Frizzle fazzle

In ninth grade geometry, my teacher suggested we memorize some obscure geometric formula for finding the surface area of a cone. "One day, you could be in a meeting, and your boss will want to know how much it would cost per square foot to cover this cone in frizzle fazzle, and you'll know. You'll be the one to get promoted!"

Yes, it was a stupid statement then. And it's even stupider now.

But the teacher's larger point recently got me thinking: just how much memorization is necessary anymore? When I was in high school, the Internets was just coming into existence. Back then, knowledge was, indeed, power. But back then, we didn't have Google.

To old people like my grandparents, the Internet is a scary, unwieldy place. They wouldn't even know where to begin. But for my generation, you just "know" where to find a lot of things. Google for almost anything. LexisNexis or Westlaw for law. Switchboard for a landline phone number. Fandango for movies. It's simple. Or at least it is to us.

One wonders if the focus of education will eventually move away from "knowing" so much (like the surface area of a cone) and toward knowing where to look. Honestly, could a geometry teacher even get away with such a statement like that today without his students laughing in his face? They could probably pull the formula up on their cell phones before he could flip to it in his book.

(P.S. http://www.math.com/tables/geometry/surfareas.htm if you care. Found it in 20 seconds using The Google.)