To memorise or to familiarise, that’s the question?

Is learning the same thing as memorising something? Could it be that we too often think about learning in that way, while there ar also other valuable other ways of learning? Take for instance ‘learning by familiarising’. Isn’t it often enough to just know about the existence of certain information, without having to remember everything about it? Especially if you are living in an environment where a lot of information is readily available, it might be worthwile to -just- familiarise yourself with a lot of it, and memorise only a little.

Ofcourse, learning is not all about memorising information, but I feel it is too much about that. For example, most learning objectives for training programmes are about ‘understanding X’, ‘knowing Y’ and ‘being able to Z’. Fewer are about ‘knowing where to look for X’, ‘knowing who to ask about Y’, or ‘why we do Z’.

I think, being familiar with, and connected to a broad range of concepts, information and meanings makes you more aware. If you are also very good at refering back to the information you are familiar with at the moment you need to have it or know more about it, I think you have an interesting mix of skills. Especially if you know why certain people, information, tools & methods are (or might be) relevant to you or others (connected to purpose).

In summary, I think we should keep on studying the topics and skills we know we need, but expand our learning repertoire more to familiarise ourselves with people, information and methods we might need later.

Q: Do you agree that, while learning, we should focus more on connecting people, information, tools & methods and purposes?

For more information on this distinction, see “Memorization vs. familiarization vs referenced learning, by Elliott Masie“