This article opened up asking a single question; "what’s the capital of Australia?” -- in an attempt to make the reader feel dumb. The name of a capital of a country you don’t live in is just the sort of data I would classify as trivia. Knowing that there is something called an atlas, or even more precise that there is a book that organizes this sort of information, or even more recently a website that you can ask this question to and receive back reasonable answer is far more important to know than knowing Canberra is the capital of Australia. Without knowing where to find or how to find the answer you would just have to answer “I don’t know”, but knowing these other concepts would allow you to answer “I don’t know, but I am reasonably sure I can find out”.
It should also pointed out that countries have capitals -- is the "larger idea" -- and the fact that Canberra is the capital of Australia is triva. A good way to look at this; things that have unique names but can be categorized in groups are often trivia and the groups they make are the knowledge. The article actually picked a excellent topic to illustrate this notion. The big ideas are countries, states, provinces, territories. Learning the unique names of these things teaching you nothing new -- other than the name. No new ideas are conveyed by learning a new name. Learning that there are states and provinces, how they work, and what their differences is far more valuable than the names of each of the individual states and provinces. So yes, not knowing the triva can still allow you to work my “larger ideas”.
Getting to know the capital of a country is like creating a tiny hook onto which other information accretes. It creates a sense of familiarity about a place, which sensitises you to other news about the area (for example, the #StopAdani movement which, tragically, is going to fail).
Five years back, I started playing these trivia games at Sporcle (sparkle.com). I mean, what is the use of knowing all the periodic table elements? Then it turns out, a niece independently fell in love with chemistry and the periodic table, which has opened up a nice new channel of talking to each other. And I'm looking forward to visiting Ytterby[1] this summer
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/elements/fe...
Your example of #StopAdani made me smile (not because it will fail) But because it sort of proved my point. I did not know who Adani is or what they were doing. But I knew how to search and what sites to go to to get some context. I was ignorant that Gautam Adani and that the Adani group is trying to make a coal mine in Australia -- but not dumb, stupid or helpless. A week from now I will likely have flushed Adani from my mind, but I will remember some company is trying to setup a coal mine and there is some movement to stop it. I will likely remember that I can find more information about this on my hacker news comments history and from there be able to then provide the remaining details.
What I think you have touched on is something entirely different than learning a skill that will provide lasting enhancements to your life. Learning to tie your shoe, or riding a bicycle is a lasting life long skill. Learning that a multinational corporation from India is trying to open a coal mine in Australia is a current event. At most will give you a good talking topic with a buddy where you can exchange trivial information -- much of which you will forget years later.
After writing this I realize that yes, having a relationship with your niece is will provide lasting enhancements to your life, but I think we can all agree the type of knowledge we are talking about here is not relationship building or social skills. While knowing trivia is definitely a good skill for those things it’s not the type of knowledge and skill sets I have been talking about.
There was a journal entry [1] by Richard Feynman shared with me on HN recently -- strangely enough on a very similar topic -- thanks stcredzero. I think this journal entry shows the dangers of trivia teaching and testing and why as a society we need to accept not knowing a easily looked up question does not make someone dumb or stupid. We should be concerning our self with ensuring we know the concepts, how to apply them, and how and where to lookup the information needed to complete the loop.
<rant> On a side note, I link to think of my computer as an extension to my mind. I dabble in many areas of computers and robotics. I could not possibly remember everything needed to do the things i do. Maybe I have subpar memory. And remembering how to find things and answer my own questions with the resources of the computer and internet is a cheap hack. Nevertheless it has allowed me to do some pretty amazing things that I otherwise would have not been able to do. The particular skill I have is something that is becoming more popular and mainstream. I think they call it critical thinking. The particular subskill of critical thinking is problem solving. If I relied on trivia and came across something I did not understand and lacked the skills of knowing how and where to find things I would have not achieved a 1000th of what I have. Bringing this back to the original article and its attempt to make the readers feel dumb because they did not know the capital of a random country -- without critical thinking and problem solving skills and the ability to recognize I have a problem in the first place, I could never have solved the problem. I would have just thrown my hands up and said welp, I don’t know, shit out of luck. We are only lucky the the dialog in the article told us the capital, as we were told no googling although they did not say anything about looking up the answer in a atlas. </rant>
At the same time, I must say that playing around with random Sporcle trivia quizzes keeps paying off in unexpected ways, both in my work and social life. As I think about it while composing this response, it seems like the payoff is in making connections with people, although I play without having an end in mind or make a particular effort to remember anything. It is not the individual trivia point; it is more the stochastic effect.
However insofar as there's a limit to every principle, I would caution against a too-generic approach 100% of the time: it's often after a second step in which you learn, often by heart (think hobby, think things you love), a bunch of very detailed information about a topic, that you truly feel confident about your knowledge. And this is what we generally define as expertise (albeit 2nd degree until you make things, apply this knowledge). In most cases, it comes with time and exposure (experience, repetition) but is much accelerated by a conscious will to learn (and good methods).
In short, a high-level ontological approach combined with a sizeable degree of freedom to explore this or that topic in ample detail (quite lacking in studies where you have to rush everything).
I agree with you, and there is a whole lot of stuff to talk about with regards to this (far too much for me to type right now).
As pointed out in my previous reply on this topic, I have indeed stacked the table to one side to help illustrate my point.
I really want to talk more about schooling with regards to this subject of learning and assessing one's knowledge retention. But it is far too late :(
It's no different to, 30 years ago, knowing that when a piece of equipment is having a problem with its anterior doohickey, the troubleshooting guide is on page 25 of the manual. It only plays up every 18 months and you always have the manual on you, so you don't need to remember more than 'doohickey problems, page 25'.
1. Graduates can implement algorithms given a nice and thorough description in a textbook or a website.
2. Graduates can implement algorithms given a few minute whiteboard explanation by a colleague or a short answer on a Stack Exchange site. (For a short answer example, look at some at cs.stackexchange or cstheory.stackexchange, where expertise is often assumed.)
3. Graduates can design and implement algorithms that are simple derivatives of those they have seen or implemented before, without any textual advice.
4. Graduates can design non-trivial derivatives of algorithms that they have seen before, given a problem that is not googleable (for example, it came up as a secondary question in your research).
The actual goal depends on the aims of your university or class.
The problem with any level besides 1 is that it seems to require an artificial test environment. You want to give the students easy exercises, say solvable within 60-90 minutes, and you want to give them as much freedom for their implementation environment -- but the reality is, any popular and "time-tested" exercise is fully solved online, most likely in full detail on Stack Overflow. (Speaking from experience, trying to "dress up" the problem in some alternate description doesn't work if the students can Google.)
And, predictably, if you forbid the access to the internet you get upset students, you provide an easy and effective way to cheat, and you give ammunition to the critics who call your testing methods "distant from any actual practice".
I don't know what the "right" answer is, but I am fully convinced that stopping at level 1, the only level where you can realistically allow access to the internet, is not the right way.