"Homework: New Research Suggests It May Be an Unnecessary Evil" by Alfie Kohn

[DetlefK]

4. bulls**t

You learn by practice. Ask any neurologist, ask any guy working with artificial intelligence.
You start with a pre-determined set of brain-parameters and slowly vary their values until you achieve a sufficient degree of efficiency/proficiency in a particular field.



Let's take a set of linear equations.
You don't have to solve it, because we need the values of those variables.
You have to solve it, to prove that you understand the METHOD for solving this kind of problems.

Or solving a path-integral.
That's ugly. Really ugly. But: You have to solve it to prove that you are capable of abstract thinking, of imagining geometric relations in your head and of juggling differentials/fractions.

Or writing a pro-contra-discussion of a thesis.

Or writing a proper short-story.

Or knowing the differences between a good book/movie and a bad book/movie.

Or actually thinking and reasoning why the utopia of "Brave New World" is no utopia at all.





Homework is all about forcing to students to employ methods and patterns. Why? Because those patterns get inscribed into their brains and when they encounter a similar problem later in real life, they hopefully have a moment of "Wait, there's a trick how to do that."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network

Read it and weep.