It’s not the number of techniques you know, but how well you know them.

 

Posted by ADAM CARTER on OCT 16, 2022

It’s not the number of techniques you know, but how well you know them.

 

Some instructors teach their students “just enough” and often these instructors believe that they themselves have been taught all there is.

Learning is often taken to mean memorization, and advancing from one grade to the next as education, and passing that grade to mean they are competent.

If instructors just follow the curriculum, they resort to telling students what they ‘need’ to know, and students simply commit facts to memory. This leaves little time for students to acquire a deeper understanding of the subject, or to develop life-long skills.

Learning is not solely committing a set of facts to memory, but the ability to use resources to find, evaluate, and apply knowledge.

Knowledge alone is not power. Applying knowledge is power.

Active processing of information, not passive reception of information, leads to learning. That is, once students have covered the fundamentals they must try to put together their own understanding of concepts, principles, and procedures.

Teachers should reduce the total amount of factual information students are expected to memorize, and devote much more effort to helping students become active, independent learners and problem solvers. “Bunkai” (analysis/breakdown) needn’t be restricted solely to the breakdown of kata.

Students are memorizing content and passing exams without a deeper understanding. Memorization occurs when the instructor and student make little or no effort to relate new information to existing knowledge. Why? Simply because some instructors just teach the curriculum hanging on the wall.

We understand and remember the information we think about! Specifically, learning with understanding requires time. Students need time to explore underlying concepts and to generate connections to other information that they have already learned and understood.

Contributing to the problem is the mistaken notion that instructors must cover only the content of a curriculum, or their students will be unprepared for the future and their next grade.

In addition, teachers worry about “losing” or “wasting” valuable class time. However, activities should focus student learning on how to use knowledge to solve important questions. Therefore, instructors should help students become active, independent learners and problem solvers.

The task of instructors is not just to educate students to perform techniques, drills, kata etc. in a rote form, but to help them acquire knowledge and understanding.

At the end of the day; it’s skill that matters, your attitude, your actions. It’s not the number of techniques you know, but how well you know them.