Unarguably, One of the lofty goals of education is the acquisition of knowledge. However, did you know that what most of us call knowledge unfortunately, is not what it is?
The word 'know' can be used in a number of senses such as: to have information, to be aware of, to take cognizance of, to realize, to be familiar with, to recognize, to be acquainted with etc...
On the basis of these meanings, many a student (a big time victim myself) have been misled to mistake rote memorization and recall for knowledge ( No thanks to Benjamin Blooms Taxonomy). But, in the real sense of the word, recall is not knowledge, or is it? Now, here is the point: that you have mastered the art of memorization so well that you can recall and write verbatim, word for word, the content of your lecture notes or textbooks in exams and obtain excellent scores does not necessarily mean you have acquired knowledge. This is no news because many of us are quite aware of this. Perhaps, we've all had the experience of "La cram, la pour" in the course of our schooling. (Chai, I don suffer!). You employ all the arsenal of mnemonic techniques and stuff your head with bits and pieces of undigested facts just to pass a test or an exam, after which the bulk of the stored data vanish into the thin air, until another exam comes knocking for a repeated cycle. What a sham disguised as education! What an intellectual fraud! Yet this is no news. We all know this too well. What is perhaps news is that in the next couple of series under this topic (this is just an intro.), we are embarking on an interesting journey to unravelling the secrets on how to gain mastery of our academic subjects or courses. Please don't miss it for anything. See you then.