Quote Originally Posted by Adam L View Post
My favorite example of this is when teachers are required to take tests on Bloom's Taxonomy (in ed school normally) and don't understand that just because you can give answers on something doesn't mean you understand it. There is a difference between the ability to give answers about something and the capability to abstractly apply, modify, reapply, evaluate and modify is a logical leap many people will never make it. The reason I love this example is that Bloom's taxonomy is all about that.
It's interesting you mention Bloom. When he wrote his taxonomy back in the 1950's he got a lot of nasty comments. The idea that you could create a taxonomy of learning was preposterous. It had been done before, but there was a lot of people who considered knowledge to be like water and brains to be buckets. Knowledge was a quantity to be poured in not absorbed or used.

Now we accept Bloom and his hierarchy and apply concepts like outcome based education, and learning objectives to everything. Yet to often we find people down around level 1 or 2 defining, describing, reciting, instead of climbing up the ladder to synthesis. Get out the bucket and pour some more knowledge in so to speak.

Sun Tzu is great, but tell me how it relates to the current conflict and better yet give me a reasoned argument about how it was applied in a previous conflict and use that as a model in the future conflict that we don't know about. Tell me how the operation of a laser jet printer sitting on my desk is similar to the operation of a TOW 2 Missile System. Drawing correlations between disparate ideas to create new patterns of knowledge is what we are really trying to do.

I remember as a low and rough corporal watching as a lt. scrambled and couldn't figure out what to do when one of our guys walked backwards of a ledge on the rim of Lava Lake. I jumped down in the ditch and was doing the breathing, beating, bleeding number telling my buddy he was an idiot. The Lt. was standing there kind of looking numb. My staff sgt. took the Lt. and said "Sir, don't you think we should call for a corpsman", "Sir, don't you think you should call Company", so on and so on and so on. Perceived power rested on the gold of the Lt's collar but reality placed on staff sgts hands.

I don't blame the Lt. for freezing in such a mundane no fire no issue kind of situation. Somebody walking backwards off a cliff kind of caught me by surprise too. I watched the staff sgt. and learned you didn't have to beat the Lt. senseless and you never stop learning. I also learned that you can't teach an autonomic response to everything. Some things you just have to experience. When I've told this story in the past I also mention something else. I learned that in the Marines teamwork go's down and UP the chain of command. You can't learn that in a book.