task 2: Memorising facts is the most important way to succeed in education. Agree / Disagree?

It has been argued that people need to have a great memory in order to be successful in formal education. This leads to some educators opting rote memory as the primary focus of their lesson. I disagree entirely the opinion that believes memory as the most important aspect in education for two reasons: reality in the workplace and the transformation of education.

First of all, education is held so that people can have some skills and qualification which in turn will give a positive perception in the eyes of prospective employers. Therefore, it is only logical that what is studied on formal education should prepare students to be workers with high capacity and ability. However, people in the office are not required to memorize all things; we have computers and smartphones for that purpose. In contrast, people in the job need to have the ability to be critical and apply creative thinking so that they can solve every problem in every situation in an efficient and instant fashion. This goes to show that we have to teach our children how to be logical, creative and critical in viewing every issue in their lives.

Another point is that the world of education itself is transforming. People no longer study with books in an old-fashioned way. Whereas people in the past relied on books as the source of information, students nowadays utilize the internet search engine to find information easily. In my opinion, as the world has changed, it is crucial to teach our students how to verify the information they find on the internet, how to do double and triple check of certain piece of information and how to be critical in replying to other people’s opinion that they will surely encounter in the Net. It has to be said that with the vast amount of information, people become lazy to recheck their news quality and tend to just accept the news as it is despite the fact that it could be a piece of false or misleading information. This means that we need to teach our students skills that are relevant to the changing world.

In conclusion, although in the past memorization was considered as essential, the current situation has changed the approach we need to adopt for our educators’ approach. It is vital to teach students critical, creative, and logical thinking instead of being passive and submissive. Moreover, students need to possess the ability to select and verify the information they find so that they can be more objective and reliable as a learner and as an individual.