Click for printer friendely version of this HowTo Education: The Proper Balance of Memorizing, Understanding and Thinking For the US, Canada and Europe, the 21st century has seen a shift in our industrial base from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy. Service, of course, is problem solving and problem solving requires thinking. If we find a way to make problem-solving both fun and profitable, then it is highly likely that we'll enjoy an interesting life. Our brain is capable of four primary functions: memorizing, where we store facts and concepts, understanding, which is how we take a concept and extend it to a different setting, thinking, where we build new concepts from stored facts and concepts and doing, where we perform some task. There is considerable evidence that storing information results in structural changes in our brains. Thus each fact we memorize creates some sort of structure that we can draw on for future use. Because there is a structural basis of memory, we must realize that unlearning a fact or a reflex requires possibly more energy than that required for the initially storing the fact or developing the reflex. Click for printer friendely version of this HowTo

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