Parrots or professionals?

The following article by the philosopher AC Grayling appeared in The Guardian on Saturday:

Knowledge and genius

I think it makes some very valid points which are relevant to education and particularly so with respect to the training of professionals.

In the article, Grayling states:

“there is no automatic connection between knowledge and intelligence“.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Simply being able to reel off facts isn’t proof of ability to perform a task. Even a parrot can be trained to reel off lists of facts. Yet there is too much reliance on rote learning in the occupational hygiene profession where trainees are required to learn masses of facts for the BOHS modules, while there is relatively little testing of their ability to apply the knowledge to solving problems.

An enormous amount of information is available to us in the modern world - and it continues to expand exponentially. It is not only unrealistic to expect a professional to absorb and remember a mass of facts, it is, in my opinion, poor practice. It is more important to know how and where to locate information than to memorise it - and then to be able to use it to analyse and solve problems.

Another week another course finished. This time it was M101, "health effects of hazardous substances".

As usual, the exam was disappointing, in that the questions were not all of a high standard. One of the part B questions in particular, was of concern. Although the overall question was OK - it asked about the hazardous effects of four relatively important substances, it also asked about how the substances could be "detected" required the candidates to list the relevant occupational exposure limits.

First of all what was meant by "detected"? Do they mean how do the senses detect the substances, how they can be detected by biological monitoring or how they can be detected by air sampling? It is not clear at all. And if they mean any of these aspects, they are outside the scope of the syllabus. An example of poor question writing.

I also think that expecting candidates to list exposure limits is unreasonable. For a start, there is nothing in the syllabus that requires it (limits aren't even mentioned). If the examiners do think it is fair (I assume they do given that they set the question), then it would imply that the candidates must know all the limits in EH40 as there is nothing to indicate that only a small selection need to be memorised. This is not just unreasonable but I would contend that it is bad practice to attempt to remember the contents of EH40. First of all there are more important things that need to be held inside our limited memory banks. Secondly limits change and I think that it is much better to encourage hygienists to look them up and ensure that the most current one is applied. Its easy enough to do this - especially as the main reference source is the pdf file posted on the HSE website (now that they don't publish a hard copy every year).

We should be training candidates about what limits are, where to find them and how to locate them - but not expecting them to memorise them.