alexpgp | Memorization vs. Understanding (Reply)

There is a group on Facebook called "Memorization is NOT the same as learning." The group description is a fairly long ramble that kept me in suspense owing to the fact that "learning" was never defined, past some vague indicated equivalence to "understanding" (also left for the reader to grok) and nonequivalence to "memorization."

The most cogent argument in the text goes like this:

If you had an aneurysm (go ahead, look it up), would you want a surgeon, who has to operate on you, that made straight A's by memorization, or a surgeon who made A's by actually learning about the brain and all of its functionings, that they know your brain is not just located in your head and is not just surrounded by your skull, but really understand what everything in there does.

Now, the way I see it, it makes sense that "a surgeon who made A's by actually learning about the brain" would be superior to one who just memorized because something took place in addition to memorization. The surgeon who "learned" would also have "memorized," no? (Or is it conceivable that a surgeon who "learned" all about the brain might ever have to look up "aneurysm"?)

Yet in my experience, the empirical evidence of the past couple of generations shows a marked trend away from memorization in education, in favor of... what? Learning, presumably? But that, you see, makes no sense, since as I see it, the path to the city of understanding passes through the suburb of memorization. (Said another way, if you haven't memorized the meaning of the word "aneurysm," you can't possibly understand the nature of aneurysms.)

Language interpretation provides a canvas, of sorts, on which to illustrate this.

If, as an interpreter, you understand an utterance, then you can generally muddle your way through an interpretation, even if you don't know the proper terminology in the "other" language, simply by explaining what was said using words you do know. (Example, if you don't know the word for "earthquake" in the target language, you can interpret it as "an event during which the surface of the earth shakes and vibrates.")

In such cases, the listeners will generally supply the missing word, which must be memorized on the spot, lest you end up explaining the word again the next time it is used. (In my experience, such memorization is fairly easy, mostly due to the embarrassment of not having known the word to begin with, but I digress...) Using the proper term after it's been pointed out to you shows that you're bright, alert, and on the bounce, which is always good.

On the other hand, if you don't understand the meaning of what the speaker is saying, then you can't explain it to listeners using other words and your performance as an interpreter will ride principally on memorized vocabulary. (If you don't have an adequate vocabulary, then your only remaining alternative is to ask the speaker to explain what he or she meant, and that's really a sort of last resort, because it calls everyone's attention to the gap in your knowledge, and if you have to do this more than once or twice, your rep as an interpreter ends up severely scuffed.)

So then what keeps good interpreters from looking bad in situations where their understanding of the subject at hand is limited? Memorized vocabulary. What allows interpreters of average intelligence to gain a basic understanding of a subject when thrust into the role of repeating what is said between parties engaged in a subject discussion? Memorized vocabulary.

And all of the above applies squared and cubed when it comes to simultaneous interpretation.

Understanding doesn't occur in a vacuum; it requires a "something" to reside in one's consciousness for the understanding to occur.

What that something is, though, is a likely subject for another time.

Cheers...