Hear, See, Do

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

Confucius said that, and he was a sharp guy.

In school, most of what I did was listening (or trying to appear to be listening). So I heard much about History. Indeed I forgot just about everything I heard.

Sometimes a teacher would try to show us something, like an experiment in physics. Often it wouldn't work. I do remember those broken experiments I saw. No idea what they were supposed to be about, though.

In high-school, we did our own experiments in electronics. Got our fingers burnt with solder. I definitely understand it's not a good idea to hold a soldering iron with my bare hands.

In mass education, it's easiest to have students hear something about the studied material. It can even be done via radio. It is more difficult to have students see facts about and the nature of the subject matter, though these days it is much easier than even 30 years ago, with multi-channel television, and with the almost-infinite Internet. Thinking about it, I realize that much of my own memory about studied materials, that I retain from my school years, came from educational television that I was watching while I was home sick. It is the most difficult - in a mass education system - to have the students do something meaningful with the subject matter, so they gain real understanding and insight. A key word in the previous sentence was "meaningful." During my school years, I was given much homework to do; almost none of it was meaningful to me, and accordingly, I didn't learn much from it. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "just do it."

So, there is very little effort for an educational establishment to teach by hearing; more effort to teach by seeing; and most effort to teach by doing. A question pops up about whether the difficulty in teaching by doing is worth the effort. I don't know, because I have access to very little evidence (research) either way. But I want to ask another question to which I don't have the answer:

Is teaching by hearing worth even the relatively little effort involved?