"The pin says I knew it once. The drill wants to know about today." - Ken Woodward
"The pin says I knew it once. The drill wants to know about today.” - Ken Woodward
What happens to a skill after the signature?
In this episode, Ken Woodward starts in a submarine chow line, where his name sat on a public list of sailors who hadn’t qualified. He was delinquent, a “dink,” for weeks. From there, he looks at how the Navy tested what he knew: checkouts and lookups from shipmates whose lives depended on his answers, and drills that kept asking.
He sets that beside the research on whether college builds critical thinking, and finds his question about atrophy is three questions. Did I learn enough, does it carry over, and do I bother to use it?
He also argues that critical thinking comes in many forms, from the bricklayer’s plumb line to a navigation fix, and admits to once reposting a political meme he never checked.
Ken closes with a question the poet David Whyte taught him: To whom or what am I apprenticing myself?
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Episode Notes
00:00 What A Difference A Drill Makes
00:36 Welcome To Curated Questions
01:56 Dink List Shame
03:09 Critical Thinking Question
03:46 Defining The Skill
04:20 Does It Atrophy
05:02 Thinking Conditions Today
06:11 AI And Less Checking
06:35 Case For The Work
06:55 Submarine Qualification Pressure
07:46 Why Everyone Learns Everything
08:17 Checkouts And Signatures
08:57 Lookups As Homework
09:19 Proof And Stakes
10:38 My Stubborn Study Problem
11:15 Memorizing To Catch Up
11:34 Lost Skill Or Lost Interest
11:57 No Lecturing Graduates
12:22 What Qual Cards Teach
13:19 Research On College Gains
14:07 Critical Thinking Is Domain Based
15:06 Transcript Illusion
15:53 Three Reasons We Stop Thinking
16:48 Earning Dolphins
17:22 Drills Test Today
18:49 No Drills For Beliefs
20:33 Work Has Built In Checks
23:34 Navigation Fix Triangle
25:41 Fact Checked By A Friend
26:37 Choose Your Apprenticeship
29:41 Credits And Encouragements