On Drilling: and Missing the Point
Application is the skill that matters, both as the means and the measure of competence. Students are not fully learning until they are applying a skill to some end, and we are not truly measuring students’ competence unless we are measuring their ability to apply their skills correctly for some purpose.
When I was in junior high school, there was a player in a neighboring district who was widely regarded as the best basketball player in the region. He worked year-round on basketball drills: ball-handling drills. He could dribble two and three basketballs at a time. I once saw him dribble the length of the floor using only his knees. Another time, he dribbled two basketballs in the distinct rhythm of the William Tell Overture. Nobody at that time had ever seen anything like it.
Kids from all over would come to basketball camps to watch him. During the season, we would go to his games just to watch him warm-up. All of the drill work had made him so slick and confident that he never made a mistake.
Ironically,the games were never as interesting. The team he played on won about half the time, but there were three or four teams that were better than his. I remember he often looked frustrated during the games.
He did receive a basketball scholarship to college. He rarely played during his four years, but he was so slick with his ball-handling drills that the university started putting a spotlight on him during the warm-ups. I heard people came to games just to watch his warm-up routine.