Grade school is the time when you're SUPPOSED to be memorizing things that form the basis of learning things that come later. There is such a backlash against "rote learning" these days that they manage to get kids through school without learning anything. Sure, it's a good goal of education to learn how to learn and how to look things up and where to find information--but part of the goal of education also needs to be to actually learn things as well.
There are very good reasons to memorize some things, certainly, but I take issue with the notions that memorizing = "actually learning things" (which seems to imply that not memorizing = NOT actually learning) and that there's some mandate to do a lot of memorization in grade school. I don't really accept those premises.
In Bloom's Taxonomy, memorization is part of the Knowledge level of learning, which is the lowest level. Memorization doesn't mean that kids even understand what they know--that comes at level 2!
http://www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htmPersonally, I have problems with open book tests at the grade school level if the teachers are not going beyond that factual, Knowledge level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Unless the test is really about seeing if the kids know how to use the index and table of contents (which is a valid question for early elementary school kids, and could be what was actually being tested!), then it seems to me that if you give the kids the facts by giving them the book, then the students should be asked to demonstrate higher level thinking skills on the test. I'd argue that the teachers are not writing good tests to make use of the open book model. But IMHO, I don't think an open book test is inherently wrong to use if used correctly, even in grade school.
