Memorization is the FIRST form of learning, and NOT the lowest as some suggest (not you 3Jack).
I agree with your assessment. Obviously, memorization is a part of learning and IIRC, a small part of IQ tests have some basic memorization skills tested. And IIRC, that's why people's IQ's tend to dip slightly as they get older (their memorization is not as good as it once was once).
But that's kind of the problem with the scholastic teaching profession and it has been going on probably since the beginning of time. It's all about the grade and less about getting the students to actually learn the subject at hand. It's more about giving a student a grade based on their ability to understand it on their own and even worse, kissing ass to the instructor and other things that have nothing to do with the actual learning. Thus it leads to memorizing the answer and nothing beyond that. And IMO, it leads to other things like cheating just so the student can get the answer down.
My old man was a high school teacher for a few years, then quit and got into working for a power company and moved his way up on the ladder. One of the things he had to do for 30 years in the power company was train linesmen and other workers and it mostly had to do with safety. Later on when I finished college, he got a part time job as a professor at a community college and he had students that were struggling. We later talked and discussed how my former Economics professor taught (which piqued my interest because at the time my future job looked like it was going to be a golf instructor, so I wanted to learn how great teachers teach). I wound up explaining to my dad that he needed to teach these students like he taught those workers at the power company in those training classes. At the power company he couldn't afford to just give out the instruction and hope that the workers memorize it and learn it on their own because people's lives were on the line if they violated procedure and safety checks.
How does this relate to golf? I think that at best, many golf instructors just memorize the answers but don't understand the answer and understand how to apply that answer to the student. I see Michael Breed 'memorize the answer' when it comes to D-Plane, but have no idea how to apply it to a student.
Or even worse, you get the instructor who memorizes the answer and thus he feels that the student does not *need* to know the answers either. I hear that all of the time. Hell, watch the Haney Project with Ray Romano and see Romano ask Haney some simple and logical questions and Haney refusing to answer them because he feels that Romano 'needs to listen to what he tells him.'
I think one of the biggest excuses I hear from fellow amateurs and golf instructors is that they will say 'Nicklaus didn't need to understand the D-Plane to play great.' But I have yet to see somebody tell me how understanding D-Plane would hurt a golfer's game.
It's funny because there seems to be a resistance to learning from students and we get teachers that are just enablers to that resistance to learning.
3JACK
I believe teaching methodology is overdone.
