IUnderestimating the Lower Books

A poster of Bloom's Taxonomy hangs in every single classroom in my high school. It is one of the things that I would stare at and wonder about on those days when all I could manage was to keep my eyes open and to occasionally scratch down a sentence I absent-mindedly heard come out of the teacher's mouth. It depicts a stack of books with the stages of Bloom's each written on a book - LOTS at the bottom, HOTS at the top. All the teachers in my school spoke of striving to reach the lantern at the top of the pyramid of books which culminate in the word 'Evaluation'. On those days when my mind was somewhere out in space, Bloom's Taxonomy never quite made sense to me. I understood the challenge of applying the information you had already processed and then the further obstacle of creating something new out of what had already been repeated and applied; however, I couldn't help wondering about the necessity of every level in the pyramid. The memorization of facts, processes, dates, conjugations and the like are the most important building blocks to any real knowledge of a subject. Sometimes, unfortunately, teachers skip over these details and go straight to the HOTS, losing students along the way. I do not necessarily agree with the statement in the article that you can start at any point in the pyramid because I believe you need to master the basics in order that the more difficult processes follow easily. This is just a warning to those teachers that want their students to reach the top of the pyramid; never underestimate the power of starting with the basics.