Dr. Bill Nolte, Associate Superintendent of Haywood County Schools

Recently I attended an academically and intellectually gifted (AIG) parent meeting at Clyde Elementary.  We have these meetings to inform parents about services for AIG students.  While leaving the meeting, a parent said, “Last year in a meeting you said, ‘If you understand it, you don’t have to remember it.’  A light went off for me when you said that.  It helped me understand the way we teach now and I have been quoting you ever since.”

For years students were taught “what” and “when” and “where” with little regard to “how” or “why”.  Here are some examples:  punctuation rules, names of states and capitals, the periodic table, the Krebs Cycle, algebraic formulas, etc.  I and many other students spent countless hours memorizing facts, formulas, processes and procedural rules.  On test day, we prayed we would remember everything we worked so hard to commit to memory.  We also prayed the test did not have questions that required thinking conceptually beyond the memorized information.

Well, “If you understand it, you don’t have to remember it.”  Here’s a list of things I don’t need to remember:  tying shoes, making biscuits, changing a tire, driving an automobile, handling a firearm, ironing a shirt, using a chainsaw, calculating percentages, etc.  I don’t have to remember how to do these, or why certain steps are followed, because I understand how they work from a conceptual standpoint.

This column is not a criticism of facts or protocols.  These are foundational in learning.  However, factual recall and procedural memorization are basic components.  Conceptual understanding goes way beyond recall of facts or the rote use of formulas.  The difference between memorized facts or procedures and having conceptual understanding is the difference between good students and great students.  Think about it for a second.  You can follow a procedural recipe for cooking a dish or you can understand how ingredients in a recipe interact with heat, time and each other to create particular textures and tastes.  With conceptual understanding of the latter, you can create dishes that are better than the original recipe.

In like fashion, conceptual understanding is key to high academic performance.  A conceptual understanding of math allows you to answer difficult questions on final exams, the ACT and the SAT because you understand math conceptually even if you forget a formula.  It also allows you to think through things in life without relying on factual recall or formulas.  If your child’s school work includes conceptual understanding practices rather than word searches, fill in the blank answers and countless work sheets, be thankful.

Submitted by:  Dr. Bill Nolte, Associate Superintendent of Haywood County Schools