one of my biggest frustrations in life is that the vast majority of people we interact with... simply dont think. They have lost, or never had, the ability to reason, to truly understand concepts, to "know" things. Yet, they know many things... as remembered facts.
I was faced with a delimma in me microsoft days. After the acquisition of Datallegro, the new microsoft owners asked me to embark on a mission, to teach the people at microsoft how to do what I do. Of course, the first step was to understand how I do what I do so I could know what to try to relay. Tht launched me on a jounrey of discovery.
This journey led me to a way of thinking about thinking.... Blooms taxonomy. It describd best both the source of my frustration and the core of mission Microsoft called me to undertake. This taxonomy providd the foundation. I share it here now as the basis of future posts.
Background:
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. During the 1990's a new group of cognitive psychologists, lead by Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom), updated the taxonomy to reflect relevance to 21st century work. The two graphics show the revised and original Taxonomy. Note the change from nouns to verbs associated with each level.I prefer the verbs version, as it is more explanatory in common language, but here are both the original and hte updated:
 |
| Booms Taxonomy Original |
 |
| Blooms taxonomy updated |
Here are the official definitions of the layers acording to the updated version:
| Remembering: can the student recall or remember the information? | define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state | |
| Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts? | classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase | |
| Applying: can the student use the information in a new way? | choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write. | |
| Analyzing: can the student distinguish between the different parts? | appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test. | |
| Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision? | appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate | |
| Creating: can the student create new product or point of view? | assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write. | |
As you climb from the foundation (remembering or basic knowledge of facts) towards the top (the ability to create anew), you truly "learn' something. Not until you reach the top and can create using the thing known as raw materials that you can claim to "know" it. Before that you only "know about" it The steps represent the necessary path from one to the other. No levels can be missed! IF you sipe "create" withut climbinh through true understanding and analyzing... then yu siply create a new appraoch to facts, not a new understanding.
Unfortunately my mission at Microsoft mostly failed. And I understand why.
IT is a simple fact that for the vast majority of people, american education destroys the ability to climb this chart. The ability to learn is squashed through the approaches and methods of modern education. In its place is a full and sole embracing of facts... which is at the bottom of hte learning cycle. The student is recline to a life of remembering insted of understanding. The bible has a name for this... it is called "sheep".
At microsoft, the culture is much like higher education, squashing true understanding of concepts in favor of demonstrable facts. I fact, within the culture there I clearly noticed that almost exclusively the higher the education of the person, the lower on the chart they lived. So the microsoft culture went something like this:
the masses, the newcomers, fresh ut of school, little experience, lots of facts, some showed proomise, but few had the capacity to grasp. they became the busy workers for the first few years.
The middle men, after several years in, doing, working, experiencing, they learned... some were achieving true learning. They were the thinkers.. the ones that drove what little innovation there was.... until they either left for greener pastures or were promoted and schooled further...
The managers... higher ups, leaders... usually with more education credentials... these were usually below the newcomers in ability to reason. They were numbers folks... in fact the more letters they posessed behind their name, the less they could think.They spent their time mostly doing meaningless things and limiting the middle men who were actually creating.
The outsiders.. acquisitions.. these guys were good, knew how to think, but if so, they didnt fit into the culture and were quickly forced out. the few that stayed became.... managers.
I am not picking on microsoft... this iis the same patter I see in every walk of life, every profession, across america. IT is rooted in the education system we run our children through. te education syste that was purposefully designed to rceate factory workers (non thinkers) from the american entrepreneur.
So back to the taxonomy... this is the key. facts have little value except to form a foundation. The true value in learning is in climbing the ladder and truly uderstanding relationshpips, the big picture, trenda, patterns, formulating cause and effect, building proposed scenerios, predicting the future. Facts are only a small almost insignificant starting point. Sure.. important.. but only a sa starting point.
Sad is hte man who aims to build a house, lays a good foundation, but then praises the foundation so much so that... the house is never built. it woul cover his beautiful foundation! the house never appers, just a beautiful useful but useless foundation for all to see.
My point in all this is to express how true learning happens. You follow the levels to the top. You master something, not remember it. And the amazing thing is... when you do this properly... you wll find that virtually all of life, all that matters, alings with the bible. There is wisdom and technology within the bible that few find... becsue it is beyond the memorization. It is beyond verse and chapter boundaries. IT is in concepts... large clouds of thught that must be held in the comprehension in entireity to see the picture and grasp the beasuty.
More on this later.. that is the basics of sevral concepts I wish to share...
so for now.... 1 2 3 may be eay, but understanding 1 2 3 is... incredibly hard and immeasurably valuable.
