[tsumnia]

To carry what zecho was saying, at what point does it become ridiculous? Everyone has a calculator in their pocket, should we stop worrying about teaching addition? You chose to use the extreme items that get memorized, but there where is the 'fine line' of things to memorize?

"Students do not need a teacher nor a classroom to memorize facts."

You are half-right here, the problem is, if we get rid of the teacher, how do you encourage the student to memorize boring rhetoric like math or reading comprehension? The teacher is also there to 'force' you to put down your toys/electronics and work. Doing your up-teenth geography homework question is a lot harder when there is no enforcement and all your friends are on Call of Duty. Teachers help teach discipline.

The poem by Taylor Mali "What does a teacher make?" (http://zenpencils.com/comic/124-taylor-mali-what-teachers-ma...) sort of touches on this too.

[derefr]

I've thought about this a bit as a game designer. Basically, teachers have to force (induce extrinsic motivation) students to learn things, because the student has no greater goal (intrinsic motivation) which would flag the knowledge to them as being immediately relevant. If, on the other hand, the student needed to be able to know the sums of large numbers quickly while they had their hands full (for, say, estimating a fair tip as a server in a restaurant), they'd quickly absorb a mental addition algorithm--because they would have created a mental gap, a place where their plans say "and then if only I could--".

The things that should be taught, I think, correlate highly to the types of things students will later wish they knew. These are mostly low-level rules and processes for things which are so "obvious" to everyone else that they're hard to communicate unless you have a background in education. To flip that around, the kinds of things we call "trivia"--things equally simple or obvious, but as easily learned as said (e.g. a state capitol) don't really need school to teach them--as, if someone later feels the need to know, they can just ask anyone, and pick it up on their own. School is mostly a place to impart knowledge that's hard to teach (including to self-teach) if you don't know the specific skills of teaching.