Some words I could never quite 'get' completely. One of them is
the word TOKEN. I mean, I know what it does. I remember Tokens
at the Amusement park. I remember learning BASIC that files were
saved in either ASCII that I could read, or TOKENIZED format,
which I couldn't. So, fake money coins or the BASIC language
words stored in a tiny coded format. Why the same word? I never
got the connection. Then today, I learn that TOKEN and TEACH are
_almost_ the same word. t*can in Old English is Teach tacen in
Old English is Token Since COINS represent the "thing" you want
to buy but they're not the thing itself... And SHOWING
(teaching) represents the "thing" you want to convey, but
SHOWING isn't the same thing as LEARNING or UNDERSTANDING... the
relationship makes sense. They're both "message passing", but in
a compressed form that's symbolic of the real thing, but isn't
-actually- the real thing but its treated "as if" its the real
thing. In short, they're relationship words. Perhaps there needs
to be a form of Teaching that's a countable word. One Teach = ..
wait.. that's a FACT. A fact is EVIDENCE, and evidence isn't
"the thing itself" but it leads your towards or shows or
"teaches you" that something *could be true*. So: Facts are
coins. The more facts you accumulate in school, the more prizes
you can win at the prize booth. In that sense, ROTE makes sense
because if all you're doing is passing FACTS back and forth like
COINS... that's all the EVIDENCE you need to show that
"understanding" took place... even though UNDERSTANDING isn't a
requirement for TEACHING... only for learning... which is
different from teaching. Teaching is a method of message passing
that *can* lead to learning, but there are other ways than
presenting TOKENS for PRIZES. In the world of money, you have
Bartering. Direct this-for-that. In the world of Learning, you
can have Experience, which isn't turned into TOKENS first but it
is DIRECT. BUT - experience is MESSIER than teaching (or
tokenized method leading to understanding) just like bartering
is a messier method for exchanging goods/services than money...
which.. is messy enough. *whew*. Ok. I *think* I got it. Still
confusing though.
The use of Token in computing seems to best represent the
connection to Fact in education:
*
"the smallest meaningful unit of information in a sequence of
data for a compiler."
*
A "fact" would be the smallest meaningful unit of information in
a sequence of education for a student.
