2013) when he claims “symbolic representation actually affected thought” (location 618) and it follows that the more symbolic representations that are presented to students the more probable it is that at least one form of text (if we want to call body language for example a text) will reach an individual student and/or augment another form of text so as to help understanding and provide impact. Again, this seemingly points to other considerations when determining the importance of memorizing oral speeches, and their multimodal means of delivery, as it pertains to understanding the inherent meaning of the entire text.
So, It seems to me that one’s ability to recite something accurately is not linked so much to the words as an understanding of the meaning behind the words. And, Ong seemingly supports such a claim when he says that “In memorizing a written text, postponing its recitation generally weakens recall. An oral poet is not working with texts or in a textual framework. He needs time to let the story sink into his own store of themes and formulas, time to ‘get with’ the story. In recalling and retelling the story, he has not in any literate sense ‘memorized’ its metrical rendition from the version of the other singer—a version long gone forever when the new singer is mulling over the story of his own rendition” (59). So, in creating one’s “own rendition” one has achieved accommodation. This is quite a considerable feat when it comes to the inherent meaning behind Mark Antony’s words.
References:
Fosnot, C. T. (2013). Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice [Kindle DX version] Retrieved from Amazon.ca
Ong, W. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.